Trying to put a Band-Aid over a bullet hole? In her new cover story for GQ magazine, Taylor Swift seems to be changing her tune about her hit song “Bad Blood.” After a September 2014 Rolling Stone interview, fans almost unanimously concluded that the revenge-y tune was about fellow pop star Katy Perry. But in GQ, Swift, 25, indicated otherwise.
“The fact that I’ve never confirmed who those songs are about makes me feel like there is still one card I’m holding,” Swift proudly noted.
And when specifically asked about Perry, 30, and “Bad Blood,” she replied, “You’re in a Rolling Stone interview, and the writer says, ‘Who is that song about? That sounds like a really intense moment from your life.’ And you sit there, and you know you’re on good terms with your ex-boyfriend, and you don’t want him—or his family—to think you’re firing shots at him. So you say, ‘That was about losing a friend.’ And that’s basically all you say.”
Swift insists “Bad Blood” is not as black and white as it appears to be.
“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,” she told the mag. “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. I don’t necessarily care who people think it’s about. I just needed to divert them away from the easiest target. Listen to the song. It doesn’t point to any one person or any one situation.”
But Swift didn’t just say that “Bad Blood” was simply about a losing a friend in the now-infamous Rolling Stone interview. In fact, she laid out, in fairly specific detail, the events that inspired her to write the now-chart-topping anthem.
“For years, I was never sure if we were friends or not,” the “Blank Space” singer told Rolling Stone of an unnamed fellow female artist. “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 also noted that the singer “Basically tried to sabotage an entire arena tour. She tried to hire a bunch of people out from under me.”
All signs pointed to Perry, who has also lashed back at Swift on social media since the news. Back in July, Perry inserted herself into a temporary online feud between Swift and Nicki Minaj, tweeting, “Finding it ironic to parade the pit women against other women argument about as one unmeasurably capitalizes on the take down of a woman…”
