Taylor Swift submits statement to court in ongoing Shake It Off song-theft legal battle

The Red Hot Chili Peppers’ were awarded with the golden icon award at Sunday 28 August night's MTV VMA awards. On collecting their award, bassist Flea took the opportunity to dedicate it to the late drummer of the Foo Fighters, Taylor Hawkins.The 50 year old was tragically found dead in a hotel room in the north of Bogota, Colombia, where the band were set to play at a festival on Friday 25 March.

Taylor Swift continues to inspire University students across the United States. This time the University of Texas at Austin will be adding an exciting English course to their curriculum, titled ‘The Taylor Swift Songbook.’Just in time for Fall 2022 semester, students will enjoy Taylor’s work, while they learn about famous poets, including Chaucer, Shakespeare, Wyatt, Coleridge, Keats, Dickinson and Plath.Professor Elizabeth Scala will be using the singer-songwriter’s songbook and the cultural context, to start class participation and debates.

Taylor Swift is being sued by a poet and author named Teresa La Dart who claims a book Swift released alongside her 2019 album ‘Lover’ copied elements of La Dart’s book of the same name.In a complaint filed in Tennessee federal court on August 23, La Dart claims that “a number of creative elements” from her book – a collection of “poems, anecdotes and photos” self-published in 2010 – were copied in Swift’s book that accompanies a deluxe version of her ‘Lover’ album.As the Daily Mail reports, in the filing, La Dart alleges Swift copied both “the vibe and design” of her own book, as well as its “format” of “a recollection of past years memorialized in a combination of written and pictorial components”.In her allegations, La Dart specifically references the similarities of both books sharing a title, having covers that use “pastel pinks and blues”, images of their author “photographed in a downward pose” and the designs comprising of “interspersed photographs and writings”.La Dart is reportedly seeking in “excess of one million dollars” in damages.NME has reached out to representatives for Swift for comment. In a statement shared with Pitchfork, La Dart’s lawyer said her client “feels strongly that her full work needs to be compared with [Swift’s] before a conclusion is made here”.They added that the decision to file the complaint “was not made nor taken lightly considering the other side is quite formidable”, and they “hope the masses can understand these issues from her perspective”.Earlier this month, responding to a separate copyright lawsuit, Swift denied she had copied the lyrics of her 2014 hit ‘Shake It Off’ from ‘Playas Gon’ Play’ by the American pop trio 3LW.

A songwriting course based on the work of Taylor Swift is to be offered at the University of Texas at Austin. The 32-year-old pop star is thought to have solely written more than 50 songs since her childhood and now The Taylor Swift Songbook will be "read" alongside classics such as Geoffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge at the North American university and will strive to "introduce literary critical reading and research methods-basic skills for work in English literature and other humanities disciplines" to students.

on “The Adam Sank Show” that while he was competing on the show’s sixth season in 2007, he was scrutinized from his talent right down to his sexuality.“I grew up in a time when being called a f—-t in school was the worst thing that could ever happen to you. You had to be as hyper-masculine as possible to fit in,” said Malakar.“And coming up in 2007, it was like, ‘Being gay is OK, but you have to define yourself, and there’s this or that.'”Malakar said that while he was on “Idol,” several of his fans speculated that he wasn’t entirely straight despite the fact that he has a long-term girlfriend at the time.He claimed several of his publicists told him that he should remain “ambiguous” about his sexuality.“‘No one needs to know anything about anything because you don’t want to lose your fans,'” Malakar recalled one publicist saying.Malakar also said that he really didn’t know how to interact with male peers due to his father not really being a role model.“I had a hard time figuring out how to interact with young boys because my dad’s from India and grew up in a temple, so there was never like, ‘This is how you are a boy,'” says Malakar.

Former “American Idol” star Sanjaya Malakar has come out as bisexual.

Sanjay Gupta isn’t sure how to feel after “Never Have I Ever” branded him “sexy”.

Tony winner Jesse Tyler Ferguson and nominee Jesse Williams are suiting up again as stars of the baseball-themed Take Me Out, which is set to return to Broadway in the fall. The hit revival will re-take the field October 27 at the Schoenfeld Theatre for 14 weeks, it was revealed today.

“The Twilight Effect With Ashley Greene and Melanie Howe,” the filmmaker discussed how certain celebrities wanted to appear in the film because they were such huge lovers of the vampire romance films.“The craziest one of all those was to hear that Taylor Swift was a huge Twi-hard, and actually Taylor Swift and I had the same agent at the time,” the “About a Boy” director said.“[Our agent said] ‘Taylor would like to be in this movie — not because of you, but she’s a Twi-hard. She would be someone at the cafeteria or the diner or whatever, but she just wants to be in this movie,'” he recalled being told.But Weitz was afraid the “Shake It Off” crooner’s fame would be too distracting in the film.“The hardest thing for me was to be like, the moment that Taylor Swift walks onto the screen, for about five minutes, nobody is going to be able to process anything,” he noted.“I kick myself for it too, because I was like, ‘Wow, I could’ve been hanging out with Taylor Swift,'” he said of the “Bad Blood” singer.

