Back in 2012, Tim Heidecker leaked an original composition "Madonna" created for her Super Bowl halftime show. And by "leak," we mean he released acompletely fake rap track that started out with, "My name is Madonna and I'm here to say \/ I like football in a very big way."
It didn't sound remotely like Madonna, but it was a pretty hilarious way to point out that most pop stars and NFL players have nothing in common aside from their shared goal of making more money than any human being could spend in a lifetime. And let's not forget the entirely fake Red Hot Chili Peppers song "leaked" before last year's Super Bowl, titled "Abracadabralifornia."
Now, Katy Perry -- this year's Super Bowl Halftime Show performer -- has gotten Heidecker'd. Listen here.
The leaked "Katy Perry" song includes the incredible lyric, "I like to have so much fun/ I like to run/ I like to watch the football game/ It makes me totally insane."
Shortly after, special guest Lenny Kravitz (who actually will join her on Feb. 1) comes in to deliver this heartfelt message: "I'm Lenny Kravitz, brought to you by T-Mobile."
At this point, it becomes obvious the song is a fake -- every red-blooded American knows the Super Bowl is put on for love of the game, not advertising.
It's almost time to hear Katy Perry roar at the Super Bowl To celebrate, she's on the cover of ESPN the Magazine this month with Houston Texans defensive end J.J. Watt.
In a behind-the-scenes video from their photo shoot, Perry shared her thoughts on the big show. "I feel like I've outdreamt my dream," she says. "I don't get nervous about much, but I'll definitely be a little tingly inside that day."
Backstage at the top-secret rehearsals
for the biggest gig in American showbiz, in a large, stuffy room marked
"Wardrobe," a dozen or so half-naked female dancers wriggle into
candy-colored, body-hugging costumes and pull on matching socks and sneakers. At
the center of the action isKaty Perry, lying belly-down on
a massage table with one bare leg poking out from under a blanket --
simultaneously getting treatment for a bad hamstring and giving notes on her
dancers' and bandmembers' costumes. "It's obscene, I know," Perry
says, referring to her elaborate multitasking. "But it's not because I'm a
diva!"
It's hard to argue with her -- after
all, she's a busy woman. In less than two weeks, on Feb. 1, Perry will take the
stage at Super Bowl XLIX's halftime show, singing and dancing her way through
12-and-a-half painstakingly choreographed minutes of blockbuster hits for a TV
audience of about 100 million (not to mention the 63,400 fans packed into
Arizona's University of Phoenix stadium). To get the show in shape, Perry and
her team set up here at the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena, where they
prepped her ongoing Prismatic Tour last spring. It's a massive undertaking.
Longtime manager Bradford Cobb compares the endeavor to launching an entire
tour. Perry agrees: "This has had brainpower going into it from before we
knew we had it, when we were being courted."
Perry weighs in on everything from shoe
options to zippers versus velcro, and whatever the question is, she has an
immediate, decisive opinion and the confidence that her team will make it
happen. "I used to say, 'That's ridiculous, we can never do
that,' " says Baz Halpin, her longtime co-creative director.
"Now I just say, 'You want to fly in on a giant banana and burst into
flames? We'll make it work.' "
As Perry surveys the dancers, she's
surrounded by the fashion designer Jeremy Scott (who created Perry's Super Bowl
costumes), her stylist Johnny Wujek and a woman whose entire job is adding
"bling" to the wardrobes -- which Perry is generally inclined to do.
When one dancer appears, Perry notes the fit of her top, which may be risque
for the family-friendly Super Bowl. "Your boobies are a little too much
for that," Perry says cheerfully. "Show Sarah!" (She's referring
to Sarah Moll, who runs halftime for the NFL, and whose facial expression shows
that she agrees with Perry.)
If Perry is nervous, it doesn't show.
She's already 108 shows deep into the Prismatic Tour. Most halftime artists use
the performance as a mega-sized launch pad for whatever they have up next, but
Perry says it will serve another purpose for her. "There isn't any selling
point going up the day after," she says. "I'm just selling my music
to the broadest, widest audience ever."
