"Shake It Off" is a song by the American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift and the lead single from her fifth studio album, 1989 (2014). She wrote the lyrics by herself and composed the melody with the song's producers, Max Martin and Shellback. The lyrics express Swift's disinterest in her detractors' negative remarks, inspired by her experience with media scrutiny. An uptempo dance-pop song, "Shake It Off" features a looping drum beat, a Mellotron-based saxophone line, and a handclap-accented bridge. Big Machine Records released it on August 18, 2014, to promote 1989 as Swift's first pop album after her previous country-oriented image and sound.
Initial reviews mostly praised the production as catchy, but some criticized the lyrics as weak and shallow. Retrospectively, critics have considered "Shake It Off" an effective opener for 1989, transforming Swift's status to that of a pop star. NME and Consequence ranked it among their best songs of the 2010s decade. The single reached the top 10 and was certified multi-platinum in Australia, Austria, Canada, Denmark, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, Spain, and the UK. In the US, the single spent four weeks atop the Billboard Hot 100 and was certified diamond by the Recording Industry Association of America.
Mark Romanek directed the music video for "Shake It Off", which portrays Swift as a clumsy person unsuccessfully attempting several dance moves. Some critics accused the video of cultural appropriation for featuring dances associated with people of color such as twerking. Swift performed the song on the 1989 World Tour (2015), the Reputation Stadium Tour (2018), and the Eras Tour (2023–2024). "Shake It Off" received several awards and nominations, including three nominations at the 2015 Grammy Awards for Record of the Year, Song of the Year, and Best Pop Solo Performance. Following a 2019 dispute regarding the ownership of her back catalog, Swift re-recorded the song as "Shake It Off (Taylor's Version)" for her re-recorded album 1989 (Taylor's Version) (2023).
Background and production The American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift had identified as a country musician until her fourth studio album, Red (2012), which incorporated eclectic styles of pop and rock. Although the album was promoted by Swift and Big Machine Records as country music, its diverse musical styles sparked a media debate over Swift's status in country. She was inspired by 1980s synth-pop to create her fifth studio album, 1989, as her "first official pop" record, naming it after her birth year.
Swift enlisted the Swedish producer Max Martin as co-executive producer of 1989. For the album's standard edition, Martin and his frequent collaborator Shellback produced 7 out of 13 tracks, including "Shake It Off". Swift wrote the song's lyrics and composed its melody with Martin and Shellback. According to Swift, she went into the studio with the producers without any melody and only knowing the "vibe" she wanted to have. As soon as Martin and Shellback played their instrumental, Swift conceived "Shake It Off" as an energetic song that could get "this one girl who hasn't danced all night" to get up and dance at a wedding reception.
"Shake It Off" was one of the two last songs (the other being "Style") produced for 1989. The track was recorded by Sam Holland at Conway Recording Studios in Los Angeles, and by Michael Ilbert at MXM Studios in Stockholm. It was mixed by Serban Ghenea at MixStar Studios in Virginia Beach, Virginia, and mastered by Tom Coyne at Sterling Sound in New York City.
Lyrics and music Swift was inspired to write "Shake It Off" by the media scrutiny on her image that she had experienced throughout her career. In an interview with Rolling Stone in August 2014, Swift said about the song's inspiration: "I've had every part of my life dissected. [...] When you live your life under that kind of scrutiny, you can either let it break you, or you can get really good at dodging punches. And when one lands, you know how to deal with it." From a songwriting point of view, Swift shared with NPR in October 2014 that she viewed "Shake It Off" as having a more mature perspective than her 2011 single "Mean", which was also inspired by her critics. Whereas "Mean" was written from a "victimized" perspective, "Shake It Off" depicted Swift in a proactive stance to "take back the narrative, and have [...] a sense of humor" about her detractors and their remarks.
In the first verse, Swift references her perceived image as a flirtatious woman with serial romantic attachments: "I go on too many dates / But I can't make 'em stay / At least that's what people say." The lines in the choruses are arranged rhythmically to produce a catchy hook: "Cause the players gonna play, play, play, play, play / And the haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate / Baby, I'm just gonna shake, shake, shake, shake, shake." The bridge opens with Swift asserting that, among the "dirty cheats of the world, you could have been getting down to this sick beat", and sarcastically mentions her ex-lovers; the lyric "this sick beat" is trademarked to Swift by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
At 3 minutes and 39 seconds long, "Shake It Off" is composed in G mixolydian – the fifth mode of the C major scale. It follows a ii–IV–I chord progression (Am–C–G) and employs the verse–chorus form, beginning with a loose verse, tightening for the prechorus, and loosening again for the chorus. Set over a tempo of 160 beats per minute, the track is a dance-pop song with an uptempo production. Using minimalist instruments, it begins with a stomping drum-and-clap pattern, created by Martin and Shellback banging their feet on a wooden floor.
