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Witness
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Date Aired
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February 22, 2022
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Running Time
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37:07
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Website
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Intro[]
Logo for...
Todd (VO): This video is brought to you by... CuriosityStream.
Footage of the opening of Katy Perry's first Vegas show on January 12, 2022
Katy Perry: Well this is neat, but it kinda smells.
Katy first appears by popping out of a large toilet
Katy: Well, where did you think I was gonna pop up?
Todd reacts with a stern look of judgement. The video cuts back to the clip
Katy: Don't you know me by now?
Todd: She's done. I'm calling time.
Todd (VO): I try not to declare careers over too early. [clip of Katy Perry performing "When I'm Gone" on SNL] Katy's still making music, she's got a new song right now. Maybe it'll take off, who knows.
Todd: But sometimes, you just have to make the call. And I say...
Clip of GMA story about Katy's "PLAY" residency
Todd (VO): ...when you've basically set up permanent residence in Vegas, [video of Katy's Vegas show] and you're performing your old hits next to a singing shit in a giant toilet, you're- [stammers] you're done, it's done. Finito.
Todd: I could be wrong. [screenshot of "When I'm Gone" at number 97 on the Hot 100] That new song could start climbing up from the bottom of the charts next week, and boy won't I look stupid. Well, you know what?
Clip of Alesso and Katy Perry - "When I'm Gone"
Todd (VO): If that does happen, I can at least console myself for my wrong prediction.
Todd: By knowing that I was not alone.
Clip of Katy Perry performing at Glastonbury in 2017
Katy: Are we crazy
Todd (VO): From the moment I started this series about career-killing albums, [screenshots of Tweets asking for a Trainwreckords episode on Witness] Katy Perry's fourth LP, Witness, was one of my top-requested episodes.
Todd: That was just [screenshot of one of the tweets form before with the date October 20, 2017 underlined] four months after the record came out. And yet everyone had just instantly known that Katy Perry was no longer a concern to popular music.
Clip of Katy Perry ft. Snoop Dogg - "California Gurls"
Todd (VO): At the dawn of the 2010s, Katy Perry had basically kicked off the decade [clip of Katy Perry's 2015 Superbowl Halftime show] with an astonishing five number one singles off one album, plus three more in the years after. She was a winner among winners.
Montage clips of Katy Perry ft. Skip Marley - "Chained To the Rhythm"; Katy's 2017 SNL performance; Katy crying during the Witness World Wide livestream; Katy Perry ft. Nicki Minaj - "Swish Swish"
And yet everything about Witness radiated failure. Like nothing else I've ever seen in my time as a professional music critic.
Sports Announcer: Despite all her best efforts, she just seems to keep falling flat on her face
Clip of Katy Perry - "Hey Hey Hey"
Todd (VO): Maybe other albums failed harder, but nothing failed louder.
Todd: In fact, you can make the case that the now-ubiquitous pop fandom term [image of a speech bubble that says "i'm in my flop era lamao"] "flop era" was coined [screenshot of Urban Dictionary definition of "flop era"] as a direct result of this album. Witness is the original "flop era".
Clip of Katy Perry performing on The Voice Australia
Katy: Swish swish, bish
Todd (VO): And it only feels right that that honor should go to such a legendary flop. To put it mildly, this is not the first Witness retrospective that's ever been written and it won't be the last.
Todd: It's gained a certain car crash mythos that's only grown with time, because it's not just a bad album.
Clip of Witness World Wide finale concert
Todd (VO): It's not even just a spectacular fall from grace from one of the best-selling artists alive. It's also a heartbreaking tragedy.
Todd: Because this was Katy's attempt to stand for good in the world.
Clip from the Witness World Wide livestream
Katy: Describe your album Witness in one word. Liberated.
Todd (VO): This was Katy trying to be taken seriously, to change her image into something both positive and deep. And it was rejected as hard as anything can be rejected. I wouldn't usually cover something this recent or this overexposed. But I have always been fascinated by Witness.
Todd: The moment Katy started making the worst and most unloved music of her career is the day I started being interested in Katy as a person.
