All hail the petty queen.
You know the type; The woman with an axe to grind. The one with a chip on her shoulder. The "crazy" lady who has every reason to be mad. Or the girl who wants you to know she's going to get her revenge – and does.
We've seen them before on a global stage, too,
Taylor Swift showed us a palpable rage in a 10-minute version of 'All Too Well'. It was dedicated to Jake Gyllenhaal – a man who broke her heart once and likely lived to regret it for the lines of lyrics it provided Swift.
Julia Roberts did it years prior when she cheated and fell in love with a man who already had a wife, Vera Steimberg. She didn't want to divorce him, not without a lot of money at least. But right after Roberts sat in front of a camera with a shirt that read "A Low Vera", she officially signed the papers.
(If you're wondering, Roberts has been married to said husband, cinematographer Danny Moder, for 20 years now.)
Miley Cyrus has done it too, over and over again with songs stuffed with Easter Eggs that paint a very shady picture of her ex-husband. Just one listen to her new song 'Flowers' will have you nodding in agreement.
The point is, even celebrities are not immune from having feelings.
And singers like Shakira and Lana Del Rey know all too well how tasty it is to use their resentment and turn it into something powerfully petty.
Listen to Shannen Findlay explain the rise of the petty queen to Holly Wainwright on Lowbrow. Post continues after audio.
Del Rey did it first. Kinda.
She's written about heartbreak and the pain that comes with that since her career took off in 2011.
But her new album, Did You Know There's a Tunnel Under Ocean Boulevard which is about to be released this month, is all about the "concerns or hopes" in her mind.
And while that doesn't necessarily sound petty, the way the singer decided to promote the album most definitely is.
On her secret Instagram account (which has over one million followers, by the way), she let fans know an album was coming by sharing a selfie of her and a billboard advertising her music.
The caption read, "There's only one [billboard] and it's in Tulsa," and added in a comment, "It's. Personal."
Coincidentally enough, she doesn't really have anything in common with Tulsa, Oklahoma, but someone else does: Her ex-boyfriend, Sean Larkin.
The retired police officer became famous when he began to star on the reality show LIVE PD which follows the lives of cops on the job.
According to rumours, the pair only dated for six months and broke up due to "conflicting schedules".
The one, lone targeted advertisement stands as an iconic landmark of pettiness.
Shakira, who is just as brilliantly petty as Rey, decided to release some new music in January 2023.
The Colombian singer and songwriter's career started at just 13 years old when she was signed to Sony Music.
She’s so talented, she’s been deemed the "Queen of Latina Music".
Her new song was recorded with Bizarrap, an Argentinian DJ and producer, and it is all about the singer's version of events regarding her divorce from her ex-husband and former professional football player, Gerard Piqué.
Listen to this small snippet of Shakira's BZRP Music Sessions #53. Post continues after video.
In the song, the lyrics read: "I wish you good luck with my supposed replacement, I don't even know what happened to you." She is referring to her ex-husband's 22-year-old mistress who she found out her husband was sleeping with when she came home and found her jam had been eaten, according to reports.
How did she get from jam to affair in one swift move? Well, that's simple: Piqué hates jam.
She added, "I'm worth two of 22 [year old], You traded a Ferrari for a Twingo, You traded a Rolex for a Casio."
Then Shakira levelled up the petty stakes when she decided to call out her former mother-in-law, Montserrat Bernabéu too. In her song, she sings: "You left me with my mother-in-law as a neighbour, with the press at my door and a debt to the taxman."
Upon the song's release, Shakira proceeded to blare her song throughout the day while a witch figure sat on the balcony... It stared straight into the home of Piqué's mother.
Their promotional jabs of shade are straight out of a well-researched playbook that tells us pettiness is undoubtedly the best form of publicity.
And boy are we happy to whip out the popcorn and watch.
Feature Image: Getty/Mamamia.
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