With her 2010
blockbusterTeenage Dream, Perry ascended to the
top tier of pop, scoring aMichael Jackson-rivaling five No. 1
BillboardHot 100singles and selling
2.9 million copies of the album, according to Nielsen Music. The 2013
follow-up,Prism, sold 1.6 million,
and featured two No. 1s ("Roar" and "Dark
Horse," withJuicy J).
Still, it's hard to
imagine the sales gap didn't stoke Perry's competitive spirit, especially as a
new wave of female stars fromAriana GrandetoIggy Azaleabegan chewing up radio
spins. Pop fans tend to pit female stars against each other:Madonnavs.Lady Gaga, Gaga vs. Perry, and
lately, Perry vs.Taylor Swift. That last beef has
been fought through magazine profiles and subtweets without either explicitly
naming the other. In 2014, for instance, Swift described a fellow female
musician as her "straight-up enemy" who tried to "sabotage
[Swift's] entire arena tour." The next day Perry tweeted, "Watch out
for the Regina George in sheep's clothing," a reference toMean
Girlsthat everyone took to be about Swift. Asked about it
now, Perry only says, "If somebody is trying to defame my character,
you're going to hear about it."
In any case, the Super Bowl gig is a
major win in the Perry column. And not the only one: In 2014, she sold out more
than 80 arenas, grossing more than $146 million, according to Billboard
Boxscore, making Prismatic the biggest tour of the year by a female artist.
Likewise, "Dark Horse" was 2014's No. 1 song on the Mainstream Top 40
chart, and she still has the most Twitter followers -- more than 64 million --
of anyone. "Watching the rehearsals solidified our feeling that she's the
right choice," says the NFL's Moll. "And we see the connection she
has with her audience and her reach on social media." SaysCharli XCX, who will be opening
for Perry this spring: "She makes sugary, plastic pop so well, makes it
sound smart and amazing. But she also has such a vision within her videos and
her live show. I love that she goes all the way with it."
When she's working,
Perry wakes up around noon, after at least nine hours of sleep. She checksThe
Huffington Postto see what's going on in the world and
slips into the uniform she has worn for the last year: a black Adidas track
suit with white stripes and matching slippers. The effect is halfRun-D.M.C., half Olympic
Village. But style isn't the point. "I'm just not playing the picture
game," she says, referring to paparazzi. "If I wear the same thing
every day, the pictures don't sell."
Today, with the wardrobe meeting done,
Perry curls up on the floor of her dressing room, which is stocked with water
and fruit, a burbling humidifier and a pair of beige sofas. She's wearing a
gold nose ring, pink nails and lipstick, and her hair pulled back in a casual
ponytail. Butters, the puppy she adopted in 2014 (she looks like a living teddy
bear), comes flying in, carrying a soggy ball. Perry recently gave custody of
Butters to her longtime assistant, Tamara, and her girlfriend. "I was
going through a breakup and I was like, 'I'm going to get a dog!'" Perry
says, referring, presumably, to one of her off-again stints withJohn Mayer. "But honestly,
I have to run an empire, and as much as I love animals I don't know if I have
the mind capacity to do it."
The rest of her early-afternoon routine
involves physical therapy for her knees and some massage, acupuncture or
cupping. "Sometimes I get a steam for my voice," she says. She also
has a therapist she sees when she's in Los Angeles. "That's one of only a
handful of people who see me as Katherine Hudson," Perry says, using her
real name, which she changed to avoid confusion with the actress Kate Hudson.
Perry lives in what she calls "a
compound" in L.A. with her older sister, Angela Hudson; Hudson's husband,
Svend Lerche; and their baby. Her younger brother, David Hudson, lives nearby
in Los Feliz and her parents, Keith Hudson and Mary Perry, are in Irvine,
Calif. "Everybody is somewhat close," she says. "I always
dreamed of living commune style. I want my own Neverland ranch at a some point,
but not with the salacious parts." She cracks up.
Her dream? "My own Starbucks on the
property," she says, only half-joking. "I have to create my own world
because it's hard to go into the other world sometimes.Barbra Streisandhas a mall downstairs
in her basement -- just weird, amazing stuff like that. I get it, because it
becomes such a thing to go out in the world."
