Witness the Flop

Frosting, fascism, and the flop-of-all-flops: Katy Perry’s Witness.

This essay was written by CMa Overdensity. Started on July 17th, 2026, and published @ cmaoverdensity.neocities.org on October 198th, 2026. Last edited October 19th, 2026. Shoutout to my mom for the title.

The image above © Capitol Records. This work is a nonprofit educational essay that complies with Subject Matter and Scope of Copyright, 17 U.S.C. § 107 (Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use).

Introduction
A Cake Made of Frosting
1. An Empty Box
2. Conclusion
Citations

Introduction

It’s easy for me to be nostalgic for the late 00s and early 10s pop music scene. We didn’t know Kesha was being abused, Nicki Minaj hadn’t gone MAGA, and Katy Perry was everywhere.

But ice cream melts, and boy, when it did, it was messy. When Trump got into office and shattered the Obama-era hope that progress was inevitable, people were distraught - scared even - and pop music followed suit. No more maximalism. No more fun. It was stripped back, minimal, heavy. Kesha was praying. Childish Gambino showed guns and said that this was America. Logic’s “1-800-273-8255” echoed the sentiments of everyone forced to listen to it in my high school gym class: “I don't wanna be alive, I don't wanna be alive/I just wanna die today, I just wanna die”. The only songs that wanted to have fun came from beyond the first Trump empire, like “Havana” and “Despacito”.

Where did that leave Katy Perry? A cherry uneaten? No. Of course not. Katy Perry couldn’t just fade away after dominating the charts, but people didn’t want fruit, they wanted vegetables. Could she do vegetables?

Let us witness vegetables as dessert, the dethroning of the early 2010s queen of pop through her own hubris and ignorance, and the album that has become synonymous with “flop era”: Witness (2017). How did we get here, what actually happened, and why did Queen Frostine turn into, and remain, Lord Licorice?

A Cake Made of Frosting

Strawberry Bon Bon

Kathryn “Katy” Hudson, born a Scorpio, only learned of her father’s psychedelic past through his sermons against drug, and she spent her childhood avoiding the sins of Lucky Charms, deviled eggs, and secular music.¹ Her first exposure to music was through the church, every Sunday morning, Sunday evening, and Wednesday night, and it quickly became her escape - and talent.² Katy convinced her parents to pull some strings in the industry (her mother did date Jimi Hendrix, after all), dropped out of school at 15, and left for Nashville to record her very first album.³ This was her self-titled Katy Hudson (2001), a Christian Avril Lavigne that reviewed decently at the time, but quickly became obscure, as Hudson recounted that it reached maybe one hundred people before the label went bankrupt.⁴ It was, by all measures, a complete failure.⁵

But many artists fail once before making it big, right? A few years later, still not an adult, she went to the door of producer Glen Ballard, whipped out her guitar, and was signed to his label Island Def Jam.⁶ The next album wouldn’t be from Katy Hudson, but Katy Perry, her mother’s maiden name, and perhaps a name that wouldn’t get her confused with Kate Hudson.⁷ She was shuffled from Island Def Jam to Columbia, where, despite being hooked up with production team The Matrix of Avril Lavigne and Britney Spears fame, she wasn’t feeling like she had gotten any closer to her dream. It was a hostage deal: Columbia refused to let her go, knowing she’d be a success, but she got no creative control. It was all “the next Alanis Morissette” and “the next Avril Lavigne, never “the first Katy Perry”. Her album with Columbia, (A) Katy Perry, almost complete, was shelved.⁸

Damaged goods. That’s what Katy was: damaged goods with not enough starpower to make it. No car, no money, and relying on her younger brother to make ends meet, was sitting in a cubicle really how it ended? Was Kathryn Hudson destined to be some pencil-pusher at Taxi Music, reviewing submission after submission of people just like her, people who wanted in the music industry that had spat her out?⁹ Had following her dreams over the more traditional - perhaps more stable - path of finishing school and starting a family ruined her life?

I can’t tell you when it happened. It could’ve happened when she got off work, another gruelling day of gatekeeping a gate she was never let through. It could’ve happened after worrying about running out of rent money. It might have happened in August 2007, where a retrograde Venus stumbled back-first into the heart of the Sun.

But she got a call. Her manager had shopped around the masters of (A) Katy Perry. Venus met the Sun: Jason Flom, then-president of Capitol Records.

She was going to be the first Katy Perry.¹⁰

More Poptart than Predator

“Ur So Gay”

“I don’t know what to say in the chorus”, Perry was saying to her friend. She had just been broken up with, and, like most artists, was venting through her work. “He’s just like… so gay”.¹ And the stars aligned.

On November 20, 2007, she released her first single in years: “Ur So Gay”. While Perry took notes from the flamboyant and queer Freddy Mercury, “Ur So Gay” was a song directed at a similarly flamboyant - yet annoying - emo ex-boyfriend.² No, the song wasn’t about actual gay people, Perry, who openly supported same-sex marriage,³ said. It was about effeminate, fake-deep emo boys that spent more time in the mirror than their girlfriends.⁴

Queer critics rejected that as an explanation.⁵ As much as she would claim otherwise, the song weaponises the word gay as “effeminate, and I don’t like it”. Her boyfriend is a skinny, pale, vegan, electric car-driving, small dick pretty boy, and that, more than his pretension and fakeness, bothers her. Her behaviour towards trans people, such as using the word “tranny” and mocking a trans man’s body, left more of a sour taste in the queer community’s mouths.⁶ And when she was drilled on why exactly she was using the word “gay” in this context, she played dumb. It’s just a saying, people are looking too deep into it, she didn’t think it’d offend anyone.⁷ “Come on, guys,” she once said when asked about it, “I’m not out there to save the world. I’m just a pop singer”.⁸

But was this going to stop this song from success? No. Perry was one of the first pop stars to understand the power of the Internet. A MySpace and Tumblr native who was familiar with early YouTube stars like Tay Zonday (of “Chocolate Rain”) and FRED, she knew that this could be something big.⁹ Her music video for “Ur So Gay” racked up thousands of views (when thousands of views was still a big thing!), and, with a boost from Madonna herself, it peaked at #2 on Billboard’s US Hot Single Sales.¹⁰

“I Kissed a Girl”

Surely, Perry would pivot away from controversy. She got her foot in the door by being a little homophobic, and that makes her apparent support of same-sex marriage seem a little weird but, hey, she’s got the right idea, right? She can recover. She’s still new. Was controversy really the way she was going to be relevant?

