National Football League

Katy Perry says NFL was in nearly total control of her show

Published Feb. 8, 2015 8:52 a.m. ET

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Based upon how the NFL docks the pay of players who don't wear their socks at the proper height or who display an unapproved brand of music headphones during warmups, it's a wonder that Katy Perry expected anything different.

Nevertheless, what this decade's pop diva of the century said in a recent magazine interview would seem to confirm that the NFL learned its lesson from Janet Jackson's Super Bowl XXXVIII's halftime performance, which introduced the phrase "wardrobe malfunction" to the world.

Perry, the star of the Super Bowl XLIX halftime show last weekend, told Elle ahead of the performance that the NFL-mandated preparation for the most widely seen performance of her career left nothing to chance.

"In my show, I am boss daddy. I am boss mommy. They call me Boss. Everything goes through my eyes; I call all the shots, 100 percent of it," she said in the magazine's March issue. "With the NFL, I have to be accountable to several levels of red tape. There are many committees I have to go through for my costumes, the budgets of my show, every interview -- everything, I have to report to somebody. So I am no longer the boss; I have to relinquish that control."

Still, Perry is nothing if not a smart businesswoman, and she understands that the chance to perform before more than 100 million viewers in the US alone comes at a price that artists have to accept.

"We love this opportunity, but once you decide you're gonna do the Super Bowl, you're gonna have no (expletive) life for six months. It is the biggest thing. Anyone that's ever done it has been scared (expletive). You stay off the Internet for the five days afterward."