Clip of Witness World Wide finale concert
Katy: Can I get a witness?
Todd (VO): So let us now bear witness to a pop star famed for her shallowness trying to blossom into a mature, liberated, socially conscious artiste. And only looking faker and more limited than ever.
Todd: Katy Perry gets woke and goes broke. This is Trainwreckords.
Trainwreckords intro followed by album cover for Witness
A Need for Change[]
Clip of promotional video for Witness
Katy: Can you see me? I mean, I know you can see me. But can you really see me? My name is Kathryn Hudson, I'm vulnerable and strong.
Briefly cuts to Todd looking unimpressed
Katy: I'm a woman, an artist, I'm liberated, goofy, and I'm not always right. I'm Katy Perry, and I'm not just one thing
The song "Witness" begins playing
Katy: Can I get a witness?
Todd: I promised myself that I wasn't gonna use the word "cringe" (RULES FOR WRITING! 1. Stop saying "cr*nge") during this episode (Seriously, find another word already) So, let's just take that dating profile she just read at us and let's see what it told us.
Katy: Can you really see me?
Todd (VO): It said that even though Katy Perry is among the most over-exposed singers on the planet, we hadn't seen the real Katy. Or we hadn't seen more than one side of her. This is...
Todd: ...undeniably true.
Clip of Access Hollywood interview with Katy
Todd (VO): In hindsight, some observers said that we didn't need to. That Katy Perry's first mistake was trying to offer new sides of herself to begin with, and no one wanted or needed that from her.
Todd: I do not agree.
Clip from Witness World Wide
Todd (VO): I think on some level, Katy Perry desperately needed to change.
Todd: See, I've been reviewing pop music a long time. And in doing so, I have said something to piss off [image of woman swinging a sledgehammer at a laptop] every major fanbase in the universe. I have had my mentions swarmed and my day ruined by [images of the artists whose fanbases Todd mentions] the BTS Army, the Rihanna Navy, the Little Monsters, the Swifties, the Beyhive, the Beliebers, the Barbz, (Oh God, the Barbz,) the Directioners, the Lovatics, the Selenators, the Arianators, most recently, the Camilizers, and so on.
Clip of Katy signing fans' albums
Todd (VO): Katy Perry stans are called the Katy Cats.
Todd: And they have never bothered me once. I kinda suspect they never existed.
Clip from Katy Perry: Part of Me
Todd (VO): Yeah, yeah, I'm sure there's at least a few, they're probably writing angry comments right now. But in hindsight, the Katy Perry phenomenon was clearly more fragile than it looked.
Todd: For a while now, I've been workshopping this theory that there are two kinds of pop stars.
Clip of JAY-Z - "Izzo (H.O.V.A.)"
Todd (VO): First, there are the ones who are so compelling, so infused with that star quality and creativity, that they'll always have that loyal core fanbase to sustain them, waiting for the next record.
Todd: And then...
Clip of Nelly - "Country Grammar (Hot Shit)"
Todd (VO): ...there are the superstars who will be superstars for as long as the music is good. And if the bops stop coming for even a second, they're gone.
Todd: This is what separates a [images of...] Janet Jackson from a Paula Abdul. An Eminem from a Marilyn Manson. The Weeknd is probably the first kind, Bruno Mars is probably the second. I admit, it's not a perfect theory.
Clip of Silk Sonic - "Smokin' Out the Window"
Todd (VO): For example, if, like Bruno, you just continually keep putting out bangers, you can maybe move from the second category to the first.
Todd: But Katy Perry was definitely not there, and I think she knew that.
Clip of Katy performing at Night of Too Many Stars 2012
Todd (VO): I don't know when I started to sense that Katy Perry was unhappy being Katy Perry. I distinctly remember a moment in 2012 when I saw her perform "Firework" at some charity event with an autistic child.
Katy and Jodi DiPiazza: Baby, you're a firework
It was very inspiring, and you could tell this meant a lot to her. It's always stuck with me, because Katy Perry was not otherwise seen as a very inspiring artist.