“I Kissed a Girl”, again, despite her saying that it wasn’t meant to offend queer people, showed the world that she was using controversy to build her career.¹ With Perry being ambiguous on whether she, as the song said, kissed a girl and liked it,² the response was even more negative. Overshadowing a 1995 song of the same name by the lesbian Jill Sobule,³ lesbians of the music industry like Kathleen Hanna of Bikini Kill and Beth Ditto of Gossip saw it as lesbianism as a fetishistic gimmick, or lesbians for straight male pleasure.⁴ Even non-lesbians like Pink thought the song wasn’t exactly a lesbian anthem.⁵ To make matters even worse, Out magazine, a queer magazine, chose (as far as we knew) the cishet Katy Perry as one of their covers for 2008 - over long-out lesbians like Ellen DeGeneres.⁶

But not everyone saw Perry as malicious. Jane Czyzselska, editor of the lesbian magazine Diva, saw her as more stupid than evil - definitely not the worst instance of homophobia in the industry. And Stonewall chief executive Ben Summerskill thought that maybe the lyrics could reflect some queer experience, as demeaning as they were.⁷ Like with “Ur So Gay”, Perry deflected criticism in the exact same way: she didn’t mean it, and you’re reading too deeply into it.⁸

Unlike “Ur So Gay”, queer people weren’t the only ones reading too deep into it. The kind of backlash queer people feared would come to queer artists came for Perry: conservatives mad that someone would dare promote this sinful lifestyle to children.⁹ This included her own parents. “I hate the song,” her mother said. “It clearly promotes homosexuality and its message is shameful and disgusting. … When it comes on the radio I bow my head and pray”.¹⁰ Years later, her father, in one of his sermons, would say “They ask how can I preach if I produce a girl who sang about kissing another girl? … They’re loving and worshipping the wrong thing”.¹¹

Does Perry deserve a little bit of credit, though? Fetishistic or not, “I Kissed a Girl” was textual lesbianism playing on Top 40 radio in 2008, several years before same-sex marriage would ever be legal in the US. Even if the narrator is drunk and thinking of her boyfriend, kissing a girl was, in some way, a conscious choice. She does like it even if it doesn’t threaten her heterosexual relationship, and she likes it not only because it was transgressive, but because she likes kissing girls. I understand the offense towards this song. Lesbians have a long history of being sexualised, and this song doesn’t exactly break away from that. But culturally? This might have been one step in normalising queerness in pop, allowing openly queer artists like Halsey, Troye Sivan, and Hayley Kiyoko, to find success.¹²

And though reviews were mixed beyond the controversy, “I Kissed a Girl” dethroned “Ur So Gay” by reaching #1 on Billboard’s Hot 100s.¹³

And stay there for seven weeks straight.¹⁴

One of the Boys

Both of these songs would find themselves on Perry’s first successful album, One of the Boys (2008). An emotional mixed bag, she would again name Freddy Mercury as an inspiration, as well as Alanis Morisette,¹ though, looking back, she noted that most of the songs here were written when she was 19.² She had quite the cast of collaborators, too, such as Max Martin (Britney Spears, NSYNC, Pink) and Dr. Luke (Kesha, Avril Lavigne), making her feel like the “luckiest bitch in town”.³

In promoting this album, she joined Vans’ 2008 Warped Tour, among such pop classics like… Against Me!, Pierce the Veil, and Rise Against?!⁴ The same Warped Tour that hosted the effeminate and emo My Chemical Romance?! Perry had some success already, but she didn’t want to be a one-hit-wonder. Joining the Warped Tour was, in part, trying to establish her as a serious, non-gimmicky artist. And though she was surrounded by emo boys, she rejected blending in, instead indulging in girlish eye candy, each outfit never appearing twice.⁵

No matter the pedigree of her producers or who she toured with, One of the Boys reviewed poorly. Melodramatic and undaring,⁶ regressive and indistinct,⁷ she was more poptart than predator, as one review called her.⁸ Perry was a better provocateur than artist, capable of dumb fun, but not real commentary.⁹ Time sweetened people’s perspectives: yes, it's politically incorrect, but it really was dumb fun, the kind to make you forget about politics entirely.¹⁰

I do love this album for being dumb fun, but it has little substance beyond that. A later review I found claimed One of the Boys was satirical,¹¹ but I struggled to find that in an album I have listened to for over a decade. Where’s the satire in using femininity - both male and female - as a punchline? “Mannequin” comes the closest to discussing anything, but was the song meant as a discussion of toxic masculinity, of men who close themselves off so much in an effort to appear masculine… or, given the intentional shallowness of “Ur So Gay” and “I Kissed a Girl”, was the narrator mad this man wouldn’t fuck her?

