Years after talks about a possible feud between Taylor Swift and Katy Perry started to circulate, the latter has finally confirmed that something did happen between the two singers.
“Honestly, it’s really like, she started it and it’s time for her to finish it,” Perry told James Corden during her “Carpool Karaoke” segment on Monday night.
During an interview with Rolling Stone in 2014, Swift explained that her hit “Bad Blood” was about another female artist: “For years, I was never sure if we were friends or not. She would come up to me at awards shows and say something and walk away, and I would think, ‘Are we friends, or did she just give me the harshest insult of my life?’”
Swift then claimed that this artist “did something so horrible. 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.”
Now, Perry has confirmed the feud started with the backup dancers.
“It’s so crazy!” Perry said. “Okay, so there are three backing dancers that went on tour with her tour, right? And they asked me before they went on tour if they could go, and I was like, ‘Yeah, of course. I’m not on a record cycle and get the work, and she’s great and all that. 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 want to join me when I say I’m going back on.’ That year came up, right? And I texted all of them because I’m very close with them and I said, ‘Look, just FYI, I’m about to start. I want to put the word out there. They said, ‘Okay, we’re going to go and talk to management about it.’ And they did, and they got fired.”
Perry claimed she tried to speak with Swift about the elephant in the room but never heard back from the “Shake It Off” singer.
“I do the right thing any time that it feels like a fumble,” Perry said. She added, “It was a full shutdown and then she writes a song about me. I’m like, ‘Okay, cool. Cool. That’s how you want to deal with it? Karma.’”
However, Perry added that she’s “ready for that BS to be done… There is the law of cause and effect. You do something and there’s gonna be a reaction. And trust me, daddy, there’s gonna be a reaction.”
When Corden asked if “we can take this beef off the grill,” Perry responded, “I think, personally, that women together — not divided and, like, none of this petty sh- — women together will heal the world.”
Perry’s new song, “Swish Swish,” prompted fans to believe the new single was about Swift, and Swift’s pal Ruby Rose took to Twitter to blast the singer for going “low.”
A representative for Swift has not yet responded to TheWrap’s request for comment.