27 Wildly Petty Celeb Moments That I Couldn’t Forget Even If I Tried
Paying attention to celeb news is like watching a giant reality show.
1. Shakira and longtime partner Gerard Pique’s split was famously messy, with rumors of infidelity and Pique quickly moving on with 22-year-old Clara Chia Marti. It was also reported that the nanny of the couple’s two children informed Shakira of the alleged cheating and that Pique then fired her.
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Shakira, in return, turned into the queen of petty. She not only released the diss track “El Jefe,” but she also put the allegedly fired nanny, Lili Melgar, in the video, and sang (in Spanish), “Lili Melgar / This song is for you, they didn’t compensate you.”
2. In the song, Shakira also took aim at her ex’s new beau’s age, singing, “I’m worth two 22s. You traded a Ferrari for a Twingo, you traded a Rolex for a Casio.” Pique decided to be petty right back — and, in reference to Shakira’s snarky lyrics, showed up to a press conference driving a Twingo and wearing a Casio watch, which he said would “last a lifetime.” He also apparently wasn’t shy about taking Clara over to see his mother, who lives right by Shakira.
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3. So Shakira — in another wildly petty move — allegedly put a scary witch mannequin on her balcony facing Pique’s mother’s house. Pique’s mother even reportedly told Spanish reporter Marc Leirado Millán that she was worried Shakira was doing witchy rituals with it. Oh, and according to fan videos, it looks like Shakira has been blasting her song “Bzrp Music Sessions #53” loud enough for Pique’s mother to hear. The song slams Pique and contains the lyric, “You left my mother-in-law as my neighbor.”
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4. You gotta love a good diss track about your ex. Last year, Keke Palmer’s then-boyfriend, Darius Jackson (who is also the father of her child), called out a sheer outfit she wore to an Usher concert, writing “It’s the outfit tho … you a mom.” Palmer appeared to respond with a song with Usher titled “Boyfriend,” in which Usher sings, “Somebody said that your boyfriend is looking for me. … Well, he should know I’m pretty easy to find. Just look for me wherever he sees you.” And then in the music video, Palmer specifically references Jackson’s comments, winking at the camera.
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Palmer later revealed she and Jackson had broken up in October 2023 and filed a temporary domestic violence restraining order against him in November, which was granted. Jackson replied with a suit stating Palmer was the “primary aggressor,” and Palmer dropped the restraining order.
5. Nothing beats a celeb with an axe to grind after a breakup. In a famously petty moment, Lyndsay Lohan, after her breakup with Wilmer Valderrama, wore a shirt reading “You were never my boyfriend” on a TRL appearance.
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6. And, of course, there’s the time Britney Spears wore that iconic “dump him” shirt after her breakup with Justin Timberlake.
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7. While performing in London, Lana del Rey changed the lyrics of her song “Chemtrails Over the Country Club,” in a move many assumed was a reference to her ex Sean Larkin. At the end of the song, she sang, “He’s born in December, and he got married when we were still together. Sometimes I wonder what his wife would think if she knew that I didn’t know anything. … He got married while we were in couple’s therapy together.” Larkin announced he’d split from del Rey in March 2020, and in early 2022, it was announced that Larkin had gotten married. Del Rey’s new lyrics suggest that the two had gotten back together after their 2020 breakup (or had never broken up).
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8. In 2019, Halsey appeared to publicly expose her ex, G-Eazy, while performing her song “Without Me” on SNL. During her performance, text appeared on the stage behind her, reading “I’m so sorry Ashley I cheated” with multiple places popping up, such as “At home in Los Angeles,” and “In Minneapolis,” along with “more places I can’t even remember.” Fans assumed this was a deliciously petty reference to Halsey’s most recent ex.
9. During his set at Coachella last year, Bad Bunny seemed a little bit salty about his Grammy loss to Harry Styles. (Styles had taken home the 2023 Album of the Year Grammy for Harry’s House, beating out Bad Bunny’s Un Verano Sin Ti). During his set, he projected a tweet onto the stage shading Harry, reading, “goodnight benito could do as it was but harry could never do el apagon.” Benito is Bad Bunny’s real first name.
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A rep for Bad Bunny later claimed that Benito had not approved of the text with the tweet being shown onstage, saying, “The request from the artist during the visuals for ‘El Apagón’ performance was to use the image only and not text from the tweet, which we take responsibility for and correct it for Friday’s performance.”
10. After being asked about similarities between Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way” and her song “Express Yourself,” Madonna shaded Gaga, calling her song “reductive” (and then sipping tea). She then took it a step further on her tour, including a snippet of “Born This Way” in her performance of “Express Yourself,” emphasizing the similarities in sound. She ended the mash-up with some of her song “She’s Not Me.” I’ll let you make of that what you will.
11. Back when Pete Davidson was dating Kim Kardashian, Kardashian’s ex-husband Kanye West posted several wildly petty (and sometimes disturbing) things about Davidson, dubbing him “Skete” and then releasing a music video that features a claymation Davidson being kidnapped and buried alive.
12. He also went on a “meme rampage,” comparing his feud with Davidson to the Marvel movie Captain America: Civil War, posting a photoshopped poster for a new version of the film featuring his allies vs. Pete’s — or really, just anyone he didn’t like, including Taylor Swift and Billie Eilish.
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13. But it wasn’t just Ye being petty — Davidson could be petty back. In a screenshot of messages between the two posted on comedian Dave Sirus’ account (which Davidson sometimes used), when Ye asked where Pete was, he replied, “In bed with your wife,” with a selfie.