But who gave a shit whether it was deep? Controversial Katy didn’t do deep: she did fun, she did fun well, and it's your fault for expecting more of her. And after years of failure, this album not only charted on the Billboard 200, but just barely got into the top 10.¹²

Cherry on Top of the World

Teenage Dream

Like a firework whose fuse had not yet met its shell, Katy Perry was flying. She toured in 2009 and 2010 across the world, detouring for the Grammys (where “I Kissed a Girl” was nominated).¹ Her tour was mixed, either catty fun² or calculated desperation.³ After was a stint as an American Idol panelist judging auditions and an MTV Unplugged session, following in the footsteps of Nirvana.⁴

A new album was inevitable, and a new album there was: Teenage Dream (2010). A poppy mix of Madonna, Prince, The Cardigans, and ABBA, she hoped this album would get crowds moving, an issue she noticed while on tour.⁵ It was a more mature outing, a transition from a cute Betty Boop to a sexier Betty Paige⁶ who was capable of not just partying, but a lot of emotions too.⁷ So concerned she was in capturing this emotion, the title track’s chorus was written four or five times to make sure she captured the essence of a teenage dream, of the transcendence of first time love.⁸ But she wasn’t reinventing herself too much - something she’d call “definitely the wrong move”.⁹

Back again were Dr. Luke and Max Martin,¹⁰ but so was someone else: British comedian Russel Brand, who had made her feel like she was living a teenage dream.¹¹ Having met on the set of a movie with half of the album written, he, while not credited as a writer, would influence the latter half by his genius.¹²

This was it. This was her chance to prove that she wasn’t a one-hit-wonder coasting off controversy.¹³ Well… maybe a little controversy was okay. Between implying British artist Lily Allen was fat, calling out the similarly controversial Lady Gaga for using blasphemy for cheap shock, and being too sexy for Sesame Street, she was still comfortable causing a stir.¹⁴ And it wasn’t like she was only controversial. She supported Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama and was Smurfette in the first live-action Smurfs movie.¹⁵ Such is celebrity life.

Teenage Dream was polarising. Some critics saw it as playfully clever and sincere.¹⁶ Others saw it as yet another unremarkable pop factory product.¹⁷ Teenage Dream is a marked improvement over One of the Boys. Shockingly, it is more mature, with “Circle the Drain” not only feeling like “Ur So Gay” done right, but an attempt at actual, genuine commentary on how women are expected to mother their partners, and stick by them even when they themselves are hurting. The five singles off this album - “Teenager Dream”, “California Gurls”, “Last Friday Night (TGIF)”, “ET”, and “Firework” - are all phenomenal time capsules of late 00s/early 10s pop. However, while I find this album hard to hate, it is still not especially deep, the singles especially. “California Gurls” is a sexy, candy romp about California girls being the best kind of girls, “ET” is about an out-of-this-world love, and “Firework” is platitude after platitude, even if all of these songs sound great. Teenage Dream is a lollipop: it's not good food, but why would you say no to a lollipop? It was a perfect microcosm of post-recession, Obama-era pop, of the party that never died.¹⁸

Teenage Dream’s success is hard to grasp. The album itself was nominated for “Album Of The Year” at the Grammys, and its singles were nominated for six between 2010 and 2012.¹⁹ Within the same timespan, it won multiple awards all across the globe.²⁰ Right now, it is diamond certified by the Recording Industry Association of America, with the album bought ten times more than if it was certified platinum.²¹ But, crucially, Katy Perry did what had only ever done before by Michael Jackson: five singles off one album that have gone #1 on Billboard’s Hot 100.²²

Prism

One of the Boys wasn’t a one-hit-wonder. But was Teenage Dream? Had the firework burst already? Had the stars moved out of alignment?

Perry let her next album stew after her wildly successful California Dreams tour. Teenage Dream was lighting-in-a-bottle, and she knew it: it would be stupid to try and do it again. No, she needed something new, something different.¹

Perry and Brand divorced in 2012, citing irreconcilable differences.² Their teenage dream ended in adult failure.

Perry said he couldn’t see her as an equal; Brand said the relationship failed for “normal, human reasons”.³ And though her next album was announced with the maximalism of a solid gold truck,⁴ it wasn’t going to be Teenage Dream. It was going to be “fucking dark” and “ugly”.⁵

Yet… that darkness would not stay forever, and she found a light through exploring spirituality. The divorce became meaningful through her Saturn return - when Saturn, well, returns to its natal position after about thirty years, bringing new challenges. Furthermore, Chinese medicine, meditation, and self-help became part of her life, though the Christian God still remained.⁶ As she explored spirituality - and started dating John Meyer - the album’s tone shifted. It became more joyful, hopeful, loving, more colourful and full of life. A prism.⁷

Prism (2013) had five singles, but only two - “Roar” and “Dark Horse” - reached #1.⁸ It’s no Teenage Dream. It has a common pool of motifs and imagery but is mostly unremarkable, and quickly became background noise as I listened to it. Reviews called it hollow, cliche, and not pushing any boundaries.⁹

Before the album, Perry had shockingly little controversy. Between an accidental insult, plagiarism drama that resolved itself, and PETA being PETA, it was quiet.¹⁰ After the album? Let’s get the least relevant controversy out of the way by saying that the physical release of Prism was declared a biohazard by Australia for shipping with seeds.¹¹ Katy Perry… did more than a few racisms. At the 2013 American Music Awards, she dressed as a sexualised and culturally-confused geisha.¹² Asian-American advocacy groups were strangely mixed on whether it was appropriation or appreciation.¹³ This was followed by her music video for “This Is How We Do”, a song off Prism, where Perry was styled with cornrows and watermelon.¹⁴ Again, at the same 2013 American Music Awards, her backup dancers were dressed in exaggerated curves, dark hair, big hoop earrings, and large lips - intended to be a criticism of plastic surgery, and instead coming off as misogynoir.¹⁵

Six years passed since “Ur So Gay”, yet her response to this was essentially the same. “I guess I’ll just stick to baseball and hot dogs,” she said, as though it was still 2007. “I guess, like, everybody has to stay in their lane?”.¹⁶ She was criticised for this, of course. Much like she was unaware “Ur So Gay” and “I Kissed a Girl” could possibly be offensive, she was again unaware how a white woman dressing as a geisha, wearing cornrows, and objectifying Black women could be offensive too.¹⁷

Impervious to controversy, after Prism, Perry sang in the 2015 Superbowl halftime. The one with the sharks, if you were around to remember,¹⁸ and a halftime show widely considered one of the best.¹⁹ And even if her 2016 Olympic single “Rise” became the first single of hers to miss the top 10,,²⁰ who cared? This wasn’t a church choir anymore, this was the fucking Superbowl. This was selling out stadiums. This was true, genuine success.

