At the beginning of the decade, Katy Perry was essentially invincible. The musician’s 2010 album Teenage Dream produced five inescapable No. 1 singles (a feat that had only previously been achieved by Michael Jackson’s Bad). Her image was easy to parse: everything was bright and candy-coated and syrupy. The songs were effervescent, and the wigs were neon.
Perry is still, seven years later, one of the most famous pop stars on the planet. She remains one of a pretty small group of musicians who commands full attention with the drop of each new single and video and visual. There were two separate news cycles recently related to the album art for her forthcoming album, Witness—one for a cover later deemed to be fake, and then one for the genuine article. She just signed a contract to become one of the judges in ABC’s American Idol reboot for a reported $25 million.
But while Perry isn’t exactly hurting at the bank or in star power (she remains the most-followed person on Twitter), she is nevertheless struggling at the moment. In advance of Witness (due to drop June 9), Perry has released three singles:
The “message” song. “Chained to the Rhythm,” was released in February, a few months after Hillary Clinton lost the election. Perry was one of the most vocal celebrities to support Clinton, performing at the Democratic National Convention, and otherwise promoting and traveling with the candidate. When she released “Chained to the Rhythm”—after about two years of relative dormancy—she wrote on Twitter that she was aiming to create “purposeful pop” with her new music, spurred by her feelings of distress related to the Trump presidency. The single included lyrics like “So comfortable, we’re living in a bubble,” and “[we’re] trapped in our white picket fence.” The track debuted at No. 4 but then fell rapidly. Her performance at the Grammys was mostly talked about in relation to the somewhat overwhelming rotating white “suburban house model” she writhed around during it.
The “provocative” song. The next single, “Bon Appetit,” was, to put it mildly, not a song about feelings of anxiety and frustration in the Trump presidency—or anything even close to a cousin of “purposeful pop.” The video sees, at one point, a nude Katy laying on a table with various vegetables placed strategically over her body, which basically tells you everything you need to know about the track. After featuring Skip Marley (Bob’s grandson) on “Chained to the Rhythm,” she was joined by Atlanta rap trio Migos, on “Bon Appetit.” (Both features felt less like obvious fits than calibrated attempts to achieve a sense of relevancy.) She promoted the release by handing out cherry pies in Times Square. The song did not crack the top 10.
The “tabloid-baiting” song. And then last week, a few days before her appearance on the finale of Saturday Night Live, Perry debuted another track, “Swish Swish,” a buoyant, if slightly inaccessible song, featuring Nicki Minaj. The brash lyrics—“Don’t you come from me,” “Cause you’re a joker / And I’m a courtside killer queen”—immediately had gossip blogs wondering if Perry was referencing Taylor Swift, whose 2014 “Bad Blood” was allegedly written about Perry. Perry was coy about its meaning on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon on Friday night, never explicitly mentioning Swift. She performed it on Saturday Night Live with a 15-year-old dancer, famous on Instagram, who seemingly ended up getting as much attention the next day as the song itself did.
While it is not completely uncommon for an artist to release three tracks before an album release, given this age of streaming and surprise album drops and teaser roll-outs for music-video previews and the like, the fact that none of these have broken through and become a major hit is significant. It also suggests the struggles that all pop stars—no matter how large their celebrity—face with each new album cycle in this current climate.
A scan of the current Billboard hot 100 reveals something that has gradually become clearer in modern pop music: the name attached to a single matters less and less. The only full-fledged female pop stars with songs in the top 30 of the charts right now are Miley Cyrus (with “Malibu,” at No. 10) and Selena Gomez (whose collaboration with Kygo sits at No. 12). The names associated with the largest hits feel interchangeable. Most people, for example, would probably have been hard-pressed to identify who sang last summer’s biggest songs: there was the “We ain’t never getting older” one, the “Don’t let me don’t let me don’t let me down” one, and so on. The identity of the artist is verging toward becoming an afterthought. As a result, and also given the numerous distractions and plethora of options available to stream, it takes a lot more to break through and connect on a single than simply having a name that listeners recognize.
Perry’s TV stops this tour have also seemed to take an “Uh, let’s see if this one works!” approach. On the Ellen Show, she played a game where she had to choose which celebrity men she would most want to date among various pairs. She never seemed comfortable, though, at a certain point punting and bemoaning that her choices would be picked up by blogs the next day. She was more relaxed on “Carpool Karaoke” earlier this week, though her decision to address the Taylor Swift feud head-on with host James Corden became the focal point of the segment—the timing was likely no coincidence, coming a few days after “Swish Swish.” (Full disclosure: she also pranked unsuspecting museum guests for a Vanity Fair video.)
Katy Perry is not going anywhere. She has performed at the Super Bowl halftime show. She has fashion collections and high-profile endorsement deals and famous love interests. And perhaps that’s why Perry’s machinations this latest album cycle feel especially notable. For a pop artist of her caliber on her fifth album, it isn’t necessarily unusual that she would be experimenting with her sound and trying new things—but it doesn’t really seem like that’s what’s really going on here. For an artist who arrived on the scene with a believable sunniness, a campy sexuality presented with a wink, Perry seems, now, a bit, well, bored. Watching her on Ellen or on Saturday Night Live, she seemed like someone in your office who has outgrown his current role but still has to clock in each morning at nine A.M. “Oh, another raunchy pop song in which we use food as a metaphor for something sexual? Sure, yeah, fine, go get me a wig.”
Since the first three offerings from the album all represent somewhat different pop fare, it’s tough to know what exactly to expect on the rest of Witness. God knows no one should have to continually have their new work compared to their output from five years ago. But these false starts over the past few months just have us hoping Perry finds something that feels like a groove. You’ll know it when you hear it.
