(Billboard)
Katy Perry responds indirectly to rumors of a Taylor Swift feud while talking about her plans for the Super Bowl Halftime Show in Billboard. Last year, after Swift claimed a “straight-up enemy” had tried to “sabotage” her arena tour, Perry tweeted the Mean Girls reference, “Watch out for the Regina George in sheep’s clothing.” When Billboard asks her about it now, Perry declares, “If somebody is trying to defame my character, you’re going to hear about it.”
Rehearsing for her big Super Bowl performance, Perry is dressed in her everyday off-stage wardrobe of a track suit and slippers. She explains, “I’m just not playing the picture game,” referring to paparazzi attention. “If I wear the same thing every day, the pictures don’t sell.”
As for her current status with on-and-off boyfriend John Mayer, Perry refuses to clarify exactly where they stand. “What I will say is that to have any relationship at this level you have to just be protective and figure out how to navigate it,” she tells Billboard. “There is no handbook. In all my relationships, I’ve learned how I have to be more careful and that it’s not up for public consumption.”
In Los Angeles, Perry lives in what she describes as a “compound” with her sister, brother-in-law, and their baby. Other family members are nearby. “I always dreamed of living commune style,” says Perry. “I want my own Neverland ranch at a some point, but not with the salacious parts.”
She jokes that her dream is to have her “own Starbucks on the property.” Perry explains, “I have to create my own world because it’s hard to go into the other world sometimes. Barbra Streisand has a mall downstairs in her basement — just weird, amazing stuff like that. I get it, because it becomes such a thing to go out in the world.”
As for the Super Bowl, Perry is appropriately nervous. “Everyone has been asking me if I’m going to be nervous before the halftime show,” she says. “I’m like, I’m f*cking human. This is the biggest event of my career.” Unlike some other previous acts, however, she’s doing this in the midst of her tour, rather than as a launching pad for a new project. “There isn’t any selling point going up the day after,” she says. “I’m just selling my music to the broadest, widest audience ever.”
Perry has been studying recent Super Bowl performers like Madonna and Beyonce in preparation. “Those performances are clean and streamlined,” she says. “They’re about the catalog, the songs. I like Madonna for the graphic effects she brought… [Beyonce] brought so much strength, so much sassiness and just the right amount of sex.” Perry says of her fellow pop superstar, “She’s an icon. Elvis, The Beatles, Michael Jackson — she’s in that category. I’m not. She’s like five notches above me, and those levels are compounded in difficulty.”
What is she hoping to do with her own Super Bowl performance? “I want the show to be quintessential Katy,” she tells Billboard. “It’s like the exclamation point on the whole last cycle. This is the cherry on top of everything I’ve already done.” What do you think about what Perry has to say?
