Stevie Nicks recalls Katy Perry discussing her past rivalry with Taylor Swift

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Washington Bureau Chief

Stevie Nicks has reflected on a conversation she had a decade ago with Katy Perry about her former rivalry with Taylor Swift.

The Fleetwood Mac star, 73, said she bumped into “I Kissed a Girl” singer Perry, 34, at the Corinthia Hotel in London in 2012, when Perry asked her about industry rivalries.

“She said, ‘So Stevie, who are your rivals?’ And I said, ‘I don’t have rivals.’ And her big blue eyes got bigger and bluer,” Nicks told The New Yorker.

“And I said, ‘No Katy, I don’t, and neither do you. You are Katy Perry, you’re who you are, you do what you do and you’re great at it. I’m Stevie Nicks, I do what I do and I’m great at it. We don’t have rivals. That’s just ridiculous.’”

Nicks said that Perry then brought up Swift, who she was in a widely publicised feud with for years.

“She said, ‘Well, there’s like, the Taylor Swift army and there’s like, the Katy army and there’s like –’” recalled Nicks.

“And I was like, ‘That’s just bulls***. You have to just walk away from that. Don’t carry that around in your mind because then they’re winning the game.’”

In 2020, Perry opened up about her and Swift’s decision to put their differences behind them after a years-long feud.

In an interview with Howard Stern, Perry explained that she and Swift wanted to set a positive example for their young fans.

“Gossip in life can take the elevator but the truth takes the stairs. It just takes time,” Perry said, adding that their feud was made out to be bigger than it actually was by the media.

‘’What I’m so grateful for is we did get to make up publicly and got to be an example of redemption for young girls,” she continued. “Now, we’re super friendly. I always wanted the best for her and now we can talk about the best we want for each other.”

The two artists publicly reconciled in 2019 in the music video for Swift’s song “You Need to Calm Down”, where they wore matching hamburger and french fry costumes. After appearing in the music video together, Perry captioned an Instagram photo of the pair hugging: “This meal is BEEF-free #MeatFreeMonday.”