UPDATE, June 9: Katy Perry's managers have since confirmed to Billboard that the singer had nothing to do with the track and any claims to the contrary are "completely false." 

A rep said, "Katy Perry’s managers at Direct Management Group confirm that this story is completely false. Katy Perry was not involved in writing, singing, recording or registering this song."

The original story appears below.

Katy Perry recently took an official, on-the-books step toward releasing new music, and KatyCats have definitely taken notice.

A few days ago, astute observers noticed that Perry had registered a new song on the BMI website, officially titled "1984." Yesterday (June 8), a producer listed in the credits confirmed that he is, indeed, working on the song.

Dallas Austin, whose decades-deep list of previous credits includes TLC's "Creep," P!nk's "Just Like a Pill" and Gwen Stefani's "Cool," tweeted about his affiliation and aligned himself with #teamkatyperry:

Of course, being Team Katy Perry doesn't automatically mean you're picking a side in the reported feud between Katy and Taylor Swift, and the song title might have nothing to do with it either.  But fans who've been waiting for the "Teenage Dream" singer to fire back in response to Taylor's "Bad Blood" song/video/all-out social media siege are hoping otherwise.

Back in January, there was talk that Katy was recording a diss track called "She's So Creepy," which would appear on a Prism re-release. The track never materialized, and given the fact that Taylor's never out-and-out named the subject of "Bad Blood," Katy's choice to take the high road and remain tight-lipped made sense. Still, one can't help but notice the fact that 1984 is the year Katy was born, just like 1989 was named for the year Taylor came into the world. A low-key jab at her rival? Maybe. Or, she could just be a big fan of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four novel, and the song is an ode to breaking free from a dystopian society that's under constant surveillance.

It's kind of a win-win either way: We may hear a catchy-yet-lacerating takedown of a seemingly perfect pop princess, or we'll eventually get an amazing music video in which Orwell's Big Brother is depicted as an enormous, glitter-encrusted robot with a unicorn horn or something.

On-Again, Off-Again Couples

 

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