Eric Church Was Forced To Take Down A Teaser For ‘The Outsiders’ After People Thought He Was Threatening Taylor Swift

Sometimes it sounds better on paper.

As an artist, not every idea is going to turn out like you had planned. Sometimes you have a vision and it just doesn’t come together like you hoped. Sometimes you think something’s going to be great, but it turns out to be a total flop.

And sometimes, you do something and accidentally make people think you’re going to kill Taylor Swift.

Happens to the best of us, right?

Well, maybe not, but it happened to Eric Church as he was gearing up to release his fourth studio album, The Outsiders.

Church was riding high from the success of his previous album, Chief, but it hadn’t been all that long since he had been kicked off the Me & My Gang Tour with Rascal Flatts for playing too long and too loud.

On that tour, he was replaced by a then-up and coming artist named Taylor Swift, and he joked with Taylor that he wanted her first gold record:

“Taylor called, because she’s great, and said, ‘Hey, I don’t want there to be any bad blood here between us, hope everything’s good.’” 

(“Bad Blood?” I see what you did there Chief).

“I said ‘No, it’s great, everything’s good. They’re going to love you. And I said, ‘Only request I have is your first gold album, I want it.’”

Well not long after, Taylor got her first gold record for her self-titled debut album, and sure enough she presented it to Church with a note thanking him for opening up the opportunity for her on the Rascal Flatts tour:

“To Eric, Thanks for playing too loud and too long on the Flatts tour, I sincerely appreciate it. – Taylor Swift”

Today that gold record hangs in the Country Music Hall of Fame as a piece of country music history. And during her acceptance speech for the Pinnacle Award during the 2013 CMA Awards, Swift told the story of getting the call for that tour:

“I remember when I was 16 and I got the first phone call from Scott Borchetta, my label president. He said, ‘Can you be on the road in two days to open up for Rascal Flatts?’ And I just started screaming, I said, ‘This has to be a miracle,’ and he said, ‘No it’s not a miracle, Eric Church got fired for playing too long.’”

Well as he was gearing up to release The Outsiders, Church released a cryptic teaser video (as he often does) that was…well, a little creepy.

According to an article at the time from The Boot, the video featured a gloved hand that kinda resembled a serial killer while Taylor’s speech about Church getting fired played on an old-fashioned TV. And as Swift repeats the line “Eric Church got fired for playing too long,” the hand writes on the wall:

“One will rise, one will fall.”

Kinda weird? Sure. But if you know Church, you know that he’s done things outside the box for his entire career.

Well, apparently people who didn’t know Church took it as a threat towards Taylor Swift.

There were numerous articles demanding that the video be removed, claiming that it could be viewed as threatening towards Swift. And sure enough, that’s what happened: The video was promptly taken down after just a few hours, and not long after another was released featuring the same mysterious gloved hand, assuring people that there was no beef between Eric and Taylor – and no, he wasn’t going to kill her:

“Eric adores Taylor for who she is and what she has done. You’re headed down the wrong trail so we must stop this. ‘One will rise and one will fall’ has nothing to do with Swift.”

Of course it wasn’t long after that Church announced that his album would be coming in February 2014, and that album would go on to hit the top of not only the Billboard Top Country Albums chart but also the all-genre Billboard Hot 200 chart, the second straight album from Chief to become the top album in all of music.

And as it turns out, that album may have also helped inspire one of Swift’s biggest hits too.

Back in 2017, Swift was sued for copyright infringement by the songwriters who wrote “Playas Gon’ Play” by 3LW, who claimed that Swift had ripped off their song for her massive hit “Shake It Off.”

Swift was forced to give a deposition in the case, and during her testimony she revealed where she ACTUALLY got the line: From Eric Church’s 2013 single “The Outsiders.”

According to Church:

“In her deposition, when [talking about the line] ‘players gonna play, haters gonna hate,’ she says, ‘The first time I heard that phrase was in Eric Church’s song ‘The Outsiders.'”

As it turns out, Swift didn’t say that the first time she heard the phrase was in Church’s song, but she did cite hearing “The Outsiders” at the 2013 CMA Awards as an example of just how common the phrase “players gonna play, haters gonna hate” is in pop culture. In an affidavit from Swift that was submitted in the case, she says:

“For example, I was present at the 2013 Country Music Awards and heard Eric Church perform his song The Outsiders, which includes the lyric “the player’s gonna play and a haters gonna hate”.

She also cited hearing the phrases while in high school, and claimed that the lyrics to her song “draw from commonly used phrases.”

Regardless of how it was brought up, you never want to hear your name or your song mentioned in a copyright lawsuit – and sure enough, Church says that a few weeks later he was served by the songwriters who were suing Swift (though it doesn’t appear he was ever sued over his song).

Well the lawsuit was eventually dismissed, but Church reached out to Swift, jokingly scolding her for bringing him into the lawsuit:

“I sent her a text… I was like, ‘Hey, thanks! Next time, let’s just skip that part?’ And she sent me a text: ‘I’m sorry. It’s the truth though. That’s when I first heard that phrase.’

It’s since been settled. But I’m like, ‘How did this even happen?'”

So hey, it all worked out in the end. Sometimes your plans just don’t come together like you thought.The post Eric Church Was Forced To Take Down A Teaser For ‘The Outsiders’ After People Thought He Was Threatening Taylor Swift first appeared on Whiskey Riff.