Todd: Critics had learned to treat pop music seriously by that point.
Montage clips of Lady Gaga - "Bad Romance"; Taylor Swift - "You Belong With Me"; Katy Perry - "Last Friday Night"; Katy Perry - "Waking Up In Vegas"
Todd (VO): But they loved high-brow Gaga or heartfelt Taylor. Not low-brow, plastic Katy Perry, who presented herself as this willfully tasteless edgelord.
Todd: Edge lady?
Montage clips of Katy Perry - "Ur So Gay"; Katy in an SNL sketch; Katy Perry's "Hot N Cold"; "California Gurls"; "Part of Me"
Todd (VO): Who went around being one of the guys, wearing low-cut outfits, making gay jokes. Shooting whipped cream from her boobs, shilling for the army. [clip from The Top Ten Best Hit Songs of 2010] I was just a budding, young content creator in 2010. And Katy Perry was a major guilty pleasure of mine. [clip of Katy Perry - "Teenage Dream"] Whenever I liked one of her songs, I'd be all embarrassed and apologize for it. Like, imagine that.
Todd: Imagine apologizing for liking "Teenage Dream", [screenshot of "Teenage Dream" on Pitchfork's Best Songs of the 2010s list] now considered one of the best songs of the decade. But that's how it was, her reputation was just not very good.
Clip of Katy Perry - "Roar"
Todd (VO): Even her uplifting songs seemed pretty hollow. [clip if Lady Gaga live performance] Gaga made her flamboyance feel substantial. [clip of "California Gurls"] But Katy just seemed like she had no cake under the frosting. [clip of Katy's charity event performance from earlier] So I see Katy beaming with pride for inspiring that little girl, and I just wonder...
Todd: ...what else she had in her career that was gonna make her feel like that.
Clip of Katy giving a speech at a Hillary Clinton rally
Katy: Equal rights for men, women
Todd (VO): She's never gone so far as to say that she regrets it all. But by 2016, she was clearly in a very different headspace. [image quoting Katy saying "I am not a feminist but I do believe in the strength of women"] She had once disavowed the word "feminist" [screenshot of headline reading "Katy Perry: Maybe I Am A Feminist After All"] but now she embraced it. [clip of Katy speaking at a Hillary Clinton rally] She got politically active and started campaigning really hard for Hillary Clinton. She was deeply invested in helping elect our first female President.
Todd: As you may recall, that did not happen.
Clips of news stories about Trump getting elected
Todd (VO): By all accounts, Katy did not take it well. And as America entered a serious flop era of its own, [image of...] Katy Perry decided that it was time that her music got serious.
Todd: There is of course one other major change in Katy's career that we have to mention.
Clip of news story about Kesha's rape allegations against Dr. Luke
Todd (VO): In 2014, Dr. Luke, the producer behind all of Katy's hits, was accused of rape. [image of Katy posing with Dr. Luke] Katy has very carefully said very little about it publicly, and I will not speculate what she thinks privately.
Todd: The point is, she clearly couldn't work with him now. Especially not while trying to brand herself publicly as a progressive feminist. [image of...] Katy's change in image was going to have to be accompanied by a change in sound.
"Chained to the Rhythm"[]
Clip of Katy's 2017 Grammy Awards performance
Todd (VO): In February of 2017, just a month after Trump's inauguration, Katy Perry came out with her new song.
Todd: This was the beginning of an era that Katy had a name for. A name that would haunt this record as the album rollout continued.
Clip of Katy red carpet interview
Katy: I'm so proud of it, I think it's definitely a new era for me. I call it, um... an era of purposeful pop
Todd (VO): Purposeful pop. Mm-hmm.
Todd: So. Let us examine what purpose there was to our new, purposeful Katy.
Clip of Katy's Grammy performance
Katy: So comfortable, we're living in a bubble, bubble
So comfortable, we cannot see the trouble, trouble
Todd (VO): This is Witness's first and most successful single, "Chained To the Rhythm". For it, Katy jettisoned Dr. Luke and replaced him with [images of Katy with...] Luke's mentor Max Martin, and [and...] songwriter-extraordinaire Sia.
Todd: And you can definitely hear Sia's fingerprints all over this.
Katy: Yeah, we think we're free
Drink, this one's on me
Todd (VO): For someone best known for bright, shiny bubblegum, Katy took a shocking direction and wrote about how mindless dance music is blinding and numbing us all to the harsh realities of the world.
Todd: This from the same woman who wrote [image of cover art for...] "Ur So Gay". Hoo, we're going there.
Todd (VO): Like, Katy Perry was the queen of party music.
Katy: Turn it up, it's your favorite song
Dance, dance, dance to the distortion
By making a dance song where the dance is explicitly tied to willful blindness and stupidity, she can only be pointing the finger right at herself.
Todd: Not everyone knew what to do with this sudden shift. [scrolling down blog comments about "Chained To the Rhythm"] I've checked the old blogs, and people are more positive than you'd remember, but they're all very divided on this song.
Todd: Me personally, I put "Chained To the Rhythm" on my best list that year, and I stand by it.
Todd (VO): For one, I just like Sia's songwriting. You can tell this was arranged and structured by her and she's good at it. But also, it really speaks to a moment in time.
Katy: Thought we could do better than that
The election was traumatic in a lot of ways, and... I think this really does capture a lot of that shattering disappointment.
Clip of "Chained To the Rhythm"
Todd (VO): When the video came out, it was even more striking. Depicting some kind of theme park of the future, complete with blunt satirical references to the various ills of society. War, climate change, the housing bubble.
Katy: Yeah, we think we're free
While Katy and her goofy-costumed peers vacuously miss the danger.
Katy: And party on
Todd (VO): The style of the video is influenced by various sci-fi universes, [screenshot of article about the inspiration of "Chained To the Rhythm"] but everyone seemed to zero in on one influence in particular: [several other headlines on "Chained To the Rhythm" being inspired by...] The Hunger Games. [clip from The Hunger Games] Specifically, the opulent, over-designed fashion of the decadent Capitol. [back to "Chained To the Rhythm"] Katy has never named those movies explicitly as an influence.
Todd: But it seems pretty likely.
Clip of Katy's Superbowl halftime show
Todd (VO): Considering her famous Superbowl performance [brief clip from The Hunger Games] also seemed very Hunger Games-y. [clip from the Superbowl halftime show of Katy performing with Lenny Kravitz...] Including performing with an actual [clip from The Hunger Games showing Cinna, played by Lenny Kravitz] Hunger Games cast member.
Todd: But there, it didn't really make sense.
Clip of Katy's Superbowl halftime show
Todd (VO): You can't dress up as Katniss Everdeen, [clip from The Hunger Games: Catching Fire] the dystopian rebel leader and then [back to the Superbowl performance] party with left shark. [clip of Katy's Grammy performance] No, it'd make way more sense to play a Katniss type figure during this era.
Todd: The same way that a [brief clip of Halsey - "New Americana"] hot young newcomer named Halsey was doing around that time.
Clip of "Chained To the Rhythm"
Todd (VO): But that's not the way she went.
Todd: So, who is she instead?
Todd (VO): Not a mere Capitol citizen, surely? Katy Perry is the spectacle, not the spectator.
Todd: So then who?
Clip from The Hunger Games
Effie Trinket (Elizabeth Banks): May the odds be ever in your favor
Katy as Effie Trinket[]
Todd (VO): Effie Trinket, played by Elizabeth Banks in the movies, is one of the hosts of the Hunger Games. She runs the live draws for the human sacrifices, and she acts as Katniss's image consultant and media coach. In the books and the first movie, she's portrayed as a chattering ditz who is willfully oblivious to the horror she participates in. However, in the movie's sequels, she starts to register the injustice of the system and eventually, it completely breaks her. The last we see of her, she has joined the rebels.
Todd: Now, I have no evidence that Katy Perry was...
Todd (VO): ...inspired by this or has even seen these movies, she's never said anything.
Todd: Nevertheless, I am...