EXCLUSIVE: Emmy Award winner Kelly Thiebaud (General Hospital, Days of Our Lives) is returning to as Eva Vasquez for the drama’s sixth season, premiering on October 6.

Christopher Vourlias Croatian production house Antitalent has signed an option agreement to develop and produce a local version of the best-selling global format “Your Honor,” the hit drama whose American remake for Showtime stars Emmy winner Bryan Cranston.The series follows a judge who must deal with the fallout when his son is involved in a hit-and-run that gets him embroiled with an organized crime family. Facing impossible choices, he discovers how far a father will go to save his son’s life.The Balkan remake will travel across the former Yugoslavia with a story that spans Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Serbia and Slovenia, according to Antitalent’s Danijel Pek.

CMU’s Andy Malt and Chris Cooke review key events in music and the music business from the last week, including Taylor Swift’s statement to a US court as part of the long-running song-theft legal battle over her 2014 hit ‘Shake It Off’ in which she explains how she came up with the lyrics for her track, while also insisting there was no way she could have been exposed to the song she is accused of ripping off before creating ‘Shake It Off’, plus some interesting new stats comparing consumer spending in the UK on recorded music and live music – and the impact of COVID-19 on all that.SUBSCRIBE TO SETLISTListen to Setlist and sign up to receive new episodes for free automatically each week through any of these services…Acast | Amazon Music | Apple Podcasts | audioBoom | CastBox | Deezer | Google Podcasts | iHeart | Mixcloud | RSS | Spotify | Stitcher | TuneInSTORIES DISCUSSED THIS WEEK• Taylor Swift submits statement to court in ongoing Shake It Off song-theft legal battle• From Suffering to Recovering: The stats that explain why the UK music industry is set for a dramatic post-lockdown comeback (Music Business Worldwide)ALSO MENTIONED• UK label spend on A&R and marketing reach almost £500 million last yearMORE FROM CMU• Upcoming CMU webinars• Buy MMF and CMU Insights’ Dissecting The Digital Dollar book on Amazon• Sign up to receive the CMU Daily news bulletin• Listen to the full Setlist theme tune

Taylor Swift has addressed a 2017 copyright lawsuit that claimed she stole the lyrics of her 2014 song ‘Shake It Off’.Writing in a federal court document filed yesterday (August 8), the popstar denied any copyright infringement, and claimed she’d “never heard” the song she is accused of plagiarising – 2001’s ‘Playas Gon’ Play’ by the American pop trio 3LW.In excerpts of the motion obtained by Billboard, Swift unequivocally rejected the accusation, writing that “the lyrics to ‘Shake It Off’ were written entirely by me”, before providing context around how they came to be included in the song.“In writing the lyrics, I drew partly on experiences in my life and, in particular, unrelenting public scrutiny of my personal life, ‘clickbait’ reporting, public manipulation, and other forms of negative personal criticism which I learned I just needed to shake off and focus on my music,” Swift wrote.Elsewhere in the motion, Swift spoke directly to the lyric in question, arguing that “players gonna play” and “haters gonna hate” were widespread aphorisms used throughout her childhood, “akin to … sayings like ‘don’t hate the playa, hate the game,’” and “‘take a chill pill’”.“I recall hearing phrases about players play and haters hate stated together by other children while attending school in Wyomissing Hills, and in high school in Hendersonville,” Swift said.Swift also cited the numerous uses of the phrase ​​in “many songs, films, and other works,” and referenced a 2013 performance in which she wore a T-shirt emblazoned with the term “haters gonna hate.”The lawsuit — filed by ‘Playas Gon’ Play’ songwriters Sean Hall and Nathan Butler — was dropped in 2018, but was later resurrected by an appeals panel the following year.

EJ Panaligan editorCinema Guild has acquired the North American distribution rights for Hong Sangsoo’s upcoming film “Walk Up.” The film will world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in September and will also play in competition at the San Sebastián International Film Festival. Cinema Guild will open the film in theaters in 2023 following its release of Hong’s other 2022 title, “The Novelist’s Film,” this fall.Kwon Haehyo, in his ninth film for Hong, plays Byungsoo, a film director who goes with his daughter, an aspiring interior designer, to a building owned by an old friend who is already established in the design field.

It’s a “Modern Family” reunion.

Over usage. Khloé Kardashian shaded Taylor Swift subtly for using her private jet more than her family. The Good American founder liked a post that joked about how the shocking information got leaked.