And Finally Artist News Beef Of The Week

Beef Of The Week #356: Katy Perry v Taylor Swift

By Andy Malt | Published on Friday 26 May 2017

Taylor Swift has a beef with Katy Perry. Katy Perry wants to end that beef. And that’s this week’s beef, people: Katy Perry’s beef with Taylor Swift over Taylor Swift’s beef with Katy Perry, and Katy Perry wanting to end that latter beef. It’s simple, really. Quite the battle.

Right, so, you all remember Taylor Swift’s 2014 single ‘Bad Blood’. When it originally came out, everyone assumed it was about Harry Styles. Because everyone always assumes that all of Taylor Swift’s songs are about her ex-boyfriends, rumoured or otherwise. ‘Welcome To New York’, for example, is about a relationship she had with the head of the New York tourist board, Fred Dixon.

I should probably say at this point, there is no truth in the rumour that Taylor Swift had a relationship with Fred Dixon. In fact, there wasn’t even a rumour. I made it up for a joke that quite possibly fell flat, and now I’m concerned he might not take it all in the spirit it was intended. Let’s just leave Fred out of this. He didn’t ask to be brought into this story. He does important work, and I don’t feel that should be belittled by lies and tittle tattle.

That said, he did run to Swift’s defence when a New York advertising campaign was criticised for using ‘Welcome To New York’ even though she isn’t a native of the city. Would he have done that if they weren’t seeing each other? Yes, of course he would. Stop this.

Anyway, what was I actually talking about? Oh yeah, how every song Taylor Swift writes is then combed for clues as to whom it might be about. ‘Bad Blood’ wasn’t, it turned out, about Harry Styles at all. It was about Katy Perry.

Or, rather, it was about another female musician who had “basically tried to sabotage an entire arena tour [of mine]”, Swift told Rolling Stone. TMZ then filled in the blanks to make it one of those classic female popstar v female popstar feuds that the media likes to manufacture. Except on this occasion there was an actual feud.

For her part, Perry took part in the feud by occasionally tweeting thinly veiled insults and then trademarking some of the lyrics of ‘Bad Blood’ by making them the name of one of her many fragrances.

Now Perry wants out. This nonsense has gone on long enough. She just wants to make up and go back to it all being ‘mad love’. Or perhaps another combination of words that Perry owns. She said as much to James Corden on his ‘Carpool Karaoke’ thing.

“It’s about backing dancers, it’s so crazy”, she said of the two popstars’ ‘bad blood’. The story begins, says Perry, when three of her backing dancers asked if they could go on the road with Swift while her career was on a temporary hiatus.

“There were three backing dancers that went on tour with [Swift], and they asked me beforehand if they could go. I was like, ‘Yeah, of course. I’m not on the record cycle, get the work, she’s great. But I will be on record cycle probably in about year. So be sure to put a 30 day contingency in your contract, so you can get out and join me when I say I’m going back on [a promotional cycle]'”.

“So that year came up, and I texted all of them and I said, ‘Look, just FYI, I’m about to start [promoting again]’. They said they were going to go and talk to [Swift’s] management about it”.

Which all sounds fine, huh? Except Swift’s management apparently just fired the dancers there and then. Bloody management, always fucking everything up. Perry, realising that this wasn’t going to look good, attempted to speak to Swift about it directly. That also did not go well, as all the events described above (except maybe the stuff about Fred Dixon) will attest.

“I tried to talk to her about it and she wouldn’t speak to me”, says Perry of her attempts to smooth things over. “I do the right thing any time that it feels like a fumble. It was a full shutdown. And then she writes a song about me and I’m like, ‘OK, cool, cool, cool. That’s how you wanna deal with it?’ Karma”.

Karma? Not sure where that comes into it exactly. Unless it’s another Perry Perfume. Whatever, she wants done with it now. “I’m ready for that BS to be done”, Perry told Corden. “Now, there is the law of cause and effect. You do something, there’s going to be a reaction, and trust me daddy, there’s going to be a reaction. It’s all about karma, right?”

The perfume? The good news is that Swift doesn’t even have to write a song in order to end all this. Corden asked if Perry would simply accept a text message stating that “beef is off the grill”.

“Yes”, replied Perry. “100%”.

Swift will probably still write a song to formally end the beefing though. Taylor Swift only communicates in song. She’s like a walking musical, except there’s been some sort of employment dispute with the dancers.