Katy Perry's 'Woman's World' and late 2010s pop

Of all the pop culture questions we thought we'd be asking this summer, “What was Katy Perry thinking?” probably wasn't high on anyone's list. But here we are with “Woman's World,” a pretty generic pop banger about female empowerment. Nice idea, but rarely has anyone read the room so wrong. Filled with cartoonish, meaty pop-pinup imagery, the video was in line with Perry's previous Day-Glo clips. But that was it widely wild because they are heavy, empty of meaning, stereotypical sexual relations or not in keeping with the way women are presented in records and videos. (Seeing Dr. Luke's controversial name in the credits didn't help, either.) In a video posted to her Instagram, Perry pushed back, insisting the whole thing was meant as satire and “kind of sarcastic” and “pretty dumb.” — even, apparently, the moment he puts a gas pump on the back of it.

If Perry wanted to mainline herself in the cultural debate, mission accomplished. But the video also sparks something she and her team probably didn't intend. It's certainly reminiscent of the lead role she played in one of the great pop moments in recent memory – that wonderful period, roughly from 2008 to 2013, when she, Lady Gaga, Rihanna, Kesha and many others commanded and reinvigorated the pop, practically competing with each other for who could come up with the craziest, most creative and luckiest single. The yearning for attention felt by the “Woman's World” video (it practically screams, “I'm still relevant!”) is a chilling acknowledgment of how far that period is now, and how much pop and the world around Perry have changed.

But first, let's relive what an amazing time this was. Perhaps it was Barack Obama's arrival in the White House and the relative youth and idealism he suggested. Perhaps it was the thirst for undeniably addictive pop after a decade dominated by exciting developments in hip-hop and a new onslaught of indie rock. Back in 2008, little else was Gaga's debut, The reputation; the one-two-three of 'Poker Face', 'Paparazzi' and 'Just Dance' recalled the heady era of Madonna's conquest, in the days when hooks mattered more than melismus exaggeration. Two years later, we got Perry's Teenage Dreamwhose first four tracks – the title tune, “Last Friday Night (TGIF),” “California Gurls” and “Firework” – were a hit in their own right.

For a few years, you could turn to any pop outlet (in my case, SiriusXM's top two channels) and hear one inventive and undeniable record after another: Gaga's “Bad Romance,” her unrelenting “Telephone.” herself and Beyonce, Adele's “Rolling in the Deep” and other singles from 21. Even Gotye's brooding “Somebody That I Used To Know” sounded like the commercial record Peter Gabriel refused to make after “Sledgehammer.” (“No, you didn't have to stoop that low/Let your friends collect your records and then change your number” is a series of breakup songs that only a record geek could love.) From the song to the production, the songs were commanding and live. Just as in prime Motown, the height of bubblegum and disco, the synth-pop boom of the 80s, and the boy-band and Britney era of the late 90s, we found ourselves for another once at a time when pop felt supremely confident in its ability to intoxicate us all.

As most of this list shows, it really was a woman's world at the time. Rihanna's cascade of singles were themselves a one-man audio series. “Diamonds” was nothing like “Stay,” the era's most soulful power ballad, which in turn was nothing like “Don't Stop the Music” or the stuttering “S&M.” Each of these records was sonically and vocally different from the last, but you never doubted that they came from planet Rihanna. (Though when a proper greatest hits compilation ever comes out, it'll be killer.)

Rihanna's “S&M” also managed to put the phrase “chains and whips excite me” into the Top 40, a risky ploy not limited to this song. The hits of that time were particularly brazen. Kesha's “Tik Tok” and “We R Who We R” and Perry's “Last Friday Night (TGIF)” — parties at rich dudes' houses, but on the record — were unabashedly hedonistic, and they loved it. Carly Rae Jepsen's 2012 hit “Call Me Maybe,” one of the last great salvos from that era, made no secret of her desire for the guy in the ripped jeans.

As anyone who studies pop knows, music is cyclical, so it was only a matter of time before that era started slipping away. Starting with parts of 2011 This is how I was born and in 2013 Artpop, Gaga's music was overrun with musical tchotchkes that filled her records and briefly lost the plot. Perry's 2013 single “Roar” felt tired compared to her effortless charm Teenage Dream period (though it works great in the musical & Juliet, based around the catalog of another contemporary master, Max Martin). Rihanna has been on a musical low for almost a decade now. perhaps he realized that a cultural moment was ending and headed for the exits. Hip-hop reasserted its creative dominance, and the rise of a new wave of female indie stars, most notably the Boygenius gang, suddenly made much of what came before feel bombastic and understated.

It's telling that one of the top songs of the summer of 2024 has a shimmering pulse, a light winking feel and a cheesecake video. But it's not “Woman's World” — it's Sabrina Carpenter's “Espresso.” Carpenter's song is more of a hypnotic dance track than one of the fully formed, modern-brill-building songs of that earlier pop era. But the video doesn't look like it cost billions, another aspect of “Woman's World” that seems out of place and means that pop is in the hands of a new generation. Now let's see if she can reach the transcendent highs of the era that, for so long, made Katy Perry someone worth rocking to.