Perry’s next album started development in early 2016, and was slated to release between then and 2018.²¹ A Scorpio ruled by the ever-transformative Pluto, she was looking to break boundaries and reinvent herself. And if her next album failed because of it? So be it.²²

Eating Your Vegetables

Elephant in the Room

On May 28, 2016, a little boy climbed the fence of the gorilla enclosure at the Cincinnati Zoo. Zookeepers signaled for the gorillas to leave the area, which one, Harambe, did not. Fearing for the boy’s life, the zoo shot Harambe dead.

That damn gorilla was a cosmic lodestone, leaving a doomed world in his wake.

Or so the memes of the time said.

A year prior, the 2016 presidential candidates were announced. Hillary Clinton, former First Lady, Senator, and Secretary of State, was finally the Democratic nominee, losing out to Obama in 2007.¹ She was a safe choice: experienced, unlikely to rock the boat, and a step towards inevitable liberal progress.² She would be the choice of most of the nominally liberal entertainment industry…³ including Katy Perry. Perry was no simple celebrity endorsement either. From October 2015 to November 2016, she campaigned with Clinton for free,⁴ and why? Simply proclaimed at the July 2016 Democratic National Convention: “I love Hillary too”.⁵

The Republicans, losers twice in a row, were uncertain and risky. Out of a shockingly diverse group of sixteen potential candidates, three of those candidates had no political experience.⁶ It was anyone’s game, but by early 2016, only four candidates were in the running:⁷ establishment Republicans Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and John Kasich…

…and reality TV star, real-estate tycoon, and political outsider Donald Trump.⁸ A man who had used a fake presidential campaign to promote his book in the 80s, and whose attempts in the last two elections weren’t exactly popular.⁹ Here he was in 2016, though, neck and neck with Texas senator Cruz in the polls, and then fighting against a coalition between Cruz and Ohio governor Kasich, as Ohio governor Rubio fell behind them all.¹⁰ This political nobody got the nomination. Donald Trump - the guy who told people “you’re fired” on The Apprentice - was the Republican nominee for the presidency.

Okay. So the Republicans shot themselves hard in the foot by getting a reality TV star on the ballot. They’re clearly not playing to win, they’re not even taking this whole thing seriously, and they’re going to lose again. The polls showed a preference for Clinton; obviously, because she was the only real candidate.¹¹ Clinton would win, because of course she would. We had our first Black president, now it was time for the first woman.

Elections were held when the Sun travelled in the Via Combusta - a section of Scorpio and Libra. All elections had been hosted during this time, but astrologers saw something deeper. The Sun - the ruler of rulers, king of kings - was walking into fire, foretelling a powerful upset.¹² Astrologers cited Clinton as the victor: her 9th house Jupiter was ready to conjunct the MC, or, in other words, growth in politics was heading for her future.¹³ But even then, it was an uncertain sky for an uncertain country.¹⁴

The die had been cast, and it had landed on a million dollars, a small loan for the 45th president: Donald Trump. Clinton won the popular vote, but Trump won the president-electing electoral college.¹⁵ The Democrat Venus had fallen to the Republican Mars, the planet that ruled over the Sun in Scorpio.¹²

How? The polls said Clinton would win! The stars said Clinton would win! What about our inevitable progress? Our first female president?

Trump existed outside of the system as a celebrity, and that was his strength. His very ignorance of politics was why people voted for him. He was going to cause change, and Clinton, still fighting off the scandal from her unsecured government email, wasn’t predicted to change anything.¹⁶ Like the lunar eclipse heralding Trump’s birth,¹⁷ America was cast in shadow. Women, Mexicans, Muslims, immigrants, queer people, and countless others saw the Sun totally eclipsed, as the populist - even fascistic - right took command of the White House.¹⁸

That shadow fell on Katy Perry too. The day after the election, she tweeted:

Do not sit still. Do not weep. MOVE. We are not a nation that will let HATE lead us.¹⁹

Judge: The Singles

“Chained to the Rhythm”

February 12th, 2017: one month into the Trump presidency. He had proclaimed an executive order deemed a “Muslim ban” a few weeks prior, and a few weeks after, he called for the gutting of Obamacare.¹

This was not the most auspicious time to hold the 59th Annual Grammy Awards. The day before was a lunar eclipse in Leo.

With the shadows out of her face, Katy Perry would roar, breaking three years of musical silence. And no one, except for the sparse few that found disco balls hidden in select cities, knew what she was going to do.²

Darkness receded, music ready. There she was, platinum blonde, black-and-white, with rose-tinted glasses. On her right arm, a glittery armband reading “PERSIST”, a reference to the silencing of Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren by Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Everyone would’ve known the reference too - barely a week had passed since it had happened.³

Wrapped in clouds and caged in suburban white fences, she wasn’t singing about parties or boys, or at least, she wasn’t singing about parties like in “Last Friday Night”. “Last Friday Night” reveled in the excess, of waking up to consequence and doing it again no matter what they were. The Katy of “Last Friday Night” was, to the modern Katy, a zombie who thought her addiction was freedom, her status quo was comfort, and who was, as this new song was titled, chained to the rhythm. If that was too obscure, featured rapper Skip Marley called out the “high place, liars”, that “time is ticking for the empire” because the people were waking up to them. The whole performance ended - Katy and Skip hand-in-hand - overlaid by the preamble to the United States constitution.⁴

