Katy Perry and Taylor Swift’s Feud: A Timeline
The "girl fight" is one of pop culture's oldest—and most reductive—practices. You can trace this phenomenon back to Bette Davis and Joan Crawford's decades-long industry-created "feud," and it has continued steadily since then, especially in the realm of pop music. Madonna vs. Janet Jackson, Britney Spears vs. Christina Aguilera, Remy Ma vs. Nicki Minaj…the list goes on and on. Society essentially trains women (and audiences) to think they have a shelf life in entertainment, causing them to view other female performers as competition—and thus enemies. It's a practice rooted in sexism, and it really needs to stop.
Unfortunately, the appetite for pitting women against each other is still pretty strong, though people are starting to show signs of fatigue. Exhibit A: Taylor Swift and Katy Perry. The two pop stars duked it out in the tabloids for years, and fans ate it up for a while—until they didn't. Now, in 2020, it appears their feud has been squashed. But let's take a look at how we got from there to here.
July 2009: Perry and Swift pay each other compliments on Twitter.
Not to quote this feud's literal theme song, but Swift and Perry's relationship actually began with, well, mad love. Swift was a big fan of Perry's song "Waking Up in Vegas," and she took to Twitter in 2009 to gush about it. "Watching the 'Waking Up in Vegas' video. I love Katy Perry. I think I'm going to hang her poster on my wall now." Perry thanked Swift for the kind words, calling her "sweet as pie" and even suggesting they write a song together about a "subject [they] know best." What did she mean by that?
October 2009: Swift attends Perry’s birthday party; their lovefest continues.
Two thousand and nine was a good year for these two. The drama was low, and the social media lovin' was high. "@Katyperry knows how to throw a birthday party! I would even go as far as to say it was party-licious," Swift tweeted. "Best EVER. Happy bday, pretty girl!!" What a simpler time!
April 2010: Perry and Swift perform “Hot N’ Cold” together.
Perry joined Swift on her Fearless tour for this cute duet. You could say this was the calm before the storm.
2012–2013: The alleged “backing dancer” drama goes down.
And now we're at the storm. Three of Perry's California Dreams tour dancers were offered spots on Swift's Red tour. However, these dancers left before Swift's tour ended to join Perry on her Prismatic tour. This incident is the root cause of Swift and Perry's feud.
September 2014: Swift tells Rolling Stone “Bad Blood” is about another female pop star.
And what did this singer do to piss Swift off? "It had to do with business," Swift told RS. "She basically tried to sabotage an entire arena tour. She tried to hire a bunch of people out from under me." We didn't know it then, but Swift was describing the backup dancer debacle that happened in 2013—that's what most people think, at least. To this day Swift hasn't confirmed anything.
But the message Perry tweeted shortly after Swift's interview went live kind of did. "Watch out for the Regina George in sheep's clothing..." she wrote, which many people took to be about Swift.
May 2015: Swift says she’s never going to talk about Perry in an interview.
“I’m not giving them anything to write about,” Swift told the Telegraph. “I’m not walking up the street with boys, I’m not stumbling out of clubs drunk. But I’m never going to talk about her in my interview. It’s not going to happen.” (Swift never said the “her” she was referring to was Perry, but people read between the lines.)
July 2015: One of Swift’s backup dancers dresses up like a shark during a “Bad Blood” performance.
Fans immediately took this as a knock at Perry, whose shark-clad dancer from the 2015 Super Bowl (i.e., Left Shark) became an internet sensation.
July 2015: Nicki Minaj gets involved.
The rapper found herself smack-dab in the middle of Perry and Swift's feud when she tweeted about her video "Anaconda" not receiving a Video of the Year nomination for the 2015 MTV VMAs. "If your video celebrates women with very slim bodies, you will be nominated for vid of the year," Minaj wrote, which Swift read as a jab directed at her. ("Bad Blood," which featured Swift and several of her supermodel BFFs, was nominated.)
"I've done nothing but love & support you. It's unlike you to pit women against each other. Maybe one of the men took your slot," Swift tweeted at Minaj. Queen Nicki said her tweet wasn't about Swift—or any artist in particular—but that didn't stop Perry from making this comment on Twitter:
"Finding it ironic to parade the pit women against other women argument about as one unmeasurably capitalizes on the take down of a woman," Perry wrote.
October 2015: Swift doubles down on not revealing the specific inspiration behind “Bad Blood.”
"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," Swift told GQ. "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. It was not a song about heartbreak. It was about the loss of friendship." At this point, however, we all knew exactly who this song was about.
February 2016: Perry puts Swift on the guest list for her Grammy after-party
Swift did not attend, but many took this as a sign a truce was in sight. They were wrong.
May 2016: Perry’s Twitter is hacked.
Before we knew this, though, people thought Perry actually tweeted, "miss u baby," to Swift. Unfortunately, it was just a hack. The drama still raged on.
June 2016: Perry announces that she’s launching a perfume called Mad Love…
…which is a lyric in "Bad Blood." Subtle.
July 2016: Calvin Harris says in a Twitter rant that Swift is trying to “bury” Perry.
Harris's Twitter tirade stemmed from "What You Came For" credit drama, but he managed to throw in a comment about Perry in between his other gripes. "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," he wrote. Perry responded with a Hillary Clinton GIF and a retweet from 2015: "Time, the ultimate truth teller."
What Harris meant by "bury" is still a mystery, but his tweet seemed to confirm that Swift did have some kind of grudge against Perry—as if that needed confirming.
