The sense, going into her seventh album era, is of a 2010s pop star now very much on the back foot – one compounded by pre-release visuals that seemed nakedly inspired by the warped futurism of next-gen stars Arca and Charli xcx. At least the imagery suggested some kind of attempt to embrace pop’s present; then the credits for her new album 143 were revealed, heavily featuring Perry’s old collaborator Dr Luke. Muddled in with all this turbo cheesecakery are blatant grasps for gay standom. “She’s a sister and a mother,” Perry sings, winking at drag culture so hard you suspect she’d pop a hernia if her abs weren’t hard as armour. Later in the video, as bionic horse Katy strides through some sort of apocalyptic scene – having rebooted as a sexy equine cyborg after being crushed by an anvil – two men kiss in the windy maelstrom. This clumsy expansiveness stumbles in a later bit when Perry rides in a monster truck with a sparkly uterus hung from it, an inadvertently apt symbol of all the essentialist, pandering nonsense going on here. Not to sound like one of those men (actually I’ll take Perry’s insistence that it’s my goddess-given right as a woman to be essentialist, OK!) but: this garbage has six writers. Granted, it is infernally catchy, but it is the Bic for Her of pop, the pink Yorkie for girls (get your lips around this!), a song that made me feel stupider every sorry time I listened to it. As well as sounding like reheated Gaga, it also sounds brazenly like Chappell Roan’s Super Graphic Ultra Modern Girl. Roan – along with Sabrina Carpenter and Charli xcx – is modelling how to be a pop star in 2024: they’re inventive, self-aware, silly, deep, some of the qualities Perry had at the peak of her promise but seems to have lost for ever. Charli’s Girl, So Confusing (and the subsequent remix with Lorde) drew on the complexities of jostling for supremacy as a woman. Woman’s World is more girl so confused. At the end of the video, Perry encounters a teenager doing a TikTok dance in front of a ring light shaped like the ♀ symbol, which Perry steals and brandishes as she flies off in a helicopter. “Who areyou?” the girl asks, perhaps in some sort of self-aware nod to Perry’s absence from pop’s upper echelons in recent years. “I’m Katy Perry!” she yells in slow-mo. It sounds less like a roar of triumph than the echoing cry of someone falling down a large ravine.

Halsey's favorite music reviewer has just published an article on Katy's new single Read below --- Defying all sense of taste, the pop singer’s comeback single is too dispiriting to even approach camp. It’s abysmal. There is nobody better at committing to the bit than Katy Perry. When singing in Simlish, she puts her whole diamond into it. Her Vegas residency, launched in 2021 during the absolute nadir of her career, featured an extended setpiece in which she interacted with a giant toilet. Sometimes, the universe completes the bit for her: “The One That Got Away” was the only single from her gargantuan 2010 album Teenage Dream that didn’t reach No. 1 on the Hot 100. She is pop music’s Jenna Maroney, meeting every challenge with a vacant stare and nothing less than 150% commitment. This is Perry’s greatest strength as well as her fatal flaw. When she half-asses something, you can really tell: Rhyming “trouble” with “bubble” would be a slam-dunk on a track about a sexy foam party, but Katy wasted it on a reggae song about the dangers of technology, or whatever. But when it comes to politics, Perry just seems bored, so much so that a comeback single titled “Woman’s World” seems like a foregone conclusion. And yet, when she describes women as “so intelligent,” she sings it in this halting, unintentionally patronizing rhythm that leaves you no choice but to assume she’s being sarcastic. Now that’s a good bit. With its pulsating synths and steamroller chorus, “Woman’s World” is clearly modeled on Lady Gaga’s 2020 single “Stupid Love,” a brazen return to form that successfully launched Gaga into the second act of her career. There seems to have been a miscalculation, though: “Stupid Love” worked not because of its sound but because it took the core elements of Gaga’s music—slightly nonsensical lyrics, acid-trip concept, a general struggle with vowels—and turned them up to 11. It’s mystifying why Perry would have chosen to mount her comeback with a vaguely political song—you just get the sense that she just doesn’t really like or care about this stuff. Even if “Woman’s World” didn’t sound like its author had to have feminism explained to her by the top half of the first page of Google, its message of empowerment would have rang false, simply because it was co-written and co-produced by Dr. Luke, the producer Kesha accused, in a since-dismissed lawsuit, of sexual assault and emotional abuse—allegations he denied. It’s sincerely twisted, if unsurprising—I generally believe you have to be at least be something of an amoral hypocrite to be a celebrity or pop star, and fair play to those willing to do it—but it also reveals “Woman’s World” to be even more of a monumental catastrophe: If Perry was willing to cop the built-in bad press of making a song about women’s lib with an alleged abuser, shouldn’t the song at least be a banger? Instead, it’s unfathomably tepid, irritating at best. In the immortal words of Sister Catherine Rose Holzman, uttered moments before she died: “Katy Perry, please stop.” [] --- SL being perceived as SOTY in comparison to a new drop was not in my bingo cards for 2024 but here we are The lashings won't stop anytime soon I fear

☠️☠️ Lol

I always forget that Stupid Love was acclaimed by critics bc fans sleep on it so hard

"Did you know that she released an album during the pandemic? Probably not." omggg....

we want CupcakKe

“is a powerful celebration of womanhood in all its forms.” Not with those kindergarten level lyrics

reheated Gaga is wild

Let me get my tomatoes ready

It's like she copied "Stupid Love" but emphasized the "stupid" aspect.