The music video continued these themes, with Perry wandering around the retro-futuristic theme park of Oblivia, surrounded by rides representing war, the housing crisis, and climate change. There’s a 1984-hour long ride for the “greatest ride in the universe” - a hamster wheel that every guest eventually falls off of. Perry sees through the illusion when rose thorns are actually barbed wire, and falls out of sync with the crowd’s synchronized dancing, ending with her deciding not to run on the “greatest ride in the universe”, to not run in the rat race she’s expected to run.⁵

“I feel like I’m starting a new era of something I’m calling ‘purposeful pop’,” she told interviewers about her upcoming album, Witness. “It's like I’ve found my voice more than ever and have a responsibility”.⁶

Perhaps she was still grasping what that responsibility was. In one interview, she swore live (). In another, on why she had gone blonde (“It’s the last colour in the spectrum I can do.”), she said she was saving shaving her head for a mental breakdown, and in another, after saying she was prioritising her mental health with her hiatus, said that “[she] hadn’t shaved [her] head yet”.⁷ Maybe Katy didn’t know that Britney Spears, the person she was vagueing, was fighting postpartum depression, grief, and a custody battle, that “prioritising her mental health” wasn’t something she felt she could even do.⁸ As beyond “Last Friday Night” this new Katy was, she wasn’t beyond leveraging controversy.

And maybe this complete change - in tone, in dress, in hair - was meant to cause its own controversy. Gone was her candied maximalism, hyperfemininity, and shallowness, Perry wanted minimalism, androgyny, and “innuendo with a purpose”. Really, this “Katy Perry” we’ve gotten to know is an inauthentic character, a mask over Kathryn Hudson because being Kathryn Hudson was too painful. And when she woke up after the last Friday night of her career, she didn’t want to do it all again.⁹

Katy Perry had gone woke. And people were excited… for the most part.

“Chained to the Rhythm” reviewed well, and its message landed.¹⁰ It’s one of Katy Perry’s deepest songs, and it continues to get stuck in my head, but… being the deepest Katy Perry song is like being the tallest dwarf. One could say it's exactly the kind of rhythm people chain themselves to while stumbling around like a wasted zombie.¹¹ It wasn’t even the most political performance at the Grammys: “We The People” by A Tribe Called Quest was explicit in how “Agent Orange”’s presidency was saying Black people, Mexicans, Muslims, queer people, and the poor “must go”.¹² Was Perry content with calling everyone - including, by accident, her superstar self - zombies in bubbles?¹³ How much social commentary about escapism can one reasonably sneak into a club track?¹⁴

The people spoke with their money and time, and though the song won three awards, it peaked at #4 on the Hot 100.¹⁵

It would be the first single, of all her album’s first singles, to not be #1.

“Bon Appetit”

The second single, “Bon Appetit”, came two months later. Without the Grammys to do promotion for her, Perry got creative. She handed out cherry pies and failed to start a Twitter challenge, but the latter of those challenges is the most telling as to how the public was responding to this era of purposeful pop.¹

Perry had an idea for modern art.

Museumgoers at the Whitney Museum of Art in New York City were directed to a piece called “Bon Appetit” by Katy Hudson, a spread of food on a table with a cloche at the center. Raise the cloche and… a live human head, Perry herself. The reaction was unenthusiastic, likely because they didn’t even recognise Perry as herself.² Her hair was buzzed short now, less Katy Perry and more Miley Cyrus.³ For a star of her size to go completely unnoticed? Embarrassing. Foreboding. Not good in the slightest.

“Bon Appetit” was meant to be a song of sexual liberation and anti-objectification,⁴ its tits-and-bits barely covered by food metaphor. The music video supports this, as Perry is prepared to be eaten not by the “boy” suggested by the lyrics, but by shadowy elites (Music Video). But, taking the lyrics as they are, reveals that there’s no commentary about those tits-and-bits, and that the consumptive metaphor is the text. A song meant to be empowering women to own their sexual choices instead compares them to something eaten, digested, and shat out. And if there’s a contradiction intended here, that women have an uneasy relationship with sex in this patriarchal society, I don’t see it. What agency is there in being eaten?

“Bon Appetit” faced mixed reviews. While some reviewers liked its gleefully raunchy nature,⁵ many more called it a gross betrayal of purposeful pop.⁶ Not helping matters was the featured artist, Migos, who, months prior, said it was “fucked up” and the “world [wasn’t] right” that people were supporting another rapper coming out as gay.⁷ This was right before Katy Perry was awarded for her queer activism by the Human Rights Campaign.⁸ This eventually became such a problem that, during their performance of this song on Saturday Night Live, Migos allegedly demanded that the drag queens set to perform with them be removed, something those very drag queens disputed.⁹ Perry didn’t lean on her old tricks of telling people they were reading too deeply into something, but that's the thing, she didn’t do anything regarding this controversy.

But Katy Perry did controversy well, no? “Ur So Gay” was controversial, and it put her on the map. I’m sure “Bon Appetit” was only helped by-

What do you mean it peaked at #59 on the Hot 100?¹⁰ No, you mean, #5. #9 even. Katy Perry doesn’t do #59s on her singles, she does #1s.

Okay, well, maybe this was just a bad choice. The title track of the album, “Witness”, did get leaked back in 2016.¹¹ Maybe they thought it was a bad play to make that an advance single, even if its lyrics about staying together even through hardship is a little more purposeful of pop.

Surely the last single will be purposeful, right?

