OPINION One of Katy Perry’s last Billboard number-ones was Roar , her eye-of-the-tiger empowerment anthem from 2013. The song found new life three years later when Perry performed it at the Democratic National Convention and lent it to Hillary Clinton for a campaign-closing ad that aligned values like respect and courage with the song’s mad-as-hell feminism: “Get ready ‘cause I’ve had enough.” These days, Roar and other Perry hits play like artefacts of the era of hope-and-change politics and “girlboss” feminism - wide-eyed, blandly encouraging, innocuous.
Maybe that’s why Woman’s World , the first single off Perry’s new album 143 , landed earlier this year like a dispatch from a parallel universe. Over synthesised disco pop, Perry lays out a blueprint for the “feminine divine” while trying to tap the sexy confidence of a Maybelline ad. In her conception, women are flowers, mothers, superheroes, sisters, “confident”, “heaven-sent”, “so intelligent” - anything but complicated.
READ MORE: Katy Perry reveals why she and Orlando Bloom briefly split back in 2017 ..
