Metal Muso Records Brilliant Song In Protest Of Taylor Swift

Late last month, news broke that Taylor Swift had somehow managed to trademark use of the phrase “this sick beat”, as well as a number of other lyrics from her latest album, 1989. Now, cunning metal musician Ben Norton has done the most metal thing possible, and penned a pummeling protest song in which the words “this sick beat” are screamed over and over. It’s so metal it’ll have Swift’s lawyers shaking in their boots.

Self-described “subversive progressive metal” composer Norton has shared his two-minute track This Sick Beat™ (below) on YouTube, under his Peculate moniker. The song sees Norton repeat the trademarked phrase, which appears in Taylor Swift’s Shake It Off, backed by some erratic progressive percussion, keyboards, strings and guitars. Norton has also shared the song’s completely trademarked lyrics (below), just to throw some more sand in Swift’s face.

Taking to the Peculate Facebook page, Norton has suggested ridiculous trademarks such as Swift’s play a role in restricting freedom of speech.

“In January 2015, it was announced that Taylor Swift had trademarked the phrase ‘This Sick Beat’™,” he writes. “Trademarks are a direct attack on one of the most fundamental and inalienable rights of all: our freedom of speech. If you give the bourgeoisie an inch, they will take a mile… and everything else you have in the process. They have already privatized land, water, and words. After language, they will next try to privatize air.

“But, although the rich can try, they will never truly own the words we use and the language we speak.”

The Peculate website describes Norton as “a committed activist” who “hopes to challenge, and help to eventually resolve, these gross obstacles to human progress — progress for everyone, not just the few”.

Unlike Swift, Peculate’s works are released on a non-commercial, fair use, attribution Creative Commons license, and are available for free. “Copyright has a very messy history very few people (even artists) know about. The short of it is it was invented not to protect the rights of artists, but to protect the profits of their publishers,” Peculate’s website reads. “This trend has continued, and has gotten truer and truer, up to this very day. Question copyright!”

Other metal musicians are getting in the Swift-crushing spirit as well, with Norton’s mate Dave Tremblay of Vod publishing an even more disturbing appropriation (below) of Swift’s trademarked phrase.

Norton has told fans he’s planning to release an album titled This Sick Beat, with 10 tracks titled This Sick Beat 1, This Sick Beat 2, and so on.

Other lyrics which Swift now owns the rights to include “Party like it’s 1989,” “Cause we never go out of style,” “Could show you incredible things” and “Nice to meet you, Where you been?” — all of which are now ripe for appropriation by the brave musos among us.