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Katy Perry has returned with her new album “143” and new comeback single “Woman’s World”. This is her attempt to return to pop stardom, what Perry received was a near-universal panning of what she deemed as a women’s empowerment anthem.
To Gen Z, Katy Perry was cemented in our childhoods as one of our first pop icons who dominated the charts in her prime during the late 2000s and early 2010s. After her successful debut album, 2008’s ‘’One of the Boys’’ and the provocative hit ‘’I Kissed A Girl’,’ she followed up in 2010 with her record-breaking album ‘’Teenage Dream” spawning many hits with the single of the same name ‘’Teenage Dream’,’ ‘’California Gurls’,’ and the Fourth of July-tinged inspirational anthem ‘’Firework’’, to name a few.
Everything about this new era reeks of desperation and an emotional need to return to the glory days. From behind the scenes, Perry returned with her previous producer, Dr. Luke, who is a controversial figure in music due to his alleged sexual abuse of fellow pop star Kesha, with him and 5 other people being writers on the song (Dr. Luke, Aaron Joseph, Rocco did it again!, Vaughn Oliver), with only Perry and Chloe Angelides being the sole women in the writer’s room and the producers being all men (Aaron Joseph, Dr. Luke, Vaughn Oliver, Rocco did it again!). Then the lyrics where she pushes woman empowerment, but in the cliche and passe “girlboss” feminism style.
On July 11, Perry released the music video which Charlotte Rutherford, a woman, directed. The video features Perry as a sexualized version of Rosie the Riveter working with a group of other construction girls before going off the rails and showing Perry as a robot hybrid with metallic legs and sticking a gas pump in her buttock.
A few days later, she released a video on her social media, with the caption ‘’YOU CAN DO ANYTHING! EVEN SATIRE!’’ where she tried to explain that the whole video was “sarcastic” and “very slapstick and very on the nose.” You can’t release a bad product that is a “reset of [Katy Perry’s idea of] feminine divine,” and expect everyone to understand that it is a joke. Perry pretends that she is controlling the narrative and anticipates the criticisms, but while doing so ignores the main critiques of the era such as working with Dr. Luke and a cameo by Trisha Paytas who has a history of transphobia.
Perry has been in the pop game since the late 2000s and now it feels like she is pressured to keep up with the younger artists while also creating a riskless pastiche of herself. The issue here is that just like when a snake is cornered, Perry is attempting every trick in the book to get back in the public’s good graces while she is being overshadowed by newer artists who champion diversity, LGBTQ+, and femininity on the same level, or even better than her such as Charli XCX and Chappell Roan. Fellow veteran artists Beyoncè and Lady Gaga have constantly evolved and experimented with different sounds while Perry has stayed stagnant.
What hurts is that Katy does have the sauce and fire inside of her, but she needs to surround herself with better talent that is not controversial and put her activism where her mouth is by putting women in the writer and producer seats. I do not wish for her to fail, I only want her to get better.
Zipporah Pruitt, (she/her) is an L.A. homegrown journalist, who covers entertainment and culture. Follow her on X and Instagram: @zippzine.
Edited by Nykeya Woods