This Is Why Katy Perry Ended Her Feud With Taylor Swift
Taylor Swift is known for two things: her catchy music and her very, very public feuds. Aside from her ongoing beef with Kanye West and Kim Kardashian, Taylor Swift's feud with Katy Perry was probably her most headline-worthy. But now, according to Perry, their feud has been put to rest, and the two pop stars wish the best for each other.
These two didn't always have bad blood. Between 2009 and 2011, Tay Tay and Perry were supposedly great friends — tweeting compliments at each other, going to each others' birthday parties, and more, per Cosmopolitan. During this time, they both reportedly had flings with John Mayer, which surprisingly didn't directly cause their feud — but it does go to show just how entangled they were.
Per Glamour, the feud instead began after three of Perry's backup dancers from her California Dreams tour joined Taylor Swift's Red tour, then left prematurely to join Perry on her Prismatic tour. T-Swift all but confirmed that this was the inciting incident of their feud and the inspo behind the song "Bad Blood" in a 2014 interview with Rolling Stone. She said the person she was talking about in the song "basically tried to sabotage an entire arena tour. She tried to hire a bunch of people out from under me."
And so, a decade-long feud was born.
Katy Perry and Taylor Swift went at each other for years
Although Katy Perry and Taylor Swift were once best buds, things got shady after Swift released "Bad Blood" and fans realized that she was talking about Katy Perry. Per Cosmopolitan, when Swift accused Nicki Minaj of pitting women against women by complaining about her lack of nominations at the 2015 MTV Video Music Awards, Perry tweeted, "Finding it ironic to parade the pit women against other women argument about as one unmeasurably capitalizes on the take down of a woman."
The not-so-subtle jabs continued from there. Swift included a shark in a "Bad Blood" performance, referencing Perry's 2015 Super Bowl halftime show. Per Rolling Stone, Perry was caught dancing to "Famous" at a Kanye West concert, knowing it was the song that started her former BFF's feud with the rapper. Then, when Calvin Harris and Swift broke up, he all but confirmed Swift's grudge, tweeting, "I know you're off tour and you need someone new to try and bury like Katy ETC but I'm not that guy, sorry. I won't allow it." Perry also released "Swish Swish," which includes lyrics that some think reference Swift. And when Perry released her album Witness, Swift made her entire catalog available on Spotify the same day, which seemed like yet another attempt at sabotage, per Billboard.
Per Glamour, there were countless other instances when the two women went at each other in ways that obviously cut deep.
Katy Perry sent Taylor Swift an olive branch
In 2018, Katy Perry sent Taylor Swift a literal olive branch and letter before her Reputation tour, per People. With that, the feud came to a (still very public) end. After Perry sent Swift the olive branch, she appeared in her former friend's "You Need To Calm Down" video dressed up as a burger. Swift was in a French fry costume, and they danced together. Perry captioned a picture of the two in costume on Instagram, "This meal is BEEF-free."
Perry told Howard Stern in 2020 that she just had to put the beef to rest after all this time. After noting that the media made the feud seem bigger than it was, Perry said, "What I'm so grateful for is we did get to make up publicly and got to be an example of redemption for young girls. Now, we're super friendly. I always wanted the best for her and now we can talk about the best we want for each other." But both she and Swift maintain that they weren't really responsible for the feud.
Katy Perry and Taylor Swift are friends again
Katy Perry told Howard Stern in an interview that the media has a double standard for women when it comes to fights. "You never see, like, articles about Ed Sheeran and Justin Bieber in a fight or Shawn Mendes and Niall Horan in a fight," Perry said (but to be fair, Ed Sheeran and Justin Bieber have never sub-tweeted each other). Perry doubled down on blaming the media for the feud, saying, "It was actually just a misunderstanding but we have such big groups of people that like to follow us, and so they kind of started turning against each other a little bit too."
Although she might have started the public spat, Taylor Swift has also always maintained that it was the fans and media who made it a big deal, not her. She told GQ, for example, in 2015, "I never said anything that would point a finger in the specific direction of one specific person, and I can sleep at night knowing that. I knew the song would be assigned to a person, and the easiest mark was someone who I didn't want to be labeled with this song."
Whoever is responsible for their years-long feud, there seems to be mad love between Katy Perry and Taylor Swift these days.