Katy Perry took fans behind the scenes of the music video for her comeback single Woman’s World, which was mauled by critics.
The 39-year-old singer took to Instagram on Saturday to offer an inside look at the project, sharing a series of female empowerment phrases to inspire her fans.
‘Girlboss s***’, ‘You go girl,’ and ‘You were born to shine,’ were shouted by the superstar before revealing the meaning of the scene being filmed.
‘We’re not about the male gaze, but we really are about the male gaze,’ she stated while looking into the camera. ‘We’re kind of just having fun, being a bit sarcastic with it, it’s very slapstick and very on the nose.’
She captioned the BTS clip, ‘YOU CAN DO ANYTHING! EVEN SATIRE!’
‘We wanted to open this video making it look like a super high-gloss pop star video,’ she added at the end of the clip. ‘And that’s what it is.’
The track is the lead single from her upcoming sixth studio album, 143, set to release on September 20.
Shortly after its release on Friday, Woman’s World was panned by the critics as a ‘monumental catastrophe’ that sounds like a ‘reheated’ Lady Gaga.
It received a particularly harsh review from Pitchfork, which suggested it sounded like Katy had learned about feminism from a basic Google search.
‘Defying all sense of taste, the pop singer’s comeback single is too dispiriting to even approach camp. It’s abysmal,’ wrote the outlet’s Shaad D’Souza.
Katy faced criticism for allegedly modeling her song after Lady Gaga’s 2020 hit Stupid Love, resulting in what some called a lackluster imitation.
Additionally, she was heavily criticized for collaborating on Woman’s World with Dr. Luke, the music producer accused of sexual assault by Kesha in a lawsuit that was later dismissed. Dr. Luke has consistently denied the allegations.
The Pitchfork review noted that Katy’s choice to work with Dr. Luke on a feminist anthem was ‘sincerely twisted, if unsurprising.’
The song also received a scathing one-star review from The Guardian, which described the song as ‘reheated Gaga’ and accused it of blatantly borrowing 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 whose sole objective was a sync on RuPaul’s Drag Race and generating comments of “you ate” from white gays living in West Hollywood,’ wrote Alim Kheraj in a scalding review for Dazed.
With ‘lyrics that genuinely felt AI generated,’ the song ‘falls as flat as the bottom of the anvil that crushes Perry halfway through the music video,’ according to Mary Siroky’s review for Consequence Of Sound.
Meanwhile, Katy has described the song as ‘the first contribution I have given since becoming a mother and since feeling really connected to my feminine divine.’
