Give Taylor Swift some props. If “Bad Blood” really is a manifesto of grievances directed at Katy Pery, then it’s the best-produced musical provocation since Riff called out Bernardo in West Side Story. The song and the video are widely believed to be laden with jabs at Perry and various news outlets, including the Daily Beast , have gone to some lengths to lay it all out for fans to digest, explaining how the video’s “Arsyn” character is a blatant send-up of Katy Perry.
Even Swift herself owned up to the fact that it all has something to do with another female artist, but she has yet to name Perry directly.
“She did something so horrible,” Swift told Rolling Stone of her unnamed rival. “I was like, ‘Oh, we’re just straight-up enemies.’ And it wasn’t even about a guy! It had to do with business. She basically tried to sabotage an entire arena tour. She tried to hire a bunch of people out from under me. And I’m surprisingly non-confrontational – you would not believe how much I hate conflict. So now I have to avoid her. It’s awkward, and I don’t like it.”
Despite the “Shake It Off” singer’s assertions, many folks are pretty sure that the hard feelings between Taylor Swift and Katy Perry are indeed “about a guy,” seeing as how Katy is reportedly dating Taylor’s ex , John Mayer. Again. According to Hollywood Life , Perry and Mayer reportedly plan to check out Swift’s “Bad Blood” video and draw their own conclusions.
Although she’s the daughter of a preacher (a preacher whose very physical appearance once gave Sex Pistols frontman John Lydon a serious case of the giggles), Katy Perry isn’t likely to turn the other cheek in the face of affronts by Swift.
“Both Katy and John are ready to watch it and they are ready to be unimpressed,” said an unnamed source to Hollywood Life . “They are not scared of any diss that might take place, but Katy is secure in the fact that if a major diss happens, she will gladly have a rebuttal in either a future video, song or performance.”
Back in the days of The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, fans saw musicians trading blows through singles and album cover art. As much as Taylor Swift’s “Bad Blood” might be in that very same vein, these days celebrities have an omnipresent celebrity-watching media and a number of social media platforms to stoke the fires of mutual enmity. With respectable amounts of star-power on both sides of the battle lines, legions of music fans eagerly await any subsequent salvos in this war of words, and it’s a safe bet that Katy Perry knows that the next roar is hers to make.
[Photo by Dave J Hogan / Getty Images]