Making a Weekend of Katy Perry's Live Stream Event

If you've been reading this blog for any significant length of time, you know that I love to play devil's advocate when it comes to pop culture. I don't like to see artists unfairly judged on the work that comes from their heart. In my mind, if you don't like it, don't listen to it. Judging a message because it isn't the message you were in the mood for at the moment? That's not cute.

I'm seeing dozens of negative reviews of Katy Perry's new album, most of which are just lists of reasons why the author isn't particularly into it, though some bring up cultural appropriation issues, which of course is an important conversation to have. But as I'm really enjoying this life-as-art live stream that stretches from Thursday night to Monday night, I wanted to offer up my own interpretation of this album release and just share my personal thoughts on it.

My girlfriend and I have been huge Katy Perry fans ever since she broke onto the pop scene with her One of the Boys album in 2008. She has a talent for writing songs that are incredibly catchy and relatable, with lyrics that lean toward empowerment a good majority of the time. I feel that female pop singer/songwriters are traditionally underappreciated and diminished in conversation. In my experience, where people assume that a male artist has a hand in writing his music, they assume that a female is just singing hits that someone else wrote for her. Where male artists can wear absolutely anything they want, female artists have their clothing and hair critiqued before there is even any mention of the music.

In Katy's case, with this album release, I can't help but feel that people are coloring their experience of this album with a mixture of things that have little to do with the music. 

Some of the highlights for me were the moments when she addressed a few faux pas that she made along the path to this album release. Despite being an artist who is known for inclusivity and has many fans in the LGBT community, she collaborated with allegedly homophobic artists Migos on her second single, was (falsely) rumored to have removed drag queens from her SNL performance at the request of Migos, and then there was the prior controversy over a Barack Obama joke.

I'm not here to debate or defend any of that, but during the Rose & Thorn dinner on her live stream, guest Anna Kendrick spoke on approaching people with kindness when they have done something wrong. I'm paraphrasing from memory and I hope I'm close enough to the point that she was trying to make, but she essentially spoke on the uselessness of dragging someone for something that they unintentionally did. Katy elaborated at various points throughout the live stream about appreciating it when someone calls her out and makes her understand things that she does not inherently understand from her multiple places of privilege.

If we want to educate people on how to be more sensitive to the feelings and experiences of others, flat out dragging them for their mistakes is not the way to do that. I feel that there is a vast difference between a human being making a mistake with good intentions in their heart and someone who is deliberately attacking and disregarding others. The difference is generally crystal clear. This is not just in defense of Katy Perry, but in support of a kinder way of dealing with each other in this world.

You may recall my post from November of last year, Maimed - A Poem About the Aftermath of the 2016 Presidential Election. I was feeling hopeless and despondent on the night that I wrote that, and that feeling permeated the months that followed too. I managed to dig deep and find some hope for myself personally, making new plans and throwing myself into my day job and my creative work, but to be completely honest, I stayed in that space of despondency when it came to the future of my country. It is very difficult to look over all the progress we have made and realize that the new administration aims to tear so much of it down. That is a challenge.

But an even bigger challenge is the fact that a sizable part of our population supports all of that. We are a deeply divided nation. You can say what you want to about Katy's album or her hair or her live stream, but she hammered home the fact that we do have to coexist and listen to each other. During DeRay McKesson's interview for his podcast, he challenged her on that idea and my gut reaction was the same as his, but after thinking it over, what other option is there? A brand new civil war? You'll never convince me that war is the answer to anything, but conversation and understanding just might heal this world or at least heal some of our hearts.

What I'm getting at is that the way that a lot of us process world events is through the entertainment that we consume, and this has been true for a lot longer than social media or even the internet has existed. Damning Katy for promising "purposeful pop" is just channeling your anger in the wrong direction. No artist is going to be able to change the world with an album these days. A new What's Going On or a Rhythm Nation II might make us all feel a little better, but what we need to do is dig deep and do the real work. Don't blame an artist for not creating precisely what you're looking for. Consider creating it yourself.