Where did it all go wrong for Katy Perry?

Katy Perry has always been a little weird. Not Lady Gaga weird. Not eating live bats on stage weird. But still… weird. Weird like a looney toon that shags. She had sentient dancing sharks as part of her Superbowl halftime show and shot whipped cream out of her bikini top at Snoop Dogg in her music video; she wrote a song that opens, “do you ever feel like a plastic bag?” and it was, somehow, a sparkling slice of pop perfection that endures 15 years later.

She has the air of someone who was never taught the full choreography, always trying to surreptitiously check if she’s doing it right – and, when she realises she’s not, flails kookily like, well, a plastic bag whipped through the air by a gently mocking breeze.

A goof, then. A sexy silly sausage with bona fide bangers to back it all up. But lately, everyone’s been pretty down on Perry. She’s gone from megawatt megastar to easy punchline and as her “absolutely bonkers” Lifetimes tour rolled into London last night complete with mad costumes, complex storylines and a 747 hold’s worth of baggage, we are simply forced to ask: Katy Perry, where did it all go wrong? 

The more accurate question might be how did it ever go right? Born Katheryn Hudson, Perry was raised ultra-religious: her family outings were to picket Madonna concerts, and Lucky Charms cereal was banned because “Lucky” bore too close a resemblance to “Lucifer”. At 17 she recorded a gospel album. It sold 200 copies and her burgeoning label deals fell apart; a poppier album she’d been working on was shelved. By the time she was 22, Katheryn Hudson seemed washed up, languishing on the open mic circuit.

But jump cut to two years later and, with a name-change, she ricocheted onto the global stage with “I Kissed a Girl”, kicking off a run of smashes that few artists have rivalled since. From 2008 to 2013, Katy Perry could barely put a foot wrong musically, and her 2010 song “Teenage Dream” remains one of the greatest pop songs of the 21st century. Sure, there were missteps – a little case of cultural appropriation here, an accusation of queer-baiting there – but most of it seemed to be chalked up to the cartoonish persona Perry had cultivated, nothing a little vamping to camera couldn’t do away with. “A lot of mistakes I’ve made in the past have been juvenile lack of education,” Perry herself said in 2020.

But if Perry was a runaway train of success, these cultural faux pas were the first screws rattling loose and signals ahead were on the verge of failing. In 2010, she married Russell Brand, the verbose comedian turned spiritual leader who is currently awaiting trial for one count of rape, one count of indecent assault, one count of oral rape and two counts of sexual assault (he denies the allegations). Brand ended their marriage via text message as Perry was about to go on stage, devastatingly captured in her 2012 documentary Part of Me. Her heartbroken sobs are replaced by a dazzling smile as she’s shot on stage, thousands of fans none the wiser.

Musically, the wheels were coming off too. In 2017 she pivoted to activism, Witness hailing an era of “purposeful pop” as heralded by “Chained to the Rhythm”, a reaction to Donald Trump’s first election to the post of President. It was… OK. Already people were a little done with the earnest Katy Perry – a four-day livestream was roundly mocked as she pottered about, had therapy live, spoke with activists and generally made a spectacle out of not very much substance.

Then came Smile in 2020, a perfectly fine album that made zero impact. And then came last year’s 143, which perhaps Perry wishes now had made zero impact: in fact it had the power of a meteor strike in destroying any lingering hope that the Perry who made “Teenage Dream” might still have it in her. The first single was the egregious “Woman’s World”, a supposedly feminist anthem that not only sounded outdated but was also rooted in deeply out of touch assertions about women’s rights (singing “It’s a woman’s world and you’re lucky to be living in it” as abortion rights are walked back? OK!).

It was also co-written by a man who had spent nine years locked in a court battle over allegations of infliction of emotional distress, sex-based hate crimes and employment discrimination (Dr Luke and Kesha reached a settlement in 2023). At its absolute best, 143 is a forgettable album. It was roundly slammed by critics and fans alike.

What do you do when the album you worked long and hard on is so widely reviled? You go to space for 10 minutes, of course. And if you go into space, do you try to be normal about it? Or do you act like you have been elected ambassador for Earth, sing “It’s A Wonderful World” to the cosmos, brandish a daisy and then say stuff like, “I feel super connected to love, so connected to love” as a result? That love connection really faltered as she shortly after broke up with long-term partner Orlando Bloom and has since been spotted canoodling with – checks notes – former Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau.

At this point, making fun of Perry’s strange pivots, increasingly dated musical output and head-in-the-clouds activism is such low-hanging fruit that you might as well just not. There’s not much you can say at this point. So you know what, Katy Perry, crack on. Snog the Canadian politician. Pop back into space. Do a four-day livestream for no obvious reason. Hang upside down for half the batshit stage show! Have the weird fan interactions on stage, sing the terrible songs, go on with your life imagining that everyone is having the perfectly nice time that you are. Whatever. It’s a Katy Perry World and she’s lucky to be living in it.