Woman's World is probably not the comeback Katy Perry had in mind

In this renewed season of pop dominance, it's hard to imagine a bigger flop than Katy Perry's latest single, Woman's World.

The heavy-handed feminist pop song and its accompanying music video were supposed to mark her comeback, but they've instead been panned by critics and memed by listeners everywhere.

Today on Commotion, music journalists Reanna Cruz and Abby Jones join host Elamin Abdelmahmoud to unpack what we know about Katy Perry's new era, and how she fell off the hit-making train.

We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, listen and follow Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud on your favourite podcast player.

Elamin: Reanna, you're the one who's like, "I'm a KatyCat. I own it. I am a fan of Katy Perry." What was your reaction when new Katy Perry arrived in your inbox?

Reanna: I was very excited. I've been waiting for this comeback for years. I'm a Witness defender.

Elamin: Witness, which has Swish Swish, Chained to the Rhythm — songs that even people who like Katy Perry would be like, "Not this stuff, though." But you're in for it.

Reanna: Those are some of my favorites. I heard Woman's World for the first time on Twitter as a demo leak, and I was like, this isn't that bad. There's a sick guitar solo. That's so major. And then the actual song came out and I was like, oh, wow. It really is stripped of anything interesting. I keep thinking of a tweet that I saw that was like, "Woman's World sounds like a song that you sing to your cat." It really is apt. Like, it's so inane.

Elamin: I think inane is the correct word. Abby, as a piece of music, tell me why the song doesn't work.

Abby: I wrote in Stereogum that the lyrics sound like ChatGPT wrote them. It's all very surface-level cliches, talking about how women are so pretty and we can do anything just based on our gender alone. It's nothing new or thought-provoking. In fact, I think Katy Perry has done better "female empowerment" anthems with songs like Roar and Firework. And my friend Cat Zhang wrote in The Cut that Woman's World feels very reminiscent of the type of hollow feminism we saw during Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign, and I totally agree. It operates under this idea that just because of our gender alone, every single woman is inherently this angelic, perfect person who can do anything. And that whole schtick feels really outdated right now.

Elamin: So we all get not just the song, but also the video, and maybe the video makes everything a little bit worse because the video comes out and is panned by pretty much everyone. And after that reaction, Katy Perry has to come out and say, hey, the video is actually supposed to be a satire.

Reanna: The first half of the video is supposed to be satire of the traditional form of feminism. But, you know, if you say it's satire, but nobody else thinks it's satire, is it actually satire?

Elamin: This is the thing that I'm struggling with. First of all, you just mounted a better defense for Katy Perry than Katy Perry's mounted for herself. That is worth pointing out. But I think more importantly, what do you make of the argument that she says it's supposed to be satirizing the male gaze, but also it's not really satirizing the male gaze? She's acknowledging this. It does sound a bit like an intellectual mess, if you will.

Reanna: I think it's not particularly smart of her. Katy Perry historically has made some interesting decisions with regards to her career. I think the backlash to Witness kind of rewired her brain a little bit, and now she's extremely scared of making a misstep in her career. So I think the satire is like, "Oh, let me get ahead of it. People are saying my video is bad, but actually it's satire." It feels like she had that in her back pocket in case the discourse tide turned against her.

Elamin: The series of albums that Katy Perry had in her sort of imperial era, let's say, were moments where she really couldn't miss. Prism becomes the very height of that, which is 2013. When she returns with Witness, she has work to do in terms of changing the public perception of her, because Witness doesn't really hit. The album after that doesn't really hit. In fact, I can't even name that album. What do you think she was trying to pull off here with this sort of comeback, Abby?

Abby: Her 2020 album was called Smile. I had to remind myself; I couldn't even remember what the singles were.

Reanna: It was clown-themed.

Abby: Terrifying…. I think she is having a bit of an identity crisis, and is scrambling to figure out who her audience is anymore. When I think of a lot of the other big pop stars today, I think of Charli XCX, Chappell Roan, Sabrina Carpenter — artists who know their audiences. They know what kind of music they want to be making, and it feels very authentic and resonant. I think Katy Perry has lost that at this point. So I think she was hoping Woman's World would appeal to a really broad audience, and that obviously backfired.

You can listen to the full discussion from today's show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts.

Panel produced by Jess Low.