It is no secret that this year is unlike any other in regard to music. This year already we have seen huge releases from more women in music than we can even count. Brat by Charli XCX is the unofficial album of the summer, Shakira’s Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran has been topping Latin album charts since its release in March, and Taylor Swift has extended her reach even further (if that was even possible) with The Tortured Poets Department. While there have been some smaller controversies around the sheer abundance of albums, variants, and marketing ploys that have dropped this year, rarely have there been controversies with the music itself. Katy Perry, in this regard, is at least introducing something new to the zeitgeist this year.
Katy teased a new single in June, with a small snippet of the song circulating online. The snippet was received with somewhat poor favour, leading to some of Katy’s fans to even claim the snippet was a decoy. Spoiler alert, it wasn’t. Alas, it was the beginning of Katy’s latest punt into the mainstream, one that has been plagued by some pretty concerning information. It was revealed that this song, later revealed to be called Woman’s World, was produced by Dr Luke.
Who is Dr Luke?
If you’re only learning about this man now, I envy you. Dr Luke is a fairly well-known record producer who has been largely active since the early 2000s. He is now probably best known for allegedly* sexually and emotionally abusing Kesha. He continues to work actively in the industry today and with some of your faves too. He has worked recently with Doja Cat, Kim Petras, and Nicki Minaj (though that may be less surprising when you learn who her husband is). Through years of lengthy battles with Luke and her record label, Kesha is finally free from her abuser and making music. This is something that should probably all be considered when you realise that Katy’s song, produced by an alleged rapist, is supposed to be a feminist anthem.
Music is not produced in an apolitical vacuum, and it is not only representative of the person singing on a recording. The people behind a release are also subject to scrutiny. If they profit from my streams I want to know whose rent I’m paying with each listen. Dr Luke, with his past behaviour, is not someone I want to support, even passively. It is also important to note that Katy Perry is an A-list, chart-topping artist. She will likely have a lot of control over who she wants to work with and a machine behind her to make it happen. Why then would she actively choose to work with someone who abused a peer of hers? She can’t feign ignorance as Perry was briefly involved in Kesha’s case against Dr Luke, meaning she worked with him on a song to uplift women, knowingly.
For a full timeline of Kesha’s legal battle read here.
A feminist anthem?
Katy Perry has had a bit of a track record of not being very good at mixing politics with her music. Ahead of her 2017 album Witness releasing, Perry described the album as ‘purposeful pop’. The album was widely received poorly, with only a very vague and diluted political subtext that was largely watered down with conflicting messaging. In this era, Katy released Bon Appetit with Migos, a group with a history of homophobia controversies. She followed it with Swish Swish, a song about beefing with Taylor Swift, which to be fair did start with Swift releasing Bad Blood about Perry a few years earlier.
Since Witness, Perry has struggled to release music to the same fanfare as her earlier work, and so this release feels like her way of saying ‘Hi world, I’m back’. I will also say that in the aftermath of Witness, and the following poorly received Smile, people were curious to see what the next move would be for Perry as an artist. After the mixed political messaging of Witness and the poor reception it received, I did not expect a song attempting to be feminist.
Katy Perry and Feminism
Katy has had a fairly watered-down feminist message for most of her career. She has touched on some feminist messaging before, but always to me in a way that feels akin to the way Disney touches on feminism. Through a massively apolitical and capitalist-friendly lens. Songs like Roar and Firework feel like they were designed to perforate the densest patches of commercial appeal. This is to the effect that any real meaningful message or perspective is reduced to ‘You’re a woman, yay!’.
This isn’t to say that Perry can’t express or embrace feminism as an artist, she has plenty of reason to. She is a very successful woman who, while not necessarily having the most mainstream success in recent years, had a record-breaking era with her album Teenage Dream. She has real potential to utilise her music to explore real feminist issues. It wouldn’t be a challenge to look at other examples, several of Katy’s peers have made music with feminist messaging and done so with success.
Perry has also had many opportunities to learn from her own past mistakes to understand how to have a nuanced and meaningful message about social justice. After her borderline homophobic song Ur So Gay to her cultural appropriation in videos like This Is How We Do and Dark Horse, Perry has had a few teachable moments.
So does Perry rectify her track record on Woman’s World?
Is It a Woman’s World?
Katy’s song, produced by alleged rapist Dr Luke, feels like it was written by someone who discovered feminism five minutes ago. It says nothing really at all, it attaches some attributes to ‘woman’, before repeating over and over that it’s a woman’s world. Unfortunately Katy, we haven’t quite smashed the patriarchy yet, so it is in fact not a woman’s world. We will be sure to girlboss harder in the future.
The lyrics aren’t offensive by any means, and that’s almost the problem. Because they don’t really say anything or speak about any specific issues, the only person who could even bother to take issue with this song would be someone with the fragile masculinity of Andrew Tate. Not all songs have to be divisive or potentially controversial, but I feel like in an era with so much feminist discourse readily accessible, a feminist song needs to actually say something. Beyond the issues people have with the producer of the song or the way it actually sounds, it is this, this totally apolitical girlboss-filtered feminism that makes me the most irked by this song.
Ironically, Cher released a song called Woman’s World 11 years ago, and it sounds a little more progressive in its feminism than Perry’s song. You can also check out Marina’s Man’s World for an even more progressively feminist song.
Boobs, Beer and Capitalism
The video for Woman’s World is another ratking of confused messaging and imagery. The video opens with Perry posed as Rosie the Riveter. The video leapfrogs off this image to show Perry cosplaying a collection of blue-collar jobs but with sexier costumes. She also emulates using a urinal and drinks ‘whiskey for women’. The video then continues with several shots of Katy’s breasts, doing a TikTok product placement, and pumping herself up with gas.
I want to be clear, there is nothing anti-feminist about a woman choosing to wear revealing outfits or dance suggestively if it is on her own terms. I have no doubts that Katy was active in wanting to wear revealing outfits in her video. I just question how this was done. The camera pans down to Katy’s chest a lot, and with the styling choices of the video I can’t help but feel like this video is like if a teenage boy directed a feminist music video. Because the actual lyrical messaging of the song was so shallow, the video was the only place Perry had left to say something, and she did I suppose.
She said that in a woman’s world, we will all be promoting products and furthering the reach of capitalism into art and culture. She also said we will all be drilling and welding in bikinis. Again, it feels like the feminist messaging of someone who learned what feminism is five minutes before filming the video.
Perry has since claimed the intention behind the video was to be a sarcastic comment on the male gaze. Its sheer deadpan delivery of the male gaze makes this somewhat hard to swallow.
So… What Now?
The jury seems to have already reached its verdict on Woman’s World. Most publications have already panned the song. The general public seems to be following close behind as more people listen to the song and sound off in the comments section. There are some who are drawing comparisons to Lady Gaga’s single Stupid Love in the rhythm of the song, drawing even more unimpressed eyes to Perry’s work. While I do hear these similarities myself, I feel the sheer tone-deafness of this song is the bigger fish to fry.
Katy will no doubt have some damage control to do if she wants to turn the song’s destiny around, but to me, the milk has already been spilt. She can’t take back working with Dr. Luke, she can’t rewrite lyrics and pretend this didn’t happen. Considering her previous album had essentially no media attention given to it at all, I suppose this negative attention may be somewhat of a positive outcome for Katy. For the first time in a long time, we’re all talking about her. Though between her and Jojo Siwa’s highly criticised behaviour and roll out of Karma this year, we can safely say that not all press is good press.