Katy Perry Attempts to Play Basketball in the ‘Swish Swish’ Video
Choosing to unveil her newest music video on a day that’s, well, going to definitely be dominated by the return of another popular female musician, Katy Perry nonetheless gave her all in the video for “Swish Swish,” which interestingly enough is most likely about that aforementioned other popular musician, featuring a whole lot of basketballs and a strange mix of celebrities in kitschy uniforms.
The Witness single finds the inexperienced Perry and her Tiger team — including one of those adorable Stranger Things kids! — forced to play a basketball game against the very jacked-up Sheep, and the first half goes about as well as you’d expect: Perry trips a bunch of times, flails around, and generally has no idea what the concept of a “basketball” is. (She even gets an IV drip of something called “Kobe Sweat.”) But after a much-needed wake the hell up, girl from featured rapper Nicki Minaj at halftime, things start to look up for these feisty felines. Who knows? They might even stand a chance at winning.
While Perry has never confirmed that “Swish Swish” was written as a Taylor Swift diss track, the song’s many sportsball double-entendre references and lyrics—such as “don’t come for me” and “your game is tired, you should retire —certainly point to that possibility, owing to the duo’s highly-publicized, multi-year feud.
“I think it’s a great anthem for people whenever someone’s trying to hold you down or bully you,” Perry explained while doing some late-night rounds this summer. “‘Swish Swish’ represents the liberation from all the negative that doesn’t serve you.” With their feud seemingly a thing of the past, though, who knows what the next era of Swirry could bring forth. A performance at this weekend’s VMAs, perhaps?
Watch Katy Perry confess to crying to some of her own songs:
