A woman so famous people get angry that she isn’t anymore
Browse demon-dwelling site X for opinions on the singer and you’ll invariably receive posts broadly categorisable into the same three themes: she is irrelevant, she is embarrassing, and (what makes all of this even worse) she used to be good. There’s sometimes a tone of pity, often not: Katy Perry in 2025 really does not find herself the recipient of recent online efforts to #BeKind. Instead, she provides a fascinating insight into the psychology of today’s music stan culture; Perry provokes anger, Perry provokes pity, Perry provokes interest. Why?
First, some more context – famed Californian Katheryn Hudson was born in 1984 to strict Pentecostal pastors who filled the home with gospel music. Naturally, the makings of the woman who would go on to pen “Peacock” (2010): notable lyrics include, “I wanna see your peacock, cock, cock”.
Unsurprisingly, Perry’s first venture into the musical world was a gospel album – 2001’s Katy Hudson (only halfway to the Katy Perry we know today). There’s not much to be said about the music itself, but a fascinating pastime is to read the YouTube comments under songs uploaded from this era – underneath an audio of “Faith Won’t Fail”, such comments include:
“For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world but loses his own soul?” – wrote user @LC-fq4cv, profoundly, 8 years ago.
“I wish your faith didn’t fail Katy!” says @LukeKorns, a clever reference to the lyrics of “Faith Won’t Fail”.
Most poignantly of all, we have @DonDraperism expressing his hope for Perry to return to her faith, “I think we’ve all strayed at times for money and acceptance”.
Money and acceptance... this brings us neatly onto an important theme throughout Perry’s career and public perception. That of “selling out,” pastiching other (more commercially successful) artists. This year she will embark on the Lifetimes tour, a celebration of her entire catalogue, quite clearly copied from Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour. This comes after releasing her 2024 album, 143, and single “Woman’s World” which got, fair to say, eviscerated (source: everyone and everything).
So, what happened in-between her Pentecostal God-rock beginnings and these 2024 offerings of critically panned power pop? A hugely successful music career, that’s what!
Back to the Before Times (pre-’irrelevance’): “I Kissed a Girl” marked the start of Perry’s commercial breakthrough to the mainstream and began her path to genuine global stardom. It was revolutionary stuff for 2009, you have to assume.
Then, 2010’s iconic and unironically era-defining Teenage Dream spawned such huge commercial success that to list its accolades feels slightly redundant. Instead, the singles – “Firework”, “California Gurls”, “Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.)”, “The One That Got Away”. All from ONE album! Insanity!
It’s here, too, with Teenage Dream’s unbelievable success, that lies Perry’s fatal flaw: she was perhaps too successful. An industrial-scale pop titan phase no-one could ever hope to replicate. How was she ever meant to continue in such a vein? And so, Teenage Dream laid the phenomenal foundations for the makings of the greatest “flop” era in popular music history, 2017’s Witness.
Witness is many things – beloved, it is not. An album so universally derided it arguably led to the creation of the very term “flop era,”Witness marked the beginning of the end for Perry’s reign over the pop music industry. Follow-up album Smile (2020) was even less successful, in that it didn’t even get to generate any fun phrases for the Stan Twitter lexicon. The next offering was 2024’s previously discussed 143.
And so, we return to Perry in 2025 – an icon, but a disrespected one, with Forbes articles dedicated to her downfall. What is the consistent theme throughout this all, the longstanding driver of Perry’s career and fame? It’s fascination, arguably. A fascination with her at her “best” – a gifted songwriter with the capacity to pen 9 number one singles; and a morbid fascination with her at her “worst” – a relic of a bygone era, desperate to stay relevant, desperate to stay loved.
Ironically, this is what no-one can deny her – her relevance. Perry is case study, Perry is history, Perry is fable. She has remained firmly in the public consciousness, regardless of her critical or commercial success. Is this not what celebrity is, in the social media era? A template for memes? A subject for mean-spirited clickbait articles? Really, Katy Perry is the same as she always has been: famous. In the end, it’s not her fault that the culture decided that was no longer good enough.
“Katy Perry toronto” by ‘HARHANJAM’ is licensed under CC BY 2.0.