Taylor Swift Plagerised Lyrics? Why Did Matt Nathanson Call Taylor Swift “Thief” On Twitter?

November 6, 2012 by Hollywoodite

Taylor Swift has been accused of plagerism over the lyrics to one of the songs on her number one album, Red, that sold VERY well.

Specifically, Swift’s 2012 song, All Too Well, contains the lyrics “And I forget about you long enough to forget why I needed to.” Whereas singer Matt Nathanson’s 2003 song, I Saw, contains the lyrics: “And I’ll forget about you long enough to forget why I need to.”

Swift just changed the “I’ll” to “I” and “need” to “needed,” but it’s pretty apparent theft of which Nathanson learned and accused Swift on Twitter. You can listen to Swift singing her version between 2:13-2:24 and Nathanson’s original between 1:44-1:50 below.

Swift is apparently “a fan of Nathanson, having been seen with his song words written on her arm at gigs in 2011 and 2012.” About which Nathanson tweeted and quickly deleted October 24, “she’s definitely a fan… now she’s a thief.”

And Nathanson re-tweeted the people mocking Swift in his feed. One fan wrote and got re-tweeted as saying: “It would be awesome if Taylor Swift’s next album contained a song called ‘Oh, S**t, Maybe it’s ME.”

Later, Nathanson defended himself when Swift’s fans ameliorated her apparent plagerism: “so far, my favorite thing about today is the wave of @taylorswift13 fans calling me a prick on twitter for writing “i saw” in 2003.”