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14. You may have heard the longstanding Hollywood urban legend that Richard Gere once ended up in the ER after sticking a gerbil up his butt. It’s haunted Gere for four decades now, and yet no one can figure out how it started (there’s obviously no proof of it ever happening). Now, we can’t 100% confirm this, but according to Gere’s longtime rival Sylvester Stallone, Gere believes Stallone started it. Stallone says he didn’t, but if he did…this might rank as the pettiest entry on this list.
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The two have been enemies since being cast in The Lords of Flatbush together. They famously didn’t get along, and Gere was fired.
15. According to Eminem, he and Mariah Carey had a short-lived relationship in the early 2000s — which Carey denied. This would kick off an infamous feud between the two, full of petty moments. In “Clown,” a song many took to be directed at Eminem, Carey sang about a man she called a clown and a puppet, saying, “You should’ve never intimated we were lovers,” she sang, “when you know very well we never even touched each other.” When performing the song onstage, she also put a backup dancer in a blonde wig and Detroit jersey, which seemed to confirm the song was about the famous rapper.
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16. Eminem was petty right back. While on his Anger Management tour, Eminem played Mariah’s song “We Belong Together” and then played voicemails that seemed to be from Mariah, saying, “I heard you were getting back with your ex-wife. Why won’t you see me? Why won’t you call me? You’re not calling me…” A rep for Mariah denied that it was her voice on the tapes.
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17. In an iconic example from my childhood, Disney Channel girlies everywhere will remember the beef between Miley, Demi, and Selena. In the pettiest moment, Miley and her friend Mandy Jiroux posted a video mocking a video Demi and Selena had posted, copying many of its moments and making fun of the gap in Demi’s teeth.
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18. I have to mention one of my favorite examples, even though it’s small. Running into Lady Gaga on a red carpet for Elton John’s Oscars watch party, Caitlyn Jenner asked if Gaga was still living in Malibu, as she hadn’t seen much of her lately. Gaga said she was, and Jenner replied, “I haven’t seen you at the Starbucks in a while,” to which Gaga said the iconically shady, “I’ve…switched baristas.”
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19. While we’re talking about iconic, petty one-liners, we have to, of course, discuss Gwyneth Paltrow. After being sued by Terry Sanderson for $300,000 as a result of a skiing accident he blamed Paltrow for, Paltrow countersued for just $1. This is wonderfully petty in itself, but nothing can compare to what she quietly said to Sanderson after she won: “I wish you well.”
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20. In another petty comment, after Diplo tweeted “someone should make a kickstarter campaign to get Taylor Swift a booty,” Lorde randomly got involved, tweeting at Diplo, “should we do something about your tiny penis while we’re at it hm.”
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Lorde later said, “I love Wes [Pentz, Diplo’s real name], and he’s a big brother to me and one of my first friends in the industry, and part of having a friendship with someone like that is not letting them say stupid shit. Taylor’s my friend as well, and I’m a girl, and if I see some weird body-shaming on my feed, I’m going to be like, ‘Hey man…’ We do still love each other, hopefully.”
21. Zayn leaving One Direction might seem in itself a bit petty, but the pettier moment came when he claimed that his bandmates hadn’t replied to his texts in an interview. “I had every intention of remaining friends with everybody, but I guess certain phone numbers have changed and I haven’t received calls from a lot of people,” Zayn said. “I’ve reached out to a few of them and not got a reply. Certain people have pride issues, but it’s stuff you overcome in time.”
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22. Speaking of Zayn…in a tiny but ridiculously petty move, after Gigi Hadid and Zayn Malik debuted as a couple, Hadid’s ex, Joe Jonas, not only unfollowed Hadid, but he deleted a photo he’d posted on Instagram with Zayn and Kanye West during Paris Fashion Week that had been captioned “#squad.”
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23. Keri Hilson prompted rumors of a “feud” between her and Beyoncé after she released the song “Turnin’ Me On,” which appeared to shade Bey with the lyrics, “Your vision cloudy if you think that you da best, You can dance, she can sing, but need to move it to the left.” Hilson has since said the lyrics are a reference to “anybody that ever tried to take me down and didn’t want to see me succeed. I’m not gonna call their names because I feel I’ve addressed it.”
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24. But the real petty moment came in 2011, years later, when she refused to pose with an edition of Juicy magazine with Bey and hubby Jay-Z on the cover, saying, “No, I’m sorry, I can’t do that.”
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Hilson later expressed her admiration of Beyoncé and said the two had had a “healing” moment: “She actually has introduced herself. It was a gracious moment. I appreciated it. I feel like she understood what happened, what had transpired and there was a bit of healing in that moment when we met. I take her as a very intuitive kind of soul, as am I.” She also said of the lyric, “I made a decision that was not authentic to who I truly am, and of course, I regret it. Of course,” though on another occasion, she’d said she didn’t write her own lyrics at that time.
25. Finally, Drake and Kendrick Lamar have been feuding for over a decade, but one of the pettiest moments has got to be Kendrick’s back-to-back diss tracks (released less than a day apart) that alleged Drake has a second secret child and that he’s a predator. In the second song, “Not Like Us,” Lamar raps, “Just make sure you hide your lil’ sister from him.” The pettiest part? The cover for the song depicts an aerial view of Drake’s house with sex offender symbols all over it.
26. According to Drake, though, the (false) news of a second secret child was actually leaked by Drake himself in order to bait Kendrick, which is pretty darn petty.
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27. In another petty move, Lamar performed “Not Like Us” FIVE TIMES at a concert in California. Oh, and he released a music video clearly referencing Drake. Your move, Drake.
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