One of those times came in early
January, when she was spotted at dinner with Mayer in L.A. (The pair have dated
at least twice since 2012. She also was married to Russell Brand for 14 months
starting in late 2010 and was reported to have been datingDiplolast year.) She
declines to define their relationship, bristling at the question. "What I
will say is that to have any relationship at this level you have to just be
protective and figure out how to navigate it," she says. "There is no
handbook." She thinks about it, and adds, "In all my relationships,
I've learned how I have to be more careful and that it's not up for public
consumption."
Perry's parents were
hippies-turned-Evangelical ministers, home-schooling Perry and her two siblings
and raising them according to a deeply conservative, fire-and-brimstone belief
system. The family, who lived mostly in Santa Barbara, Calif., was poor enough
that food wasn't always easy to come by. "But I love my childhood,"
she says. "Because I can't change it and it made me who I am." Perry
regrets her lack of formal education, and stays informed about news and issues
that are important to her, including her outspoken support for LGBT rights.
"I grew up in a little bit of a bubble of ignorance and judgment,"
she says. "And so I'm happy that I've been able to evolve past that."
At 13, Perry convinced her parents to
bring her to Nashville to seek a career as a gospel singer; she released an
album on a Christian label at 16. But after discovering secular artists, fromQueentoGwen Stefani, she moved to L.A.
and shifted her ambitions -- first aiming to be a acoustic guitar-wielding
singer-songwriter, later settling on her current plan: global pop domination.
She bounced from contract to contract -- "I had two cars repossessed, I
was always going by the hair of my chinny chin chin" -- before landing on
Capitol Records. Working with Dr. Luke, Max Martin and Benny Blanco, she broke
through with 2008's button-pushing "I Kissed a Girl." Since then,
that core team (often helped by songwriter Bonnie McKee and others) has
produced a string of No. 1 songs. "My strengths are melodies and
lyrics," Perry explains. "Max is the king of melodies and Luke is the
king of, like, sounds. When we get together we make the biggest songs."
"Everyone has
been asking me if I'm going to be nervous before the halftime show," Perry
says. "I'm like,I'm f---ing
human.
This is the biggest event of my career." To prep, she has been studying
recent shows, with extra attention onBeyoncéin 2013 and Madonna in
2012. "Those performances are clean and streamlined," she says.
"They're about the catalog, the songs. I like Madonna for the graphic
effects she brought." And Beyoncé? "She brought so much strength, so
much sassiness and just the right amount of sex," Perry says. "She's
an icon.Elvis,The Beatles, Michael Jackson --
she's in that category. I'm not. She's like five notches above me, and those
levels are compounded in difficulty."
She also reached out toBruno Mars, a buddy from awards
shows, who had the halftime gig in 2014. (She insists she doesn't have many
close celebrity friends -- she's probably tightest withRihanna,AdeleandEllie Goulding.) She scans the email
on her phone -- "let me just make sure it's kosh" -- before reading
it out loud:
Hello,
exclusive Super Bowl club member! I was wondering if you are in L.A. at all
this month and would have tea with a sister who is about to throw up with
nervousness re: [football emoji]. I've heard about your process through our
managers, but am wondering if you had more insight on important things like,
spray tan the night before or three nights before? JK, or maybe not!
"I'm going to meet up with him and
he'll tell me whatever there is to tell," Perry says. "Although I don't
know how much there really is." She knows that no matter how much she
prepares, the halftime show is live, and asJanet JacksonandM.I.A.demonstrated, anything
can happen. "You can't control other people, and hopefully they're on the
same path with you," she says. "My special guests" -- includingLenny Kravitz-- "don't have
any agenda other than the music. But you can never be too sure." Kravitz
claims that he and Perry have been cooking up a surprise. "It's cool
because it's different for me," he says. "Our voices are going to
blend well together."
Perry's focused on the opportunity:
Playing for an audience so vast that it will include some of the few remaining
human beings who have never heard of her. What's her strategy to win them over?
It's simple, Perry says: "I want the show to be quintessential Katy. It's
like the exclamation point on the whole last cycle. This is the cherry on top
of everything I've already done."
