KATY PERRY CHARITABLE TRUST UK

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What Is Katy Perry Doing?

The only time Katy Perry made me cry was during her 2012
documentary, Katy Perry: Part of Me. Worn down from the stress and exhaustion
of her California Dreams Tour and returning home to be with her then-husband
Russell Brand between tour dates, Perry broke down in tears before she had to
perform. Perry has spoken openly about the fact that when they were together
Brand wanted children and she, ten years younger than him, wasn’t ready. On
December 31, 2011, in the midst of her tour, he reportedly texted her that he’d
filed for divorce. As the film ended with the triumphant breakup anthem, “Part
of Me,” I found myself emotionally struck by the lyrics: “This is the part of
me that you’re never gonna ever take away from me.” It wasn’t her Lemonade, but
it was as close to self-examination as Perry has ever managed.

As her fifth studio album, Witness, looms, I’ve
increasingly wondered if we’ll ever see that Perry again. “Part of Me” is
arguably Perry’s best song. It has an addictive, pulsating beat courtesy of Max
Martin, and its kiss-off-to-an-ex lyrics are the type that have propelled many
a pop star to dance floor domination. But what’s striking about it is its
association with Perry’s divorce from Brand, which gives it a real sense of
gravitas. Perry sells the emotion behind the song, and if you doubt her
sincerity, well, there’s an entire documentary for you to see that no, this
shit is for real. As for the rest of her catalogue … I have doubts. Take her
recent foray into “purposeful pop” as she calls it, which began with “Chained
to the Rhythm,” then took a sharp detour with the release of hip-hop laced,
club-ready songs “Bon Appétit” and “Swish Swish.” Woke could certainly work for
Perry. She’s not the first pop star to use social commentary as an aesthetic
(there’s Madonna’s “Like a Prayer” video for instance, although that played
into Madonna’s oeuvre of pushing American buttons and conservatism), but the
whiplash of Perry capitalizing on her late-season campaigning for Hillary
Clinton with claims of woke pop to rapping about Migos metaphorically eating
her out shouldn’t be surprising to anyone who’s followed her career.

Raised in a Pentecostal Christian family in Santa Barbara,
Perry’s first foray into the music industry was as Katy Hudson on a self-titled
Christian rock album. The album flopped, which led Hudson to take the name Katy
Perry and flee to Los Angeles, where she recorded her 2008 album One of the
Boys. The first single “I Kissed a Girl” was a massive hit, as was the
follow-up single “Hot n Cold.” She’d tossed off her church robes for the more
commercially appealing garb of faux-lesbianism and a pinup girl aesthetic. This
isn’t a knock on Perry’s maneuver. Most of music’s successful artists began
their careers singing in church, and Perry’s origin story closely resembles
that of disco queen Donna Summer, who bailed on her Boston church to tour in a
production of Hair and record the erotic anthem “Love to Love You Baby,”
complete with 22 simulated orgasms. But “I Kissed a Girl” was rightfully
knocked as queerbaiting that clashed with another album track, “Ur So Gay.”

After the success of One of the Boys, Perry continued her
foray into pop with 2010’s Teenage Dream. Centered around partying and the
pleasure of being a bikini-clad beach babe, the album went on to tie Michael
Jackson’s Bad as the second album in history with five No. 1 singles from the
same album. There’s no denying that it’s one of pop music’s highlights of the
last decade, but even then, Perry has a hard time selling the aesthetic. The
inspirational anthem “Firework” starts off with the maudlin and embarrassing
American Beauty reference, “Do you ever feel like a plastic bag, drifting
through the wind, wanting to start again?” and her dips into hip-hop were
questionable at best. “California Gurls” featured a verse from Snoop Dogg — who
was gladly lending his voice to every pop star in need of a hit and some
crossover potential in the mid to late 2000s (hello Pussycat Dolls and Justin
Timberlake) — and the single “E.T.” was later released with a Kanye West verse.
Rather than feeling like organic collaborations à la Mariah Carey’s profitable
’90s remixes, Perry’s hip-hop dabbling feels increasingly thirsty.

