Though Taylor Swift does her best to play the innocente, her vitriol was obviously peaked in the wake of Katy Perry’s “Swish Swish” “diss track” aimed at achieving recompense for Swift’s 2014 “Bad Blood.” While Swift attempted to downplay who the song might be about in an interview with Rolling Stone when it first came out, it became pretty evident that the Pennsylvania-bred basique was still harboring some animosity about Perry poaching some backup dancers from her tour. And well, just ask Madonna, quality backup dancers are hard to find, so it’s vaguely understandable.
Perry took her time in responding with “Swish Swish,” waiting an entire three years to re-stoke the flames of animosity. Maybe she thought that if enough time had passed, Swift wouldn’t be bothered to respond to the goading once again. Perry thought wrong, almost as wrong as thinking it would be a good idea to marry Russell Brand. Because Swift is your typical undercutting white bia, she knew to lie in wait to make just the right move that would pack a wallop in insulting Perry right back: re-releasing her entire back catalogue on every major streaming service including Spotify.
For anyone familiar with the gravity of this move, it was a colossal deal for Swift to remove her music from Spotify in the first place–though she and her record label president were convinced many other major artists would follow suit (but even Prince, in death, was forced to succumb). Thus, this unexpected return that “just so happens” to coincide with the release of Witness, Katy Perry’s fifth album (if you want to count that weird first record, Katy Hudson, which sort of acts as a foil to LDR’s “first album,” Lana Del Ray a.k.a. Lizzy Grant) feels more than slightly calculated (Swift’s least favorite word to hear describe herself). And so the gauntlet has been thrown anew, and one supposes Swift ought to hope that Perry isn’t as cannibalistic as she lets on in seeking out further vengeance for this level of “character assassination.” Then again, maybe Swift’s re-initiation of the beef is only serving to do what Kanye claimed he already did for Swift so long ago: make that bitch famous. Because God knows the reviews of Witness aren’t serving to promote Perry’s longevity. Thus, maybe Swift is unwittingly doing Perry a kindness in cultivating controversy.
But really, white female pop star feuds are so banal, rarely resulting in the actual shedding of “bad blood” the way it can with, say, Nicki Minaj and Remy Ma. And even Bette and Joan put them to shame with their bad bitchery.
