Katy Perry’s ‘Ladies International’ Backlash and the End of 2010s Pop

of the whole The pop-culture question we thought we’d be asking this summer was, “What was Katy Perry thinking?” Certainly not on anyone’s record that long. However here we are with “Woman’s World”, a relatively generic pop banger about female empowerment. High quality concept, although rarely has anyone interpreted the room so badly. Filled with cartoonish, muscular pop-pinup imagery, the video was in the layout of Perry’s previous, date-glo clips. However, it was largely vandalized for being heavy-handed, meaningless, stereotypically sexual, or not in line with the way women presented themselves on records and in films. (See that controversial Dr. Luke name in the credits doesn’t even support that.) In a video posted to her Instagram, Perry hit back, insisting that the whole thing was intended as satire and “a little sarcastic” and “very It was just a slap. ” – even, it seems, like the time she stuck a gasoline pump up her butt.

If Perry intends to mainline Self In cultural dialogue, the project rather achieved. However this video also triggered something that he and his team definitely did not intend. It certainly recalls the lead-character role she played in one of the most laudable pop moments of recent memory – that chic period, circa 2008 to 2013, when she, Girl Gaga, Rihanna, Kesha and many others commanded and revitalized pop, There are competitions with almost every option to see who can catch the wildest, most inventive and jacked-up bachelor. The longing for the idea felt in the “Woman’s World” video (it almost screams: “I’m still relevant!”) is a startling acknowledgment of how far gone that period is now and the area around pop and Perry. How much progress has been made?

First, though, let’s once again enjoy just how amazing that era was. Perhaps it was Barack Obama’s arrival in a white area and his relative early life and path of idealism; Perhaps it was a desire for undeniably addictive pop after a decade when hip-hop was dominated by thrilling trends and a pristine onslaught of indie rock acts. Again in 2008, played a minor role in Gaga’s first membership, Situation; Its one-two-three punch of “Poker Face,” “Paparazzi,” and “Just Dance” brought to mind the heady date of Madonna’s triumph, The time when the importance of the hook outweighed the melisma overkill. Two years later, we were given Perry junior dreamThe first four tracks of which – the eponymous song, “Last Friday Night (TGIF),” “California Girls” and “Firework” – were a crash parade in themselves.

For a few years, you would have to go to any outlet to listen to pop (in my case, SiriusXM’s two Lead 40 channels) and later listen to a simple and straightforward file: Gaga’s “Bad Romance,” her and Beyoncé’s Incredible. “Telephone”, Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep” and alternate singles 21, Even Gotye’s angsty “Somebody That I Used to Know” sounds like the economic file that Peter Gabriel later refused to keep with “Sledgehammer.” (“No, you didn’t have to stoop that low/Tell your friends to collect their records and then change your number” is a breakup-song layout that any file expert might like.) From making a song to producing Till then, the songs were commanding and alive, Just as in the high Motown era, the peak of bubblegum and disco, the synth-pop boom of the 1980s, and the boy-band and Britney eras of the late 1990s, we once again find ourselves in an hour when pop has us all. Felt completely confident in his talent to intoxicate.

According to most record productions, that hour was actually a girl’s international. Rihanna’s cascade of singles was Pitch’s own one-man array. The skyscraping “Diamonds” didn’t pitch like all the rest, as did “Stay,” the most dynamic energy song to date, which in turn didn’t pitch like all the rest, like the pumped-up “Don’t Stop Them.” Music” or the stuttering grind of “S&M.” Each type of information was already different sonically and verbally, but you never suspected they all emanated from planet Rihanna. (If and when she got the right releases a greatest hits compilation of sorts, it gets killer.)

Rihanna’s “S&M” even managed to slide the words “chains and whips excite me” into the lead 40, a risky move that’s no longer limited to that song. The hits on that date were particularly brutal. Kesha’s “Tik Tok” and “We Are Who We Are” and Perry’s “Last Friday Night (TGIF)”—occurrences at rich people’s properties, though on the record—that were fearlessly hedonistic and loving it. Were. Carly Rae Jepsen’s 2012 mishap “Call Me Maybe,” one of the most admirable renditions to that date, couldn’t hide her desire for a partner in ripped jeans.

As anyone who researches pop knows, the song is cyclical, so it was only a matter of date before the ages began to spread. Launch with parts from 2011 born this way and in 2013 artpop, Gaga’s song overtook the musical trope that cluttered her information, and she briefly deviated from the plot. Perry’s 2013 single “Roar” felt strained compared to her easy charm junior dream age (despite the fact that it actually works great in music and juliet, based entirely on the catalog of another recent master, Max Martin). Rihanna has been musically underrated for the past decade or so; Perhaps she realized that a cultural hour was about to end and headed out. Hip-hop has again asserted its creative dominance, and the emergence of a pristine stream of female indie stars, notably the Boygenius gang, has made everything that came before it feel at once bombastic and obscure.

It’s telling that perhaps the hottest songs of summer 2024 have a shimmering beat, a winking lightness, and a cheesy video. Although this is no longer “Women’s World” – it is Sabrina Chippy’s “Espresso”. Chippy’s song is more of a hypnotic dance exercise than the most perfectly shaped, modern-brill-construction songs of that bygone pop era. However, the video doesn’t really feel like it’s worth billions, any other aspect of “Women’s World” feels irrelevant, and that means pop is in the arms of an ancient year. Now let’s see if it can attain that sublime height of age, which for a long hour propelled Katy Perry to any personal significance.