Katy Perry defends her latest music video as the singer calls the sexualized scenes “slapstick”

By Jason Chester for MailOnline

10:48 July 14, 2024, updated 10:51 July 14, 2024

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Katy Perry has insisted that a controversial scene in her music video for ‘Woman’s World’ was meant to be ‘slapstick’ and ‘sarcastic’.

The 39-year-old singer returned to music with her new song earlier this week, but was criticized for the sexualized nature of the video, particularly a moment in which she and her dancers perform sexy choreography on a construction site before she is “smashed” by an anvil and returns in a new costume.

In a behind-the-scenes video shared on Instagram, Perry said of the moment: “We’re just having fun and being a little sarcastic about it. It’s very slapstick and very obvious.”

“With this set, it’s like, ‘Oooh, we’re not about the male gaze, but we’re really about the male gaze.’ And we really exaggerate it and take it to the extreme.”

The former American Idol judge explained that the anvil moment was intended as a “reboot” to help her embrace the “idea of ​​the feminine divine.”

She added: “We wanted to open this video to look like a super glossy pop star video.”

“Woman’s World” is the first single from Perry’s upcoming album “143,” which will be released on September 20th.

The title is a code for “I love you,” which was commonly used in pager messages in the 1990s.

Katy said in a statement: “I wanted to create a bold, exuberant and celebratory dance-pop album whose central message is the number 143, which symbolizes the symbolic expression of love.”

It will be the star’s first album since 2020’s “Smile,” which failed to match the success of her previous records.

The Firework singer had previously stated that the album would be “pure joy and fun”.

She told Access Hollywood: “I just need to make one more record that makes me feel truly happy, complete and full of love.”

“Sometimes artists say, ‘Oh, this is boring, you want to make music from a harder perspective,’ but in reality it’s very happy and cheerful, like pure joy and fun and playful and celebratory and a party.”

Shortly after its release on Friday, “Woman’s World” was panned by critics as a “monumental disaster” that sounded like a “warmed-up” Lady Gaga.

The film received a particularly harsh review from Pitchfork, which said it sounded like Perry learned about feminism from a simple Google search.

“The pop singer’s comeback single defies all taste and is too dispiriting to even come close to being considered cheesy. It’s miserable,” wrote the channel’s Shaad D’Souza.

Perry was criticized for allegedly basing her song on Lady Gaga’s 2020 hit “Stupid Love,” which some called a lackluster imitation.

In addition, she was heavily criticized for working on Woman’s World with Dr. Luke, the music producer whom Kesha accused of sexual harassment in a later dismissed lawsuit. Dr. Luke has always denied the allegations.

The Pitchfork review noted that her decision to work with Dr. Luke on a feminist anthem was “frankly twisted, if not surprising.”

The song also received a scathing one-star review from the Guardian, which described the song as “reheated Gaga” and accused it of blatant borrowings 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 aim was to get a sync on RuPaul’s Drag Race and get comments like ‘you ate’ from white gay men in West Hollywood,” wrote Alim Kheraj in a scathing review for Dazed.

With “lyrics that genuinely feel like they were generated by artificial intelligence,” the song falls “as flat as the bottom of the anvil that crushes Perry in the middle of the music video,” says Mary Siroky’s review for Consequence Of Sound.