The Stockholm Syndrome variants

It's the musical equivalent of this

Honestly, just stream the superior song.

I still dont get why it was so disliked. Its catchy AF

That was hot garbage. She hasn’t evolved as an artist. Its the same cringy meme chasing **** + product placement overload thrown in that she always does.

Definitely not true. That contract ended years ago, as was made clear in the sworn court exhibit.

Katy Perry launched an exciting new era in her record-breaking pop career with the announcement of her sixth studio album, entitled 143, set for September 20. “Woman’s World,” the first single, is a powerful celebration of womanhood in all its forms. The official video, which will make its broadcast premiere on MTV Live, mtvU, MTV’s Biggest Pop as well as the Paramount+ Times Square billboards, was directed by Charlotte Rutherford.

Who has a harder job this week, Katycats or Joe Bidens press secretary?

‘Celebration of womanhood’ and it’s a video that looks like it was directed by a horny 14 year old boy

https://x.com/mrpopofficial/status/1811799102453129463?s=46&t=Ls18CinN6NKWnEsbc4EidA With its pulsating synths and steamroller chorus, “Woman’s World” is clearly modeled on Lady Gaga’s 2020 single “Stupid Love,” a brazen return to form that successfully launched Gaga into the second act of her career. There seems to have been a miscalculation, though: “Stupid Love” worked not because of its sound but because it took the core elements of Gaga’s music—slightly nonsensical lyrics, acid-trip concept, a general struggle with vowels—and turned them up to 11. It’s mystifying why Perry would have chosen to mount her comeback with a vaguely political song—you just get the sense that she just doesn’t really like or care about this stuff. Complete article: https://pitchfork.com/reviews/tracks/katy-perry-womans-world/

Retribution for Roar vs Applause

Dazed magazine also published a review and said "Woman’s World’ sounds like it was designed by a committee in a boardroom at Capitol Records whose sole objective was a sync on RuPaul’s Drag Race and generating comments of ‘you ate’ from white gays living in West Hollywood" It's bad for her (but I'm living for the lashings )

reheated Gaga

Mind you, the moment billboard stops counting these - she’ll never do this again ☠️

The SL praise omgggggg

This made me appreciate stupid love so much more

I'm sorry, I'm ready to get dragged for saying this, but it 100% feels like a video that was made to capture the male gaze as opposed to embracing sexuality or celebrating women and feminism.

On her Insta Stories currently

Katy is taking Gaga's decay of a blonde pop star concept and pulling a uno reverse card this era

Although we were all expecting it, I'm in shock at just how scathing the reviews are. But she doesn't have a hard task. All she needs to do is dig deep and present something that's honest to herself. Stop with every move being calculated and forced. Why is that so hard? The only answer is that there's nothing underneath the surface, just more surface. She was always the stereotypical Black Mirror popstar.

"gays like hot boys so they're women too" - katy, probably

Before anyone tries to drag Katy, let us all recall she’s allegedly contractually obliged to work with Dr. Puke, and that she’s also allegedly a victim of SA. We don’t know exactly why she’s working with him, she may be a victim herself.

I think this is actually what bugs me about it the most. Women's rights were catapulted back more than half a century. Women are being arrested for miscarriages or being forced to carry dead/deadly pregnancies to term no matter the risks. There are some states where a frozen egg has more rights than the woman it came from. And womanhood is being weaponized against the trans community. And here comes Katy Perry to make a fun campy video about how cool being a lady is. "Tone deaf" doesn't begin to cover it and it goes beyond a parody of how absurd reality is. It's just flat out idiotic and bad. But given Katy's political leanings and history, both as a religious artist and as someone who made gays the butt of the joke in earlier work, I guess we shouldn't be surprised. We can forgive a bad song but she's just not looking like a kind or even intelligent person rn.

she worked hard to receive this reaction she had that 50-meter-long dress and everything

Couldn’t agree more! Also, the gay kiss was so unnecessary! I was like, girl, you are trying waaaaay too hard! She was totally like, “Here, f*gs, I guess this is what you want, right?”

HELP this is why music journalism is essential

God... the song has no bridge and final chorus, I’m just praying to God Gaga doesn’t fall into that trap again, I truly feel like Chromatica didn’t reach it’s full potential because so many tracks were cut short and didn’t get the chance to go anywhere special and truly fulfilling. It’s my only wish now, I’m scared...

i would laugh if SL got a little stream boost lol

"It's a woman's world", but the mv had to show women's bodies sexualised as much as possible and the song had to be written by WOMEN'S ABUSER

She is not obliged to work with him. Stop spreading misinformation and own up to the fact that your fave actually chose to work with him and let's pretend that it is true, do they have to work on a song about women's empowerment together?