As Maria alluded to yesterday, Katy Perry is currently getting obliterated in the court of public opinion over her new single, “Woman’s World”. It’s her first song since 2021, the lead single of her upcoming album 143, and Pitchfork deemed it “a monumental catastrophe” and called Perry “pop music’s Jenna Maroney”. Pitchfork is not the alpha and omega of music criticism, but Shaad D’Souza’s review of “Woman’s World” is both concise and brutal, summing up the problems with Katy Perry’s re-launch as one of the millennium’s pop girlie queens.
The most serious charge against “Woman’s World” is that it’s hypocritical, as four of the six credited songwriters are dudes, and all four producers on the track are dudes, too. It’s a woman’s world, unless you’re Katy Perry making pop music, and then it is very much a man’s world. But more than that, one of the writer-producers on the track is Dr. Luke, whom Kesha has accused of sexual assault, among other things (Dr. Luke denied the allegations and the case was eventually settled). As D’Souza says in her review, if you’re going to be so nakedly hypocritical as to work with an accused abuser to make a feminist pop anthem, shouldn’t the song be GOOD?
Which is the real problem with “Woman’s World”—it sucks. Not to downplay the seriousness of supporting an accused abuser under the guise of making liberation pop, but the song just plain sucks. It’s so bad. It’s bad in 2024, it would have been bad in 2004, too. The video is also bad, not because Katy is wearing a bikini, but because the concept is basic to the point of not even trying. Check it out:
You know what that song honestly reminds me of? “This Is Not a Feminist Song” from SNL, a joke track that is eight entire years old and is actually a better song than “Woman’s World”. It’s musically better, thematically better, and satirically better. Oh yeah, Katy claims “Woman’s World” is satire, saying the video is supposed to be “on the nose”:
Yeah, no, I got that. It’s just bad, though. There’s nothing fresh or clever about this concept.
Also, the lyrics. “It’s a woman’s world/you’re lucky to be living in it”, bitch, we’re in a post-Roe world, it is demonstrably NOT a woman’s world when women’s bodily autonomy isn’t even secure. This is “live laugh love” as feminism, the kind of feminism that never did sh-t for anyone because vague platitudes are nothing, they’re not even band-aids because at least band-aids stop the bleeding. A more resonant lyric for now comes from Paris Paloma’s “Labour”: “24/7 baby machine/so he can live out his picket-fence dream”. THAT is the moment we’re living in, not this Hobby Lobby wall art bullsh-t.
But that’s not to say that pop girlies have to be blaring feminist screeds. There is a case to be made that Sabrina Carpenter’s mix of cheerful girliness and toppy sexiness is empowering, but no one is out here appointing Sabrina the head of the world feminist cabinet. And though Chappell Roan’s music and stagecraft is a celebration of queer iconography, first and foremost, her music is GOOD. Same with Beyoncé, she read us all on Black country music history, but COWBOY CARTER is, above all else, a f-ckin’ banger of an album.
If the music isn’t good, no amount of messaging or good intentions or positive vibes will help, and “Woman’s World” just isn’t good. There is also a sense that Katy’s heart isn’t even in this, because the concept and execution are so aggressively mediocre, and the Dr. Luke connection is egregious. No one is asking Katy Perry to make feminist anthems, if she just wants to sing songs that are just food metaphors for sex, that’s fine. As long as the music is good, songs about cupcakes that are really about f-cking are cool and groovy. The music just has to be good.
Here are Katy Perry and Orlando Bloom on vacation in Saint Tropez, probably not really caring what peons like us think of Katy’s new song.
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