ABC/Ida Mae AstuteBy now, fans know Taylor Swift’s hit “Bad Blood” was supposedly inspired by fellow pop star Katy Perry, though neither woman has ever confirmed it. But what’s really interesting about the song is that Taylor says she wrote it as a way of “standing up for herself.”
Taylor made her reputation by writing songs about heartbreak caused by busted romances, but “Bad Blood,” she says, is “about a new kind of heartbreak that I experienced.” She says it happened “when someone that I desperately wanted to be my friend and thought was my friend ended up really making it very obvious that she wasn’t.”
“This was somebody I really looked up to and really, really longed for the approval of this person,” she adds. “So it was kind of devastating to receive kind of a low blow.”
What was this low blow? Taylor told Rolling Stone that the person in question “basically tried to sabotage an entire arena tour. She tried to hire a bunch of people out from under me.”
But instead of confronting whoever it was directly, Taylor wrote “Bad Blood,” which, she says, was her way of striking back at her frenemy.
“This song was kind of the first time I ever really stood up for myself in that relationship ‘cause she was always the bolder one,” Taylor reveals. “I think it’s important to stand up for yourself, and if you can only really come up with the courage to do it in song form, then that’s how you should do it.”
Whomever inspired the song, Taylor’s the last laugh: “Bad Blood” has topped a number of different Billboard charts, and the star-studded video is one of the most talked-about clips of the year.
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