Who is Katy Perry ? As she reminded people in the initial run-up to her comeback single “Woman’s World,” where she dusted off her six RIAA-bestowed Diamond awards, she’s one of the biggest-selling pop stars of the millennium, with fizzy, playful tracks like “California Gurls” and strident empowerment anthems like “Firework” racking up millions of sales. She’s judged wannabes on American Idol ; she’s headlined the Super Bowl halftime show; she’s celebrated a king’s coronation. She’s done it all, backwards and in heels.
Who Katy Perry might be in 2024, though, is another question entirely —and one that she tries to answer on her sixth full-length, 143 . Leaving Idol behind, which she did in May, implied that she wants to return to being a full-time pop monarch. But the landscape she’s returning to isn’t one easily swayed by cotton-candy bikinis and winking allusions to cherry Chapstick.
Thanks to the waning influence of radio, stardom even at the level of Perry’s doesn’t guarantee singles-chart success, while the maximalist productions that she used to lord over feel as dated as a Vine. Perry seems aware of her unmoored state on 143 , but that doesn’t stop her from trying to reclaim the cultural spot that she had in in the late ‘00s and early ‘10s through tricks — cheap if hooky affirmations, broad appeals to the male gaze — that worked back then. Those tricks include rekindling her relationship with Lukasz “Dr.
Luke” Gottwald ,.