“Swish Swish”

When Taylor Swift released “Bad Blood” in 2014, she said it was not about an ex lover, but a woman in the industry. A day after this came to light, Perry tweeted for people to watch out for the “Regina George in sheep's clothing”.¹

But they really did used to be mad love: Swift said she liked her, Perry defended her from Kanye’s iconic VMA interruption, and they sang a surprise duet of “Hot & Cold” on one of Swift’s tours.² When three of Swift’s dancers left her Red tour for Perry’s Prismatic tour, however, it made a really deep cut.³ Was Perry going to shoot back? She gave a nonanswer: Witness is about everything and everyone and empowerment and standing up to bullies who definitely didn’t include any specific Regina Georges.⁴

“Swish Swish” is largely agreed on as her response to “Bad Blood”, and got the same kind of mixed reception as that song did.⁵ A sassy song with a great feature by rapper Nicki Minaj?⁵ Or a lyrically-illogical, calculated disappointment saved by Minaj?⁶ The music video was also poorly received for being cartoony, tryhard, too full of memes like Shooting Stars and the backpack kid (the one that flossed, remember flossing?), and openly including a product placement for Just Dance.⁷ Unfortunately, this song really is only redeemed by Minaj on her B-game, who brings more raw hate in her verses than Perry does in the whole song. Swift employed consistent wound imagery in “Bad Blood” to emphasise that what Perry did hurt her that badly. Perry shoots back by calling her… a “shellfish”, as cute as an “old coupon, expired”, and mixes basketball imagery with Prism leftovers like karma.

I’m being reminded of another 2017 product that was released a month after Witness, one that promised to tackle big social issues, but was panned for being out-of-touch and having product placements, including one for Just Dance.

Is Witness shaping up to be Katy Perry’s The Emoji Movie?

No. It can’t be. No one was expecting anything but a cash grab with The Emoji Movie. Katy Perry had three successful albums, multiple #1 songs, a record shared with the King of Pop. But here it is. A political message promised, but absent, instead replaced with the most generic of diss tracks, like The Emoji Movie had the most generic of children movie plots.

It charted better than “Bon Appetit” at least! Was Perry back on her game with a fun diss track? Top 10? Top 5?

#46.⁸

Like a bandaid over a bullet hole.

Jury: Witness Worldwide

Sometime after “Swish Swish”, Perry would, again, find herself in controversy. She would again be accused of cultural appropriation by posting an image of Hindu goddess Kali dancing on Shiva with the caption “current mood”, and then of racism when she compared those missing her old black hair to missing Obama.¹ Then, at that year’s Met Gala, she was caught wearing a John Galliano dress; Galliano, in 2011, was filmed harassing Italian women by saying “I love Hitler. People like you would be dead. Your mothers, your forefathers would all be fucking gassed”.² And if that wasn’t bad enough, DJ and producer Mano came forward on Twitter alleging that not only did Perry call him and other Black artists the n-word, but they had to explain to her why she couldn’t call them that… after being told to stop multiple times.³ The firework was nosediving, and fast. The album release was imminent, and it was going to bomb if someone didn’t do something.

Katy Perry was going to do something big: Witness Worldwide. For four days, she was to live in a Big Brother/Truman Show-type livestream where the cameras were always rolling. There, she talked with activists, had her makeup done, played songs for fans, chatted with RuPaul, and, I kid you not, went to therapy, among other things.

Some saw it as a candid reflection on the privacy-deprivation celebrities live with,⁴ but most saw this as a calculated, cynical, even desperate gimmick.⁵ A good chunk of it became lost media. Sit with that. It’s 2017. It was livestreamed on YouTube. Katy Perry is an internationally known pop star with a diamond-certified album and a record only met by Michael Jackson. She was begging to be looked at. Yet, of the total ninety-six hours, only twelve of them are archived.

Though, even if the rest of Witness Worldwide was recovered, I don’t know how many people, aside from me, would want to watch it. Shockingly, a 24-hour livestream of someone going about preplanned activities is boring! And for her purposeful pop era, the optics here are terrible! Ah yes Katy, we know you’ve had some… issues with people from demographics not of your own. Let us record you listening and learning in an Orwellian nightmare. Let us record a professionally shot, lit, and edited therapy session where you spill your guts (or not, perhaps we’ll brief you on which guts look the best on camera). Talk to RuPaul over brunch for an hour or so, it’s not like he’s controversial in the queer community despite being part of it.⁶

I’m getting a strange sense of deja vu.

In 2014, rapper Macklemore won four Grammys, including sweeping the rap categories. This was controversial not only due to him being white in a category created and dominated by Black artists, but also that his album won out over the critical darling that was Kendrick Lamar’s debut, widely considered one of the best albums of the year.⁷ Everyone thought Lamar had been robbed - including Macklemore. So, being a good sport, he sent him a text saying that he deserved those Grammys, not him, and congratulated him for how far he came.⁸ Pretty cool of him to do, right?

No, because he published it on his Instagram. Like an observed electron, the apology changed state from sincere to insincere in the eyes of the public, regardless of if Macklemore was sincere or not.⁹ In the words of the similarly snubbed - but not apologized to - Drake: that shit was wack as fuck.¹⁰

In an attempt to be authentic, Witness Worldwide accidentally(?) engineered a panopticon that made authenticity impossible, that centered Perry in conversations that weren’t about her. Look at Katy Perry listening to and learning from minorities.¹¹ Who cares about who they are, look at how woke Katy Perry is!

And beyond Witness Worldwide, what was she doing to show that she had listened and learned? Along with past activism for queer rights¹² and against HIV/AIDS,¹² both of which she’s been awarded for,¹³ during this album cycle, she donated ten thousand dollars to Planned Parenthood, protested the Muslim ban by making a PSA, and posted about the oil pipeline tearing up Native land and transgender rights.¹⁴ There’s asterisks on almost everything here, though. Her protest of the Muslim ban ended up offending Asian-Americans.¹⁵ She posted about the pipelines and transgender rights, but should “woke” begin and end at online visibility? And of course, while Perry has long supported queer rights, her relationship to queer people has already been illustrated as problematic. Even her awards are problematic: the Human Rights Campaign has been long criticized for its lack of inclusivity.¹⁶

The only time she put her money where her mouth was in this era (besides, of course, the donation to Planned Parenthood) was during Witness Worldwide, where she apologised for multiple accounts of cultural appropriation on a podcast with Black Lives Matter and civil rights activist DeRay McKesson.¹⁷ This was the right play, but did she mean it? Can we even tell that she’s not performing guilt, performing an apology, for the sole purpose of promoting an album - which was the point of Witness Worldwide?

Take note that, during this time, articles discussing celebrity activism did not mention Katy Perry.¹⁸ In one, her possible place, like Lamar by Macklemore, was snubbed by the Backpack Kid, the same one in the “Swish Swish” music video. The GIF in the article shows Katy Perry in it, off to the side, irrelevant.¹⁹

Executioner: Release

Midnight, June 9th.¹ We can finally witness Witness (2017).

And boy, did no one like it.

Positive reviews were asterisked. Sure, it's not subtle like she promised, but an obvious feminist message was still good.² Once it stops being a hot topic, people will like it better.³ And you can still dance to it, at least.⁴

But was it purposeful pop? No, and everyone knew it.⁵ This disconnect made Witness disorganised,⁶ and its samey production - curiously missing longtime collaborator Dr. Luke - made it forgettable too.⁷ Both over- and underwritten, the lyrics were panned as too uncomfortable to mean anything, not fun enough if they were meaningless, and too reliant on Perry’s worsening tendencies towards vague sentiments and mixed metaphor.⁸ Her slathered-in-effects voice couldn’t save it,⁹ and neither could her wasted features, including Canadian electronic duo Purity Ring, Jeff Bhasker, Jack Garratt, and Mike Will Made-It.¹⁰

The leaked¹¹ title track “Witness” is about finding connection during difficulty, worded in a way that is vague enough to apply to any situation. It was received well,¹² and ought to have been an advance single over “Bon Appetit” or “Swish Swish”.
“Roulette” is a party song about enjoying the moment, and though it’s a fun track, the lyrics are already coming apart with forced rhymes like bubble/trouble/rumble/careful. While largely received positively,¹³ some thought it was indistinct from other “throw your cares away and party” songs.¹⁴
“Hey Hey Hey” says women can be feminine and strong, with empowering(?) lyrics like “Marilyn Monroe in a monster truck”. Critics found it derivative, forgettable, lyrically-scuffed pop feminism.¹⁵
“Deja Vu” covers the evergreen topic of breaking up, mixing metaphors like “Why do you keep me at the end of a rope that just keeps getting shorter?”. Critics saw both lyrical weakness,¹⁶ but also a groove.¹⁷
“Power” tells women to break the cycle of abuse, and that they don’t need to be submissive to men. Here, while the lyrics are obvious, like “But I have, I have to break the cycle/So I can sit first at the dinner table”, they still serve that theme. Jack Garratt’s contribution was appreciated,¹⁸ and so was the song’s message.¹⁹
“Mind Maze” is so vague its lyrics could be about escaping any hardship, even if I think the song is going for an abusive relationship. This was a collaboration with Purity Ring, and the electronic production makes the song stand out - in a way I’m not sure I like. Some critics enjoyed Purity Ring’s contribution here,²⁰ but others thought the song was forgettable and annoying regardless.²¹
“Miss You More” is another Purity Ring collab, more explicitly about the complex feelings of a relationship ending. I could not find a single bad word about this song in all the reviews I’ve read.²²
“Tsunami”, a collab with Mike Will Made-It, feels like a “cooler” echo of “California Gurls” and is a similar kind of sex song to “Bon Appetit”. Unlike either, I found it forgettable. Critics either saw it as sexy and breezy,²³ or unsubtle and forgettable.²⁴
“Bigger Than Me” is the third Purity Ring collab, and is about having a larger role to play in… something. Again, the song is very vague, which critics agree with me on,²⁵ but others saw it as an earnest attempt at introspection.²⁶
“Save as Draft” is about waiting to send a text to someone you probably shouldn’t be talking to at all. I found it generic; reviews were mixed. Some saw it as a good ballad cleverly using technology to its advantage,²⁷ while others saw it as conventional and out-of-touch.²⁸
“Pendulum” is a song about karma, displaced from. While I found it just okay, this was one of the most highly praised songs on the album.²⁹
“Into Me You See” is yet another breakup ballad, and is a collaboration with Hot Chip. It’s a little too bare and slow for me to find it anything but boring. Critics were split on whether it was good,³⁰ or a lyrically-clumsy, barely-noticeable collab.³¹

Instead of being purposeful pop, Witness was desperate pop. Vague platitudes when she promised politics, unfun when she promised fun, and with her worst lyrical tendencies on display, no one got what they wanted here. When Perry tried being political, she couldn’t get much farther than “Chained to the Rhythm”, the very first song officially released from this album. Where her strengths lie - in songs like “Pendulum” and “Roulette” - is far from purposeful pop: it’s in making the exact same thing she’s always made.

However… I can’t say it's a bad album. It’s not Teenage Dream, obviously, but it is far from the worst pop album I’ve listened to. Boring, sure, but not unlistenable. One gets the feeling that, if Perry hadn’t made this album cycle political, it would be received better. No one would care about most of the album not being purposeful pop if she didn’t tell us it was going to be purposeful pop.

Debuting at #1 on the Billboard 200, it quickly fell off by the next week and kept falling.³² She was being outperformed by mid-tier musical Dear Evan Hansen and her own rival Taylor Swift.³³ And while Witness: The Tour was well-received, the album’s music was its weakest link.³⁴

This would be the last time a Katy Perry album would ever hit #1. Did we witness the last spark of Katy Perry?

