Taylor Swift: Legally Banal Music for the Nazi Youth

15th of October, 2019

This piece was first left as a review on the website RateYourMusic.com. I was reviewing Shake it Off, the Taylor Swift single. I like the format of this one, it's like a collage piece. Very little of it was written by me, but the combination of sources produces a new character of description.

"The most conceptually interesting Taylor Swift song" is an award I certainly do not give lightly, and this song is that. I don't much enjoy actually listening to it, but it has not one but two aspects to it that occasionally cross my mind and make me smile. I will let others do the talking I think.

1

"Plaintiffs explain that the plethora of prior works that incorporated the terms ‘playa’ and hater together all revolve about the concept of ‘playa haters’ –a “playa” being “one who is successful at courting women,” and a “playa hater” being “one who is notably jealous of the ‘playas’” success.” Plaintiffs explain that Playas Gon' Play used the terms in the context of a third party, the narrator of a song who is neither a ‘playa’ nor a hater, stating that other people will do what they will and positively affirming that they won’t let the judgement of others affect them."

"In the early 2000s, popular culture was adequately suffused with the concepts of players and haters to render the phrases “playas … gonna play” or “haters … gonna hate,” standing on their own, no more creative than “runners gonna run,” “drummers gonna drum,” or “swimmers gonna swim.” Plaintiffs therefore hinge their creativity argument, and their entire case, on the notion that the combination of “playas, they gonna play” and “haters, they gonna hate” is sufficiently creative to warrant copyright protection."

"... The concept of actors acting in accordance with their essential nature is not at all creative; it is banal."
—U.S. District Judge Michael Fitzgerald declares the lyrics to Shake it Off to be lawfully banal under United States Law in his dismissal of a lawsuit

2

"All these things about us being "intelligent" and the term "IDM" are just silly. I'm not a particularly intelligent person, me. I'm diligent, I'm pretty hardworking, but I'm not that clever. I ain't got any qualifications, I just pick up stuff that I think is interesting at the time. And is our music abstract and weird? To us or our mates it's not! Maybe if you've only listened to pop music, then yeah, it's weirder, because you've not been exposed to it. But that works the other way, too. I don't listen to pop, but someone dumped a load of Max Martin tracks on me to try and explain what he was about, and it seemed really, really alien to me, like Nazi youth music or something. I think everyone has a different idea of what weird is."
—Sean Booth of Autechre forever creates the association in my mind, and perhaps in yours too, of the National Socialism buried deep in the DNA of such hits as Hit Me Baby One More Time, I Kissed a Girl, and Shake it Off.