Of all the When it came to pop culture questions we thought we’d ask this summer, “What was Katy Perry thinking?” probably wasn’t at the top of anyone’s list. But here we are with “Woman’s World,” a fairly generic pop song about female empowerment. Nice idea, but rarely has anyone gotten the piece so wrong. Filled with cartoonish, fleshy pop pin-up imagery, the video was in keeping with Perry’s previous Day-Glo videos. But it was widely criticized for being heavy-handed, meaningless, stereotypically sexualized, or out of step with the way women present themselves on record and in videos. (Seeing Dr. Luke’s controversial name in the credits didn’t help, either.) In a video posted to her Instagram, Perry fired back, insisting that the whole thing was meant to be satire and “a little sarcastic” and “very slapstick” — even, apparently, the part where she shoves a gas pump up his behind.
If Perry intended to become principal to By entering the cultural conversation, the mission is, in a sense, accomplished. But the video also triggers something she and her team probably didn’t intend. It certainly recalls the starring role she played in one of the great pop moments in recent memory—that sublime period, roughly 2008 to 2013, when she, Lady Gaga, Rihanna, Kesha, and many others commandeered and reinvigorated pop, practically competing with each other to see who could come up with the wildest, most creative, most outrageous single. The need for attention felt in the video for “Woman’s World” (she practically screams, “I’m still relevant!”) is a jarring acknowledgement of how distant that period is, and how much pop and the world around Perry have changed.
But first, let’s relish this astonishing time. Maybe it was Barack Obama’s arrival in the White House, the relative youth and idealism he suggested; maybe it was the undeniably addictive pop hunger after a decade in which the exciting developments of hip-hop and a new onslaught of indie rock bands had dominated. In 2008, nothing had the club craze of Gaga’s debut, Fame; His one-two-three punch of “Poker Face,” “Paparazzi” and “Just Dance” recalled the heady days of Madonna’s conquest, the time when hooks mattered more than excess melisma. Two years later we had Perry Teenage dreamwhose first four tracks — the title track, “Last Friday Night (TGIF),” “California Gurls” and “Firework” — were hit parade hits in their own right.
For a few years, you could turn to whatever channel you used to listen to pop (SiriusXM’s two Top 40 channels, in my case) and hear one inventive, undeniable record after another: Gaga’s “Bad Romance,” her relentless “Telephone” with Beyonce, Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep” and other singles from 21. Even Gotye’s sulky “Somebody That I Used To Know” sounded like the commercial record Peter Gabriel refused to make after “Sledgehammer.” (“No, you didn’t have to stoop that low/Ask your friends to get your records and change your number” is a breakup song line only a record geek could love.) From the vocals to the production, the songs were authoritative and alive. Just like the Motown era, the heyday of bubblegum and disco, the synth-pop boom of the ’80s, and the boy band and Britney era of the late ’90s, we found ourselves once again in a moment where pop was utterly confident in its ability to intoxicate us all.
As much of this list shows, this moment was truly a woman’s world. Rihanna’s cascade of singles was itself a one-person array of sounds. The dizzying “Diamonds” sounded nothing like “Stay,” the era’s most powerful ballad, which in turn sounded nothing like the pumped-up “Don’t Stop the Music” or the staccato squeak of “S&M.” Each of these records was sonically and vocally different from the last, but there was never any doubt that they all came from planet Rihanna. (If she ever releases a true greatest hits compilation, it’ll be a killer.)
Rihanna also managed to sneak the line “chains and whips excite me” into the Top 40 with “S&M,” a risky move that wasn’t limited to that song. The hits of the era were particularly risqué. Kesha’s “Tik Tok” and “We R Who We R” and Perry’s “Last Friday Night (TGIF)”—recorded, rich-guy house parties—were unapologetically hedonistic and loved it. Carly Rae Jepsen’s 2012 hit “Call Me Maybe,” one of the last big salvos of the era, made no secret of her lust for the guy in the ripped jeans.
As anyone who studies pop knows, music is cyclical, so it was only a matter of time before this era began to fade. Let’s start with some clips from 2011 Born like this and until 2013 Pop artGaga’s music has been overrun by musical trinkets that have cluttered her records, and she briefly lost the plot. Perry’s 2013 single “Roar” seemed strained compared to her song’s effortless charm. Teenage dream era (although it works wonderfully in the musical & Juliettebased on the catalog of another contemporary master, Max Martin). Rihanna has been keeping a low musical profile for nearly a decade now; perhaps she realized a cultural moment was ending and headed for the exit. Hip-hop has reasserted its creative dominance, and the emergence of a new wave of female indie stars, particularly the Boygenius gang, has made much of what came before it suddenly seem bombastic and unsubtle.
It’s telling that one of the defining songs of summer 2024 has a shimmering beat, a winking lightness, and a cheesecake video. But it’s not “Woman’s World”—it’s Sabrina Carpenter’s “Espresso.” Carpenter’s song is more of a hypnotic dance track than one of those fully formed, modern songs from that earlier pop era. But the video doesn’t feel like it cost billions, another aspect of “Woman’s World” that feels out of place, and that means pop is in the hands of a new generation. Now let’s see if it can reach the transcendent heights of the era that, for a long time, made Katy Perry worth listening to.