Taylor Swift, who’s currently being sued by songwriters alleging she stole lyrics from their 2001 hit “Playas Gon’ Play,” admitted in federal court that she’d never heard of the group 3LW, NPR reports. She also noted that she’d never listened to “Playas Gon’ Play.”

The lawsuit was first filed in 2017 by Sean Hall and Nathan Butler, who both penned the 3LW track. In the suit, they allege that she stole some of the song’s lyrics for her 2014 hit “Shake It Off.”

In Swift’s chorus of the song, she sings “the players gonna play, play, play,” and “the haters gonna hate, hate, hate.” Butler and Hall allege the lines in Swift’s chorus are almost identical to their song’s lyrics, which includes “playas, they gonna play, and haters, they gonna hate.”

Swift argued that the phrases “players gonna play” and “haters gonna hate” were a big part of popular culture when she was growing up, and that’s what inspired her to use them in “Shake It Off.” She added that in her youth, the phrases culturally were used “to express the idea that one can or should shrug off negativity.”

“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,” she said.

The Grammy Award-winning singer offered several examples proving the phrases were culturally significant, noting country crooner Eric Church’s 2013 performance of his song “The Outsiders” at the Country Music Awards. The song also includes the phrase “the player’s gonna play and a hater’s gonna hate.”

She also pointed to one of her own performances that year, where she wore an Urban Outfitters T-shirt with the phrase “haters gonna hate” on it.

Swift concluded her statement, telling the court that she “never heard the song ‘Playas Gon’ Play’ and had never heard of that song or the group 3LW,” before Butler and Hall’s lawsuit.

“None of the CDs I listened to as a child, or after that, were by 3LW,” she said. “I have never heard the song ‘Playas Gon’ Play’ on the radio, on television, or in any film. The first time I ever heard the song was after this claim was made.”

 

Hall and Butler argue that while the phrases are embedded into culture today, they were “completely original and unique” when they wrote the song.

The case’s next hearing is slated for Sept. 19.