On The Hollow Nature of Katy Perry's Purposeful Pop
Pre-orders for our zine's second issue are now live. Enjoy this essay from our Spring edition.
Earlier this year we published the first edition of our print zine Where Those Two Things Intersect. It was a collection of essays from each Endless Scroll host and featured our insights on everything from our recent vinyl pickups to our favorite venues. Now, the second edition is available for preorder. You can order it at our Big Cartel store, or by signing up at the $10 tier of our Patreon.
The first edition is now on sale, and we’re sharing one of its essays. Eric wrote about what they consider to be one of pop music’s most prestigious flop eras, Katy Perry’s ‘Witness.”
“When I’m gone / I’m never really gone” proclaims Katy Perry on “When I’m Gone”, a recent one-off single. The song features 2010s EDM relic Alesso and was rolled out in support of her Las Vegas residency. Its video is painted in the trappings of edginess and confidence, but like everything Perry has done in recent years, it feels dated. The accompanying video begins with Perry saying over the phone that it’s “time to give them everything they want.” This is a nod to the meme of Real Housewife and Alleged Popstar Erika Jayne in a similar pose, specifically claiming she’d give “the gays” everything they want. This hasn’t been a fresh reference for several years, but that didn’t stop Katy Perry. Much of her recent output shares the bold claim that while she may be down, she isn’t out. 2020’s worst album, Smile, was home to “Never Really Over,” a Charlotte Russe-core pop song that insisted “just because it’s over / doesn’t mean it’s really over.” While pop music isn’t required to carry a lofty message, the redundancy within these choruses is still laughable.
I guess it makes sense why Perry would shy away from lyrical depth; her career decline grew most severe with an album billed as “pop with purpose.” 2017’s Witness, her fifth album, is one of contemporary music’s most preeminent flops. It’s an album that shows an artist desperate to change, but with no actual goal. It’s hard to pin down what exactly went wrong, but a prominent theory is that Perry got in her own head. Her prior record, Prism, did moderately well, but coming after a hit as colossal as the Teenage Dream era, led to less overwhelmingly positive press. Perry felt bullied by detractors and over-corrected. The rollout of Witness was marked by shifts in messaging, an overemphasis on her feud with the current deity of Rolling Stone, Taylor Swift, and a bizarre 96-hour live stream. An era full of drama and bold swings can captivate if you get lucky, but more often these feel like distractions, and that’s the hole Witness fell into.
One of the ideas Witness claimed to be inspired by was what Perry called “purposeful pop.” This was only ever realized by the lead single “Chained to the Rhythm.” The song is fairly standard electro-pop with a left-field choice of feature, Skip Marley. It is paradoxically a piece of mindless, frilly culture criticizing mainstream consumption of mindless, frilly culture. It is scolding you for enjoying it. Some more guileless writers praised it as politically charged songwriting in the wake of Trump. I’m willing to give them some leeway, as many thought his presidency could bring about a wave of stellar protest music; a bit of fleeting optimism that never came to pass, because of course it didn’t. Calling this song political, though, is laughable. A collection of cliches and platitudes, it earnestly thinks “Turn it up, it's your favorite song / Dance, dance, dance to the distortion / Turn it up, keep it on repeat / Stumbling around like a wasted zombie” is profound. It’s your friend who read 1984 in high school and thinks himself a philosopher.
While Perry’s idea of meaningful pop music was a miss, it’s also one she didn’t explore further. Besides “Chained to the Rhythm,” there’s not a single moment that feels like a ham-fisted attempt at mindful, “open your third eye” messaging. She doesn’t even give herself the chance to clarify what exactly she means by it. Instead, the record and its rollout decided to be about riding the wave of her spat with Taylor Swift. “Swish Swish” is not a good song by any means, but is well-produced, featuring an extensive Nicki Minaj verse that feels at home on it. Minaj can keep up with its breakneck pace, where Katy gets lost in it. “Swish Swish” ended up hurting Perry more than anyone else. It failed to take off commercially and was roundly mocked by the press. A frequent complaint was with how little venom it actually gave off. If you’re going to build something up to be a massive diss track, there should at least be something to back that up. “Swish Swish” ended up a failed attempt at stoking the fire and was snuffed out almost immediately by its follow-up just a month later. That song, the inane “Save As Draft” is one of little substance. It’s a mid-tempo ballad that uses the language of editing to convey an image of a relationship in turmoil. Despite being a single, you probably never heard it, and you absolutely never need to.
The most unforced error of the Witness rollout is without question “Bon Appétit.” The record’s second single was the only one that generated genuine controversy. Perry performed the song on Saturday Night Live shortly after its release and was joined by Migos, who are featured on the song. Migos had previously been called out for their homophobic language and behavior, and reportedly refused to share the stage with drag queens Perry had hired, and who had been on stage for Perry’s prior performance of “Swish Swish.” When your fanbase is primarily queer people, this is of course, bad. “Bon Appétit” is also just an abysmal song that seems to ask you “get it? get it?” every time it makes a poorly veiled innuendo. It’s tryhard behavior to the extreme.
The singles weren’t the only place Witness faltered, its tracklist is riddled with bizarre decisions. On “Déjà Vu” Perry compares her lover’s words to Chinese water torture without even considering how extreme that simile is. I guess there’s not much else to expect from a song with “every day’s the same /definition of insane” as a common refrain. “Hey Hey Hey” is a song with the worthy goal of smashing gender expectations but fumbles with some truly ridiculous lines. “Marilyn Monroe in a monster truck” and “a baby with a briefcase” are among the many incredibly funny mental images it conjures up. The reputation of the record as a colossal failure is an earned one. While its rollout and marketing were confused and mishandled, the music is equally to blame. A record can be mismanaged but find its audience when it comes out if the work is strong, but Witness is the sound of an artist struggling to keep up with the world around her, and in the process, forgetting why people connect with her. Today, Perry is performing nightly in Las Vegas in a stage show called PLAY, where she sings the hits. Being a Vegas staple is a more lucrative gig now than it once was. Perhaps this time spent soaking in her older material will remind her why people liked it in the first place.