Taylor Swift released her 12th album The Life of a Showgirl last week — and before it was even out for a full day, listeners were already pointing out similarities between her new songs and existing tracks by other artists. The comparisons were harmless, at first, but some of them escalated into full-blown accusations of musical plagiarism. Some of the songs in question include the album’s title track, the buzzy diss track “Actually Romantic,” and the Travis Kelce-inspired “Wood.”

“The internet loves to sleuth, doesn’t it,” forensic musicologist and professor at Berklee College of Music Dr. Joe Bennett tells Rolling Stone . “But similarity alone is not evidence of influence, still less copyright infringement. Coincidental partial similarity is way more common than many people t

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