14 DAY TRIAL // If we’re to believe reports online, it’s been almost a couple of years now that Katy Perry and Taylor Swift went from inseparable BFFs to arch-rivals, but knowing which rumors to believe and which not is paramount in understanding how the industry works, Katy herself tells Elle magazine in a new interview.
The world of pop stars is like the world of soap operas, she explains, in the sense that the media loves to assign roles for them to play on a loop. Most often than not, these have nothing in common with everyday reality.
The never-changing narrative
Since she burst on the big scene with “I Kissed a Girl,” Katy has been assigned the role of the bad (but good), rebellious girl, who is here to break all the rules but be as girlie as she can be as well.
She says fame wasn’t what she expected, in the sense that she was prepared for one thing, but she suddenly realized she had silently agreed to a bunch of all other things she had no idea being a pop star would entail. As Katy puts it, this is what drives certain people to shave their heads in public, referring, of course, to the infamous Britney Spears meltdown.
However, when speaking about the roles the media has pop stars play, Katy makes it sound as if these pop stars and the people behind them have no say in the matter, which isn’t the case. Katy was perceived as the rebellious girl at first, but that was the image that she cultivated for years afterwards, and still does to this day.
Taylor the sweetheart, Kanye the villain
Because no interview with a pop star would be complete without some name-dropping, Katy proceeds to explain even further her theory on how showbiz works.
“You’ve got to name someone the villain, someone the princess, someone the mom-, the dad-type–you know there always have to be characters. As pop figures, we’re all characters. And the media uses that. Who is the sweetheart, who is the villain? You know. Taylor’s the sweetheart. Kanye’s the villain. That’s the narrative,” she says.
Again, she’s right on the money: Taylor has been the sweetheart for years, just like Kanye played the villain since that night when he got up on stage at the MTV VMAs and snatched the award for Video of the Year from her hands to say that Beyonce had the better video, so she deserved to have won.
Again, saying that it’s the media who uses this narrative ad nauseam means ignoring the obvious fact that these celebrities cultivate this image to their advantage, exploiting it whenever it suits their interest.
Just like Katy, who will probably be the girl who refused to grow up but rebelled for many years to come.