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Katy Perry has insisted a controversial scene in her music video for ‘Woman’s World’ was ‘slapstick’ and ‘sarcastic’.
The 39-year-old singer returned to music earlier this week with her new track, but has been criticized for the sexualized nature of the video, particularly notable for the moment in which she and her dancers perform sexy choreography on a construction site before she is “crushed” by an anvil and returns in a new costume.
In a behind-the-scenes video shared to Instagram, Perry said of the moment, “We’re just having fun, being a little sarcastic about it. It’s very slapstick and very direct.”
‘With this set it’s like, “Oooh, we’re not about the male gaze, but we are about the male gaze.” And we’re really overdoing it and being too direct about it.’
The former American Idol judge explained that the “anvil” moment was meant as a “reset” to help her embrace the “idea of the divine feminine.”
Katy Perry has insisted a controversial scene in her music video for ‘Woman’s World’ was ‘slapstick’ and ‘sarcastic’
A moment in which she and her dancers perform a sexy choreography on a construction site before she is “crushed” by an anvil and returns in a new costume has been criticized
She added: ‘We wanted to make this video look like a super glossy pop star music video.’
Woman’s World is the first single from Perry’s upcoming album 143, due out September 20.
The title is a code word for I love you, which was often used in messages sent via pagers in the 1990s.
Katy said in a statement: “I wanted to create a bold, exuberant and celebratory dance-pop album with the symbolic 143-digit expression of love as the common thread throughout the message.”
It’s the star’s first album since 2020’s Smile, which failed to match the success of her previous records.
The Firework singer previously said the album will be “pure fun and joy.”
She told Access Hollywood: ‘I have yet to make a record that makes me feel truly happy and whole and full of love.
‘Sometimes artists say, “Oh, that’s boring, you want to make music from a difficult angle,” but actually it’s very happy and cheerful, pure fun and playful and festive and a party.’
Shortly after its release on Friday, Woman’s World was panned by critics as a “monumental catastrophe” that sounds like a “warmed-up” Lady Gaga.
Pitchfork gave it a particularly negative review, saying it sounded like Perry had learned more about feminism from a simple Google search.
“The pop singer’s comeback single defies all sense of taste and is too dispiriting to even come close to camp. It’s awful,” the outlet’s Shaad D’Souza wrote.
Perry was criticized for basing her song on Lady Gaga’s 2020 hit Stupid Love, resulting in what some said was a mediocre imitation.
Additionally, she was heavily criticized for her collaboration on Woman’s World with Dr. Luke, the music producer who was accused of sexual assault by Kesha in a lawsuit that was later dismissed. Dr. Luke has consistently denied the allegations.
According to the Pitchfork review, her choice to work with Dr. Luke on a feminist anthem was “genuinely twisted, but not surprising.”
The song also received a scathing one-star review from The Guardian, which described the song as “a warmed-over version of Gaga” and accused it of borrowing lyrics straight from Chappell Roan’s single Super Graphic Ultra Modern Girl.
“Woman’s World sounds like it was designed by a committee in a boardroom at Capitol Records for the sole purpose of synching up on RuPaul’s Drag Race and generating “you ate” comments from white gay men living in West Hollywood,” Alim Kheraj wrote in a scathing review for Dazed.
According to Mary Siroky’s review for Consequence Of Sound, the song, which features “lyrics that genuinely seemed AI-generated,” is “as flat as the bottom of the anvil Perry crushes halfway through the music video.”