The beat is looped throughout the song, as is the synthesized staccato saxophone line. Shellback used a brass preset on the Mellotron to play the said saxophone sound; he said he "started playing something bad on purpose" but Martin was immediately enthusiastic. The saxophonist Jonas Thander added to this by creating his own instrumental lines to complement Shellback's part. Thander recorded his alto and tenor saxophones at his home studio in Sweden, and it took him one whole night and the next day to edit together all the saxophone parts from multiple players. The choruses incorporate a syncopated brass trio of saxophone, trumpet, and trombone, and layers of backing vocal harmonies echoing Swift's lead vocals. The bridge, accentuated by hand claps and running from 2:18 to 2:42, features Swift's spoken word delivery.
Release On August 18, 2014, during a live streaming event held on Yahoo and sponsored by ABC News, Swift announced 1989 and its lead single "Shake It Off", and premiered its music video. Within minutes of the video's release, Big Machine, in partnership with Republic Records, released the song to contemporary hit radio and adult contemporary radio in the US. "Shake It Off" was made available for download by Big Machine on August 19, and a limited CD single edition was available via Swift's website on September 11. In Europe, Universal Music Group released "Shake It Off" to Italian radio on August 29, and as a CD single in Germany on October 10; while Big Machine, in partnership with Mercury Records, released it as a single in the UK on October 13, 2014.
The release of "Shake It Off" received extensive media attention, given Swift's abandonment of country music to reinvent her artistry as pop. The magazine Drowned in Sound described the single as "undoubtedly ... the most significant cultural event" since Radiohead's 2011 album The King of Limbs, while country radio stations and the Country Music Association received the song with surprise and confusion. Writing for Billboard, Jason Lipshutz contended that while "Shake It Off" was not Swift's first "straight-up" pop song, by explicitly naming it so, it was her "bold foray into the unknown" where she could distance herself from the limitations of the country pop sound that had defined her music.
Critical reception "Shake It Off" received mixed reviews upon release. Although positive reviews found the production catchy, critics deemed the track repetitive and lacking substance compared to Swift's works on Red. Randall Roberts from the Los Angeles Times lauded the sound as "perfect pop confection" but found the lyrics shallow, calling them insensible to the political events at the time: "When lives are at stake and nothing seems more relevant than getting to the Actual Truth, liars and cheats can't and shouldn't be shaken off." In congruence, The Guardian Molly Fitzpatrick wrote that the lyrics fell short of Swift's songwriting abilities.
Giving the song a three-out-of-five-stars score, Jeff Terich from American Songwriter regarded Swift's new direction as "a left-turn worth following". While Terich agreed that the lyrics were dismissive, he felt that critics should not have taken the song seriously because it was "pretty harmless". In a positive review, Jason Lipshutz from Billboard wrote: "Swift proves why she belongs among pop's queen bees ... the song sounds like a surefire hit." In a review of the album 1989, Alexis Petridis praised the lyrics for "twisting clichés until they sound original". In the words of Andrew Unterberger from Spin, while "Shake It Off" was musically a "red herring" that feels out of place on the album, it thematically represents Swift's new attitude on 1989, where she liberated herself from overtly romantic struggles to embrace positivity. Swift herself acknowledged the song as an outlier on 1989, and she deliberately released it as the lead single to encourage audiences to explore the entire album and not just the singles.
Retrospectively, Hannah Mylrea from NME considered "Shake It Off" an effective opener for Swift's 1989 era, which transformed her image to mainstream pop. While saying that "Shake It Off" was not one of the album's better songs, Rob Sheffield from Rolling Stone applauded it for "serving as a trailer to announce her daring Eighties synth-pop makeover". Nate Jones from Vulture agreed, but he described the song's bridge as "the worst 24 seconds of the entire album". In his 2019 ranking of Swift's singles, Petridis ranked "Shake It Off" third—behind "Blank Space" (2014) and "Love Story" (2008), lauding its "irresistible" hook and "sharp-tongued wit". Jane Song from Paste was less enthusiastic, placing "Shake It Off" among Swift's worst songs in her catalog: "Swift has a pattern of choosing the worst song from each album as the lead single."
Commercial performance "Shake It Off" gained an audience of nine million on US airplay after one day of release to radio and debuted at number 45 on Radio Songs after two days of release. After its first week of release, the single debuted at number nine on Adult Pop Songs and number 12 on Pop Songs, setting the record for the highest debut on both charts. On the Pop Songs chart, it tied with Mariah Carey's "Dreamlover" (1993) for the highest first-week chart entry. Although not officially released to country radio, the single debuted and peaked at number 58 on Country Airplay.