Katy Perry is still trying to navigate all the trials that come along with being one the biggest pop stars in the world. The “Chained to the Rhythm” singer, 32, talked candidly about her evolution — and the negative feedback that’s come with it — during a tell-all interview with The New York Times.
“Every day when I think I know something, the universe shows me that I need to learn another lesson,” said Perry, who just released Witness, her fifth studio album. “So I stand here today, more so than any other day, saying I know nothing. I literally know nothing.”
Perry — who spent the past weekend opening up her life (including yoga and therapy sessions) to fans during a livestream on YouTube to promote Witness — called the recent negative press she’s received a “maddening game.”
”They want you to stand for something, but once you do, and if you don’t do it perfectly, they’re ready to take you right down,” the singer told The Times. “I didn’t kill [the old Katy Perry], because I love her, and she is exactly what I had to do then,” she added of her ever-changing self. “And I’m not a con artist, I didn’t con people, like, that was just me. And this is me now. … It’s a departure, and it’s a necessary evolution that I have to take.”
Perry shared that part of her drastic change has come from cutting alcohol out of her life and attending therapy sessions with her family.
“I feel very empowered [and] extremely liberated, liberated from the conditioning of the way I used to think, spiritually liberated, politically liberated, sexually liberated, liberated from things that don’t serve me,” she added.
The “Dark Horse” singer, for example, recently stunned fans after she publicly apologized to frenemy Taylor Swift after their years-long feud stemming over allegedly sabotaging each other over backup dancers.
“I know that sometimes it feels publicly like I’m dragging cement blocks, but like, the pyramids were made out of cement blocks — or not cement. But do you know what I’m trying to say?” Perry concluded to The Times. “I’m gonna get there.”