An Empty Box

Like any Scorpio would, she stung back at the critical reception. People were expecting perfection from her and hating her when she inevitably wasn't. She was just building bridges when she collabed with Migos. And she was definitely not a con artist. The old Katy, unlike her rival, had not died.¹

No one was buying it.

With every tweet she read, every hour wasted lethargically doomscrolling, she realised that she might have stung herself too.² No one understood her, but she had hardly given them Kathryn Hudson. She gave them Katy Perry, the muzzled provocateur, the woke sleeptalker, the falling popstar. Depression was inevitable when compartmentalisation, of shoving criticism onto Katy Perry and off Kathryn Hudson, failed, and difficult talks with her label didn’t help.³ How could she separate Kathryn Hudson from Katy Perry? The mask was fused to her face, the character more real than the person beneath.

She took a step back, took it as a lesson in overreliance on validation, and went to therapy.⁴ Offscreen, this time. She would never see Witness as a failure.⁵

But would anyone else?

There’s… an unfortunate little snag here. A missing person. A series of crimes. An animal, a cannibal.

In 2014, fellow pop starlet Kesha accused Dr. Luke of forced drug use, rape, and long-term abuse of many different kinds.⁶ The music industry largely sided with Kesha, with big names like Adele, Lady Gaga, Ariana Grande, and Taylor Swift giving her some kind of support.⁷

In 2018, an unsealed deposition revealed that Perry testified in Dr. Luke’s favour. He had never been inappropriate to her, despite rumours fanned by Lady Gaga.⁸ Personally invested in both parties, she chose to side with neither. Perry knew Dr. Luke was using her as a pawn, but she didn’t publicly support Kesha either.⁹

Dr. Luke’s omission from Witness could have been her way of siding with Kesha, but as time progressed, this appeared more tactical than moral. Smile (2020) lacked a Dr. Luke credit, and was quickly forgotten in the midst of Taylor Swift’s Folklore and Dua Lipa’s debut Future Nostalgia.

The album after, 143 (2024), had a certain name in the credits.

Perry, like she was still in 2008, deflected complaints by saying Dr. Luke was just one of many cooks in the kitchen. A&R manager Chris Anokute didn’t help by reducing the decision down to a bid for another #1 hit, and whining about the media trying to “assassinat[e]” them over this.¹⁰ Backlash was inevitable. The first single off the album, “Woman’s World”, was criticised for not only featuring Dr. Luke as a producer, but for an overtly sexual music video and vacuous lyrics that claim, among other things, women can be mothers and sisters.¹¹ Daring, I know. Allegedly, 2024 Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris politely declined using the song in her campaign.¹² Perry later claimed the song was parody, in some effort to save face.¹³

Kesha’s response to all this summed up how the world now viewed Katy Perry: lol.¹⁴

Damaged goods. Katy Perry had become damaged goods once again. This time, there was no record label to blame it on. She could blame it on her PR team, but the public blamed her.

Conclusion

Ever since Witness, Katy Perry has been under a malefic sky, even if 143 is considered her worst album.¹ Smile peaked at #5, 143 at #6, and their highest peaking singles at #40 and #63.²

From the start, Perry wasn’t known for depth or tact. She weaponised controversy, much like a certain celebrity president, to dominate. This, it seemed, was written in her stars as well. Scorpio isn’t ruled by the Democrat Venus, but the Republican Mars. And like a conservative, every criticism she got was met with the same flippancy, that she was just having fun, was fun illegal now, did you have to scrutinise art that was meant to be meaningless? She was a popstar, for God’s sake, not a politician!

Then, she entered her woke era. This was purposeful pop, and she was a political popstar who demanded being read into. What did people find? Frosting without a cake, sweet and sickening, out-of-date and stale under the US’ new management. She used to dominate by drawing attention to herself, but now struggled to hold space for others. She used to dominate by being artificial and plastic, but now struggled to appear earthy and real. She used to command control of the radio, but now flopped hard.

Despite wanting the world to witness Kathryn Hudson, Katy Perry hadn’t seen her. Kathryn, the same girl who sings in a million churches all across the nation. Kathryn, girl-curious and terrified. Kathryn, the repressed. Kathryn, the homeless. Kathryn, the dead. Who witnessed them? Where was her writing credit in a time where the Kathryns of America were scared of their own desires, their own family, their own god?

This did not mean Katy Perry only witnessed Katy Perry, because she hadn’t. Who witnessed Katy Perry, the escapist, the eternal party girl, the soundtrack of a generation? Where was Katy Perry offering us a distraction from the first Trump presidency, from us fearing for our lives, who didn’t want to be reminded of how much worse the world became? What is the purpose of a gay bar, a women’s group, a people of colour support chat? Is it not to escape from the majority, to feel like, for once in your life, you’re normal, and you can be around people who understand you? But Perry flits into gay bars for the spectacle, and has to be educated on why she can’t say the n-word when around Black artists. Of course she wouldn’t understand the necessity of levity in this situation.

Perry didn’t need purposeful pop to be relevant, and if she felt the edge of scissors on the thread of her career, there were a million ways to pivot that would preserve her legacy as the early 2010s queen of pop. Instead, she is a mellified woman, a Swedish fish coelacanth. Manufactured in the early 2010s, she wasn’t fit to be hoarded like a Twinkie until years after her expiration date. And yet, here she is, putting the old recipe back on the market like tastes haven’t changed, her newest compilation album of her biggest hits outperformed by Chappell Roan and Billie Eilish, and outperforming her newer work.

In hindsight, we all knew she had an expiration date. Teenage Dream was a one-hit wonder, and Prism was an inevitably-successful aftershock. Witness was New Coke, a new formula for success that was immortalised as a failure.

Katy Perry’s career is void-of-course: nothing more will come from the matter.