Taylor Swift sued for $42m over lyric "haters gonna hate, players gonna play"

"Haters gonna hate" may just be a dumb meme, but "haters gonna hate, players gonna play" is a copyrighted expression, according to a lawsuit filed against pop singer Taylor Swift.

The claimed copyright proprietor is Jesse Graham, whose action comes not long after Swift declined to appear in a selfie with him, according to the New York Post.

Taylor Swift's song, Shake it Off, contains a similar wording to the one Graham situates in his own work.

Graham, 50, alleges that the chorus of Swift's 2014 anthem ("Cause the players gonna play, play, play, play, play / And the haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate") borrows from his slow-jam "Haters Gone Hate," which contains the phrase "Haters gonna hate, players gonna play."

Though the two songs bear little resemblance beyond that one lyrical similarity, Graham adamantly defends his case.

"Her hook is the same hook as mine," he told the Daily News on Saturday, claiming Swift uses it about 72 times in her song. "If I didn't write the song 'Haters Gone Hate,' there wouldn't be a song called 'Shake It Off.'"

Here is Mr. Graham's 2003 song:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=808MLaHcBs4

And here's Swift's hit:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfWlot6h_JM

According to the Post, he's also planning to sue CNN for the title of its morning show "New Day," as he operates a church organization called "New Day Worldwide."

In 2010 I asked a Latin forum what "haters gonna hate" is in Latin. It's apparently "Osores Oderint". Then I asked them what "let them hate, so long as they click" would be. At that point, as I recall, I was banned from the Latin forum.