Katy Perry Insists Her Woman’s World Music Video Was ‘Satire,’ But Fans Aren’t Buying It

Katy Perry seems to be attempting damage control after her latest music video was slammed across the internet.

On Friday, the pop star shared the official video for her song Woman’s World, the lead single from her forthcoming album, 143.

Fans on X (formerly Twitter) and music critics quickly voiced their dissatisfaction with the ostensibly feminist anthem.

The Guardian’s Laura Snapes called the song “garbage” that “made me feel stupider every sorry time I listened to it.” At Pitchfork, Shaad D’Souza called the tune “unfathomably tepid, irritating at best”. And Vulture’s Justin Curto wrote that Woman’s World is “stuck in vague feminist empowerment, which may have worked in 2014 but falls short in 2024”.

More to the point, many people blasted Katy for choosing to reunite with songwriter and producer Dr. Luke, whom pop star Kesha Sebert accused of sexual assault in a high-profile 2014 lawsuit.

The music producer, whose legal name is Łukasz Sebastian Gottwald, has always denied the allegations and countersued Kesha for defamation. The litigation was ultimately settled in June 2023 after a legal battle lasting nearly a decade.

On Saturday, Katy appeared to respond to this criticism by indicating that the video was meant to be satirical.

“You can do anything! Even satire!” she wrote on X, alongside a pre-recorded clip from the set of the Woman’s World video, where she offers some thoughts about her intentions behind the clip.

“We’re kind of just having fun, being a bit sarcastic with it,” she said. “It’s very slapstick, and very on the nose.”

“With this set, it’s like, ‘Ooh, we’re not about the male gaze, but we really are about the male gaze,’” she went on.

“And we’re really overplaying it and on the nose, because I’m about to get smashed, which is like a reset ― a reset for me, and a reset for my idea of ‘feminine divine,’ and it’s a whole different world we go to after this.”

Halfway through the Woman’s World video, Katy is, indeed, “smashed” flat by a giant anvil, after which she gets up in a new location and the song continues.

Still, not everyone was clear on what exactly was being satirised, or what Katy was actually trying to say with the song and video.

Watch Katy Perry’s Woman’s World music video in full below: