Almost as soon as the pop star Katy Perry had returned from a very brief trip to space with a group hosted by Jeff Bezos’ fiancée, Lauren Sánchez, the derisive comments started.
In Slate, Heather Schwedel wrote: “It was one thing to understand intellectually that Katy Perry, Gayle King, and Lauren Sánchez’s much hyped ‘all-female’ trip to space aboard a Blue Origin rocket would in actuality only be an underwhelming 11 minutes long. But it was another to watch it play out over a multihour, breathless livestream that culminated with Perry kissing the Earth like a soldier returning from war and not a multimillionaire returning from the world’s shortest influencer trip.”
Ellen Cushing, writing for The Atlantic, proclaimed Ms. Perry to be the “perfect pop star for a dumb stunt.” Various celebrities, like the actress Olivia Wilde and the model Emily Ratajkowski, criticized Ms. Perry and the Blue Origin flight.
Even the X account for Wendy’s came after Ms. Perry on Tuesday in a series of posts (among them: “can we send her back”). On its face, this seemed a little strange. Why was a fast-food chain offering sideline snark about a pop star heading into space?
But a decade-plus after the songwriter Linda Perry described Ms. Perry’s music as microwave popcorn, one could be forgiven for wondering if the posts from Wendy’s were an erstwhile purveyor of empty calories picking a fight with another.
Ms. Perry, after all, is the singer who in her 2010 “California Gurls” video, wore a bra made to look like giant cupcakes that ultimately shot out whipped cream. (The point was contained in the lyrics: “we’ll melt your Popsicle.”)
Soon after, Ms. Perry released the single “Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F),” an anthem about the joy of waking up after a weekend bender.
“There’s a stranger in my bed,” she sang. “There’s a pounding in my head. Glitter all over the room. Pink flamingos in the pool.”
The comedian and actor Rob Delaney penned a humor piece for Vice about the song, in which he responded to the lyric “is this a hickey or a bruise” by saying: “Hold up! There’s a huge difference,” and asked, “did the aforementioned ‘stranger’ punch you in the neck?”
Ms. Perry, for what it’s worth, has often championed other artists over the years. They have often declined to return the favor.
Take, for example, Robyn, the Scandinavian high priestess of plaintive dance-pop, who opened for Ms. Perry on her 2011 tour promoting “Last Friday Night” and “California Gurls.”
When Time Out New York asked Robyn whether she was a fan of Ms. Perry’s, she laughed and said: “You know what? I have to go now.”
Of course, there is room for artists to age and grow. (Compare, for example, the Beyoncé of Destiny’s Child with the Beyoncé of “Lemonade,” “Renaissance” and “Cowboy Carter.”)
But Ms. Perry’s attempts at stretching artistically have mostly involved aping the work of other more acclaimed women in music and getting clocked for it.
In his review of Ms. Perry’s 2019 song “Never Really Over,” the Times music critic Jon Caramanica wrote: “A new Billie Eilish song from Katy Perry. A new Norwegianish Spotifycore song from Katy Perry. A new Haim song from Katy Perry. A new Pink song from Katy Perry. A new bubble-pop Taylor Swift song from Katy Perry. A new Mumford & Sons song from Katy Perry. A new Abba song from Katy Perry.”
And in fact, “Never Really Over” borrowed so heavily from a 2017 song called “Love You Like That,” by the Norwegian artist Dagny, that Dagny ended up with a writing credit on the song.
Promoting the single at an event in Shanghai, she stood there in her pleated metallic dress in front of a wind machine that turned her giant blond extensions into a moving object. Just as Madonna had stood there for the Brit Awards in 1995 in her pleated silver dress in front of a wind machine that turned her giant blond extensions into a moving object.
In 2024, Ms. Perry was back with a new album, “143,” whose title, she said, represented her “angel number.”
The first single was “Woman’s World,” and the video for it featured Ms. Perry done up in a red and white bandanna like Rosie the Riveter.
Then, the camera panned back and showed her wearing Daisy Dukes and an American flag bikini top that barely concealed her breasts.
The lyrics discussed how she felt: “Sexy, confident, so intelligent.”
To prove the point, Ms. Perry pours whiskey into her mouth, letting it spill all over herself.
The song was co-written and co-produced by the Swedish super-producer Lukasz Gottwald, better known as Dr. Luke, who in 2014 was accused by the pop singer Kesha of sexual misconduct. Over the next nine years, Kesha and Dr. Luke traded lawsuits before settling their claims out of court.
The reviews for “143” were withering. On Metacritic, it has a rating of 37 out of 100, making it the site’s lowest-rated album since 2011 and the worst-reviewed album by a woman in the site’s 24-year history.
Rich Juzwiak, writing for Pitchfork, said the “material here is so devoid of anything distinguishing that it makes one suspicious it’s a troll or cynical attempt for the campy realm of so bad it’s good.”
The Times devoted an entire podcast to the question of whether the album was “really that bad.” (The answer, the critic Lindsay Zoladz said, was “complicated.” This still was not exactly a compliment.)
So the sight of Ms. Perry levitating inside a phallic rocket as she held onto a daisy — a tribute to her daughter, Daisy, that she said in interviews she chose to bring with her because the flowers are often described as “weeds” because they are really resilient — was perfectly in keeping with the image she had designed for herself.
The event was trumpeted as having something vaguely to do with feminism, but in one of the numerous criticisms delivered by celebrities after the spaceflight, Ms. Wilde summed up the experience succinctly on Instagram, sharing a photo of Ms. Perry with the flower along with the message, “Billion dollars bought some good memes, I guess.”
Jacob Bernstein reports on power and privilege for the Style section.
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