Three months shy of her 40th birthday, Teenage Dream singer Katy Perry’s embarrassing comeback is fast turning into a midlife nightmare.
The prolific hitmaker has been bogged down by a tacky flesh-baring video and dismal single sales.
Now in the midst of a promotional campaign, she is promoting her new album titled ‘143’, which she says is a reference to her ‘symbolic angel number’, but in its current form it is more likely to get an upbeat spot on the charts.
What is clear is that after a four-year hiatus from releasing music, the veteran star’s renewed bid for relevance has backfired.
The signs were ominous in June, when she attended Balenciaga’s latest haute couture show in Paris, bare-chested, wearing an open leather jacket and little else.
Three months shy of her 40th birthday, Teenage Dream singer Katy Perry’s embarrassing comeback is turning into a middle-aged nightmare.
The signs were ominous in June, when she attended Balenciaga’s latest haute couture show in Paris, bare-chested, wearing an open leather jacket and little else.
Perry, with her straight face, seemed more like a Bianca Censori impersonator than a credible global pop sensation: it was a preview of what was to come.
Then her single ‘Woman’s World’ fell… off a cliff, crashing on the Billboard charts at #63.
Masquerading as a feminist and girl-power anthem, the hard-hitting synth-pop song has been criticised for its co-production credit with alleged rapist Dr Luke, as well as its widely panned accompanying music video, which deals with the male gaze.
Dated and desperate, it’s a crass mess of phallic petrol bombs, vibrators and underboobs, with Perry using urinals and singing laughably bad lyrics like: “She’s a flower, she’s a thorn, superhuman, number one.”
Amid the backlash, Perry has attempted to explain the video’s cheesy thirst for attention as a kind of satire, but no one is fooled.
And as her mother dances along to this Gaga-lite B-side, the joke is on her.
Wearing a bikini and smiling grimly, she has been touring Ibiza’s big clubs with the kids, hosting “listening parties” for the new album in Paris and London, and even buying drinks in packed bars while boasting “I’m rich” to the cameras.
All of this smacks of desperation and is certainly a far cry from years past.
Though she was never the greatest singer or dancer, the Santa Barbara native has enjoyed her moment in the California sun.
With an estimated fortune of $350 million, he is one of the richest people in the world thanks to his particular ironic and exaggerated style.
Her 2008 debut, “I Kissed a Girl,” has surpassed 850 million streams on Spotify. In 2010, Perry became only the second artist in history (after Michael Jackson) to have five No. 1 hits from one album (Teenage Dream), while her 2015 Super Bowl halftime show was, until recently, the most-watched in history.
She also appears to have a happy family life with her husband, actor Orlando Bloom, and their young daughter, but clearly, at 39, that’s not enough for a diva addicted to the cheap oxygen of fame and validation.
She also appears to have a happy family life with her husband, actor Orlando Bloom, and their young daughter, but clearly, at 39, that’s not enough for a diva addicted to the cheap oxygen of fame and validation.
It’s an illusion that recently led her to endorse Democratic candidate Kamala Harris by – what else? – sharing an edited video of the vice president listening to ‘Woman’s World’.
And it is this kind of entitlement that assumes people will accept their tired junk, keeping their coffers full regardless of quality.
But the public’s patience for vulgar and banal pop disguised as false feminism is running out.
Clever collaborations with the likes of Kanye West (before anti-Semitism) seem like a thing of the past, while the certain chutzpah that propelled her catchy hits to success may no longer be enough.
Especially as the material gets weaker and the fans get older.
Unlike her successful contemporaries like Beyoncé and Taylor Swift, Perry seems to have failed to evolve artistically.
And this has left the 39-year-old actress, who recently quit her job as a judge on American Idol (the big money-making job for many fading pop stars), very exposed.
Despite all the efforts to show off a beach body and the money poured into this increasingly humiliating campaign, Perry’s ill-judged comeback is proving to be more of a flop than a firework.