When she didn’t have Juicy J (on “Dark Horse”) rapping
about how Perry would “eat your heart out like Jeffrey Dahmer,” as if the
cannibalism of gay adolescents by a serial killer was a turn-on, she was busy
fending off accusations of cultural appropriation while she sported gold grills
in her mouth or cornrows and a sassy attitude like she was Mad TV’s Bon Qui
Qui. Even now, as she claims to be ushering in the era of wokeness with her
bang-the-suburbia-doldrums anthem “Chained to the Rhythm,” she undercuts it
with lyrics like “got me spread like a buffet” or bragging about her “world’s
best cherry pie.” (Her vagina, in case you didn’t catch the subtleties!) I’m
not here to knock Perry for employing sexual agency in her songs, because that’s
certainly a message that could go hand in hand with “purposeful pop.” Even the
aforementioned Lemonade juxtaposed the liberation themes of “Freedom” with
Beyoncé warning her lover that she could dump him and “bounce to the next
dick.” But Perry’s hip-hop songs always have an air of desperation, with an
added feature from a rapper to get crossover appeal. And for someone who has
worn black culture as a mask multiple times and been called out on it, the tone
deafness of Perry being served up on a platter for three black men to dine on
is overwhelming.

If anything, Perry is most believable when she’s being
petty. There’s real heartbreak in “Part of Me,” for sure, but the reason
breakup anthems work is because you’re reminding your ex how much better your
life is without them. And if the song wasn’t enough to convince Brand, she made
it the name of her documentary and put his callousness on display for millions
to watch. It’s similar to another one of Perry’s songs, the rather underrated
“Circle the Drain,” which is allegedly inspired by her relationship with Gym
Class Heroes front man Travie McCoy. Focusing on his drug addiction, she
belittles his need to get wasted and penchant for falling asleep during
foreplay. This is pettiness of the highest order and Perry excels at it.

It’s also why Perry is more emotive than she is in most of
her songs when she shades Taylor Swift on Twitter, ranging from tweeting “Watch
out for the Regina George in sheep’s clothing …” and chiming in on Swift’s 2015
beef with Nicki Minaj over VMA nominations. Although for someone who claims to
embrace hip-hop culture, Perry has learned very little from it. Just this
summer, Nicki Minaj and Remy Ma proved that women can profit off a good hip-hop
beef with their respective singles “No Frauds” and “ShEther.” Being an artist
is about putting your pain and heartache to paper, and the fallout of a
friendship should be as fair a game as a breakup with an ex. But when Minaj
joins Perry on the alleged Swift diss track “Swish Swish,” it falls flat.

Calling it a diss track is generous. It’s more of a
subtweet that fans can pretend is a diss if they want, but there’s no real
passion behind it. It is mostly made up of subliminal references to haters over
a beat a DJ can easily transition into “Truffle Butter” (Nicki remains the
generous queen). Admittedly, it’s the strongest of Perry’s Witness releases
thus far, but once again, hip-hop as Perry’s lane is really unbelievable, not
to mention her sudden use of black gay ball culture in her recent SNL
performance — all the while inexplicably needing a co-sign from Migos, who’ve
expressed homophobic rhetoric in the past. The desperation for hip-hop cred
even as it clashes with your inclusivity message is as far from “purposeful
pop”as you can get, so what are we even doing here? Why create a narrative
around an album then fail to follow through, unless you were only using that
narrative to garner buzz? The entire lead-up to Witness seems designed to
capitalize on past beefs and her political allegiances without doing any of the
hard work on the tracks themselves.

Most interpretations of her songs are just that —
interpretations, because the writing has so far been too nonspecific and
frigid. Perry seems like she’s throwing everything at the wall in an album
marketing meeting and waiting to see what sticks. It makes her as believable
singing “purposeful pop” as she was being a hip-hop diva, as she was telling
you she kissed a girl and liked it.

The tagline to Part of Me, was: “Be yourself and you can
be anything.” But five years later, I’m still not sure who she is.

Katy Perry’s also given some oddball interviews in 2017.

https://youtu.be/Cgys1k8eN_I?list=PLZQfnFyelTBOQ15kmHSgEbdjzLMWzZpL7
Radio1

The Trouble With Woke Pop Stars

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KATY PERRY CHARITABLE TRUST UK

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