Fans were stunned when Katy Perry randomly showed up in Taylor Swift’s 2018 video for “You Need to Calm Down.” The two singers had been involved in a years-long feud by that point, though it had perhaps cooled.
The bottom line, though, is that they had both grown and the decision to make that reconciliation in such a shocking and public way was intentional on both of their parts. They wanted it to make an impact and a statement.
“Gossip and lies, they take the elevator. But truth takes the stairs,” she told Howard Stern on Tuesday. “Time will tell my story.”
“What I’m so grateful for is that we did get to make up and we made up publicly to be an example of redemption,” she added.
“It’s hard for young girls, growing up [with] cliques and high school and pettiness and all that stuff,” she continued. “So now we’re super friendly and I’ve always wanted the best for her and we can talk about the best we want for each other.”
And yet, Perry also revealed that underneath all the joy she shared in that wacky video, and her public persona of giddy goofiness on ABC’s “American Idol,” she actually found herself ironically in a very dark place while making the music that would become the album “Smile.”
“It was more than I had ever faced in my life,” she said of her worst-ever experience with depression. This came out of her feeling like a failure when her previous album, the more serious “Witness,” failed to match her earlier efforts.
“I’ve always had a playful thing about my music and I lost that… I had really lost my smile,” she said. “You create art and you’re excited for it to be received by the world. When it’s not received by the world, when it’s kind of like, ‘No, thank you,’ you think, ‘Oh shit, that doesn’t feel good.'”
It hit her harder than she expected. “It was more than I had ever faced in my life. I’d had bouts of depression before, but I had been able to avoid falling into the really dark depression by making music,” she said.
In fact, she admitted that she struggled over taking medication, in part because of her own self-empowerment anthem “Firework.” She said that because she was the woman who wrote that song, she “was so ashamed about being on medication.”
What also helped was learning how to get out of her own way, which for her meant no longer being a “desperate, thirsty” pop star striving for that number one single or number one album. All of this pressure she put on herself became overwhelming.
“It was one of those things where I’d sprained my brain a little bit,” she said. She went so far as to say that she had even considered suicide at one point amid her mental health struggles. With meditation, medication and even a week-long retreat helped her on her journey toward healing.
By her side through it all has been fiance Orlando Bloom. “He’s the only one that could handle it,” she said. “I showed him all of it. And I still test him and he still shows up and he still is not phased by it and that’s why he is perfect for me — because I’m a lot.”
These days, Perry and Bloom are more than busy with planning a now-delayed wedding amid COVID-19, preparing for a baby that’s coming “soon,” and Perry dropping new music. But through it all, it looks like she’s found her “Smile.”
“Smile” is set to be released on August 14, but it doesn’t sound like baby is going to wait that long. As for that wedding, Perry has given up on 2020 altogether, “because those plans are always canceled.”
