Katy Perry's Fall Off Needs to be Studied

===================================

Follow your melon:

All editing by Austen unless there's another credit above.

[TheBluwee]

You could say her career was hot & now it's cold

[james-m-]

This is karma for what she’s done to the past 15 years of retail workers

[BigOwl]

Katy Perry went from being the second person in history to having 5 billboard hot 100 number one songs on a single album (after MJ), to not even being able to reach the top 60 with her new song. That is crazy

[mikeydflyingtoaster]

This feels like the absolute epitome of trying to please everyone, inevitably pleasing no one

[highro]

What she really did was waste her “low point” phase in her career.
Lady Gaga is a PERFECT example of how to navigate this phase. She was at the height of her career (Born This Way) and within like a year was at her lowest (ARTPOP). But she took the criticism, channeled that into her work & her vocals, did a lot of small performances and tributes plus some acting roles but mainly stayed out of the spotlight. But when she came back, she hit with Joanne and changed her whole career trajectory with A Star is Born.
Seeing her go from the biggest thing on earth, falling off & slowly but surely rise back up to perform at the Super Bowl and Coachella than win an Oscar was satisfying. You rooted for her, you saw her fall than redefine what the whole world thought of her and earn her respect.
Katy Perry just feels like she’s trying to pick up right after Prism and negate Witness & Smile. Like she didn’t change anything, she’s still working with Dr.Luke and she never really went anywhere, she just lost popularity. I mean Lady Gaga went MIA for a good year before popping back up in AHS: Hotel but Perry was on American Idol & doing DoorDash commercials. So there’s no comeback to root for, it’s just like ohh she’s releasing another album & it’s not good.
I view her winning the Vanguard Award as being a final goodbye & Thank you for your contribution to Pop but your era has ended.

[jfh.]

As someone who has worked in a grocery store since 2009, I’d be fine never having another Katy Perry song get popular and play in retail stores. I have been hearing at least a couple Katy Perry songs almost every working day for 15 years. Her entire discography sounds like it was made specifically to play in grocery stores almost like she created the genre.

[HunterBlairAmbrose]

I think it's a broader conversation of the era of overly palatable, safe, non descript dance pop music being most certainly on its way out.

[drhall]

Fantano's shirt looking like he should be holding a dead fish on a Tinder profile.

[ThomasWillett]

In fairness, I've felt this way about some of Katy Perry's bigger hits over the years. It baffles me how "Roar" is such a big deal because there's not one organic thought in the whole thing. Every line feels stolen by motivational posters and I can't buy into the emotions. She has proven to do better than this, but I think that was a sign of her just settling for absolute banality. We just were accepting of it back then.

[NegaLomie]

YouTuber Todd In the Shadows did a really interesting and insightful video about Witness. Something he talked about was the idea of the “delayed flop”; anything she released after Teenage Dream would have been successful, but Prism wasn’t that great. It sold and got radio play, sure, but it could be said that her decline started with that album and Witness was just the last nail in the coffin of her cultural relevance.

[dellarae]

Dr. Luke and Trisha on the same song about feminism is pretty hilarious

[Arcslogger]

One thing worth mentioning is that Katy has been a judge on American Idol for a while now, which is not conducive to making music suitable for playing anywhere outside of a shopping mall. I have to imagine that her presence there has moved her fan base to be mostly middle aged moms and young kids.

[davidkonevky]

The only thing worse than working with Dr Luke, is working with Dr Luke only for the song to be mid at best

[DiegoMartinezDP]

It’s not a sudden downturn. It’s gone out since “Witness”. And that was in 2017.

She’s been done.

[gars]

Katy Perry reminds me of how a lot of hair metal bands went from overproduced in the 80s to sounding like crappy garage bands in the 2000s. Producers and musicians are so important.

[Peter-zpyq]

I just think she is completely divorced from the cultures and references she thinks she’s playing with. Despite tapping into some vague “divine feminine” ideal, her feminism is stuck in the past and the Dr. Luke association just makes it 10x worse. And then the whole futurism thing is just… a shiny aesthetic with no substance. It’s all shallow and surface and trendy but with no care about understanding why it’s trendy. It’s like she’s lost and is playing a caricature of her past. I think she thinks she’s doing satire, but if so it’s really not translating.

[jeremytewari]

Collaborating with Dr Luke is honestly just such an unacceptable decision on so many fronts that it’s honestly cost me most of my remaining respect for Katy

[PatrickHogan]

The smartest thing Katy Perry could have done for this album cycle would have been leaning into the emo revival. Made One of the Boys Part 2, had features like Avril and Olivia Rodrigo on it, had a bunch of guitar-driven tracks and piano ballads. People would have loved it.

[whytho]

I saw Katy in Vegas near the end of her residency and she seemed completely over it. The energy was low asf and it felt like she was just going through the motions. I figured it was because she’d been doing the residency for some years when I saw her but seeing as how she’s approaching her new album with the same lack of energy and creativity, that doesn’t seem to be the case.

[MrSensical]

You can't just say "the weird sudden spiral of Katy Perry's career we're currently witnessing" when you accidentally namedropped the record from 7 years ago that led to this trainwreck