September 2016: Perry tweets she’d collaborate with Swift if she apologized.
We'd soon learn what Perry meant by this.
October 2016: Perry rocks out to “Famous” at Kanye West's concert.
She posted a clip of herself dancing at the exact moment West raps about Swift. If you forget, this is the song that caused all the drama between Swift, West, and Kim Kardashian. West claimed Swift approved of him calling her a "bitch" in the song, but she says she never green-lighted the verse. This feud came to a head when Kardashian released a private conversation between West and Swift, which proved Swift was cool with the song...but not necessarily the "bitch" lyric. The fact Perry shared a video of herself jamming out to this song is shady, to say the least.
May 2017: Perry says there isn't a response to “Bad Blood” on her new album Witness, but then she releases “Swish Swish.”
"There is no one thing that’s calling out any one person," Perry told Entertainment Weekly about her album, which everyone believed—until they heard "Swish Swish." The track, which clearly is a response to Perry's haters, contains lyrics like, "You're about as cute as an old coupon expired" and "Your game is tired; you should retire."
May 2017: Perry hard-core opens up about the feud on Carpool Karaoke.
Perry confirmed everything during her ride with James Corden. She said that yes, there's a situation between her and Swift, and yes, it's about backup dancers. Perry also said she tried to talk to Swift about the incident, but Swift ignored her and instead chose to "write a song." Could that song perhaps be "Bad Blood"? Here's everything Perry told Corden:
"Honestly, [Swift] started it, and it's time for her to finish it. It's about backing dancers. It's so crazy. There [are] three backing dancers that went on tour with her tour, and they asked me before they went on tour if they could go. I was like, 'Yeah, of course. I'm not on a record cycle. Get the work. She's great. But I will be on a record cycle, probably, in about a year, so be sure to put a 30-day contingency in your contract so you can get out if you wanna join me when I say I'm going back on.' So that year came up, and I texted all of them because I'm very close with them. I said, 'Look, just FYI: I'm about to start. I want to put the word out there.' They said, 'Okay. We're gonna go talk to management about it.' They did, and they got fired. I tried to talk to [Swift] about it, and she wouldn't speak to me. I do the right thing anytime that it feels like a fumble. It was a full shutdown, and then she writes a song about me. And I'm like 'Okay, cool, cool. That's how you wanna do it? Karma.'"
June 2017: Perry implies that Swift tried to “assassinate her character.”
This is when the Katy Perry Talks About Taylor Swift Nonstop Parade began. Here Perry says Swift tried to "assassinate her character" with "Bad Blood." “I mean, I’m not Buddha—things irritate me,” she told NME, according to EW. “I wish that I could turn the other cheek every single time, but I’m also not a pushover, you know? Especially when someone tries to assassinate my character with little girls [her fans]. That’s so messed up!”
June 2017: Swift makes her entire catalog available on Spotify the day Perry’s album Witness comes out.
Coincidence or sabotage?
June 2017: Perry says she’s ready to quash the beef.
“I forgive her, and I’m sorry for anything I ever did, and I hope the same from her,” Perry told Arianna Huffington on the Thrive Global Podcast.
August 2017: Perry releases the “Swish Swish” video; fans make “Bad Blood” comparisons.
This is grasping at straws, but you can't deny at least some of the similarities. Both clips have star-studded casts; plus, Perry teased this video as a "catastrophe," which happens to be what Swift called herself in "Bad Blood." Each video centers on a conflict between two opposing teams. (In the case of "Swish Swish," it's a basketball game; in "Bad Blood," it was Swift's squad versus Selena Gomez's.) And the final reference: All the celebrities in the "Swish Swish" video have kitschy nicknames, just like Swift's friends in "Bad Blood." Hmmm.
August 2017: Perry says she hasn’t heard anything from Swift about ending their feud.
"Listen, I’d love for the beef to end. I’d love to take it off the barbecue,” Perry said on the SiriusXM show The Morning Mash Up. Does this mean the end is near? Stay tuned, my friends.
May 2018: Perry sends Swift a literal olive branch.
This might be a sign that their "feud" is over for good. "So I just got to my dressing room and found this actual olive branch," Swift posted on Instagram Stories May 8, the first night of her Reputation tour. (She was in Arizona.) "This means so much to me." She captioned the video with, "Thank you, Katy" and a simple pink heart emoji.
June 2019: Swift sends Perry homemade cookies with “Peace at Last” frosting.
Perry posted the gift to her Instagram with the caption, "Feels good." Swift commented with several heart emoji. So it's official: Their feud is dead. So does this mean we're getting a collab?!
June 17, 2019: Perry appears in the video for Swift’s newest single, “You Need to Calm Down.”
Dressed in her Met Gala hamburger outfit, Perry and Swift (as fries) literally hug it out in the video. They subsequently posted images on Instagram with cute captions like "A happy meal" and "This meal is BEEF-free." Swift revealed in interviews that the two have been on good terms for a while now but weren't sure if they were going to discuss it publicly. But when she sent Perry the idea for the video, Perry replied, "I would love for us to be a symbol of redemption and forgiveness."
September 14, 2020: Swift sends Perry and Orlando Bloom’s daughter a baby present.
"Miss 🌼🕊 adores her hand embroidered blankie from miss @taylorswift 😩😩😩 hope it’s one she drags around for years till it becomes an unrecognizable shred that she keeps in her pocket as a teenager 🥺♥️," Perry wrote alongside a photo of the adorable pink embroidered baby blanket.
Originally Appeared on Glamour