Clip of "Chained To the Rhythm"
Todd (VO): ...unshakably certain that she saw [clip from The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1] herself in this character specifically and it inspired this video. [clip from The Hunger Games: Catching Fire] One, it expresses the shame Katy feels as a walking, breathing avatar of shallowness. Keeping the masses happy and stupid while leading the young and innocent into a brutal and deadly system. [clip of "Part of Me"] Wonder how she feels about this now, ahem.
Todd: And two, it suggests a redemption arc.
Clip from The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1
Todd (VO): It shows that even a willfully-ignorant agent of the corrupt state can wake up and become a hero.
Todd: Which is great, it's all well and good. But if that is what Katy was thinking, there's another element to Effie's arc that should've given her pause.
Todd (VO): As a rebel, separated from her cosmetics and luxuries, Effie Trinket looks...
Todd: ...absolutely miserable.
Clip of "Chained To the Rhythm"
Katy: Turn it up, keep it on repeat
Todd (VO): "Chained To the Rhythm" is a feel-bad song. It's a pop song about how pop songs are evil. It is almost designed to fail. I find it compelling mostly as a look into Katy Perry's tortured psyche. But...
Todd: ...I don't expect anyone to be as fascinated with one rich white woman's self-loathing as I am.
Todd (VO): Like, maybe this could've worked as a stealth satire, but there's zero stealth to this. It's sledgehammer-blunt and utterly despairing. There's just no mistaking what it means.
Todd: Katy's fans certainly figured out what it meant. And many of them were justifiably insulted.
Katy: We're all chained to the rhythm
Todd (VO): Who's "we", Katy? Like, it's one thing if Katy doesn't feel good personally about her success. But saying we're all stupid for listening to her?
Todd: Okay, screw you too!
Todd (VO): Listening to Katy Perry does not mean you are unaware of the issues of the world. For a lot of people, Katy Perry was a relief from those problems. And even if you wanted Katy Perry to get deeper, is this the direction you really wanted her to go?
Todd: Is this what people were crying out for? A song about the vacuousness of pop culture?
Clip of Katy at a women's march
Todd (VO): Katy Perry was at the women's march, surrounded by furious people ready to fight the power. How could she have missed that no one there wanted to wallow. And they certainly didn't want to talk about how stupid pop culture brought us to this point.
Todd: It's just pop music, who fucking cares!? We have actual issues to worry about.
Todd (VO): Not everything's about you, Katy Perry. And that's to say nothing about the verse from Skip Marley, [clip of Kendall Jenner Pepsi ad] who had an extremely strange 2017 soundtracking white celebrities' journey into wokeness. [back to "Chained To the Rhythm"] I still like this song, I think it's strong, I think it's catchy, it's certainly unique. But it was never going to be a hit.
Todd: In her first stab at purposeful pop, Katy Perry completely misjudged the moment.
Clip of Katy's Glastonbury performance
Todd (VO): "Chained To the Rhythm" did mediocre numbers by Katy's standards. But Katy was committed, and she made sure everyone knew.
Clip from Witness World Wide livestream
Katy: Sexualizing myself was like this attention-grabbing thing. It went into my 20s and it went into my career just like over-sexualizing and not like...
She began wearing less revealing outfits, got a short blonde haircut that no one seemed to like. [screenshot of New York Times article "Katy Perry Woke Up. She Wants to Tell You All About It"] Gave a lot of interviews about her new outlook. In May, she dropped the next single.
Todd: So, let us hear the next step in the evolution of Katy and her progressive, purposeful pop.
"Bon Appétit"[]
Clip of Katy Perry ft. Migos - "Bon Appétit"
Katy: Cause I'm all that you want, boy
All that you can have, boy
Cuts to Todd rubbing his face
Katy: Got me spread like a buffet
Bon a, bon appétit, baby
Todd: The next song was called "Bon Appétit". A sex song based around food metaphors.
Katy: Appetite for seduction, fresh out the oven
Melt in your mouth kinda lovin'
Todd (VO): I mean, that's a purpose, I guess.
Todd: Okay, maybe "Bon Appétit" was always the plan.
Todd (VO): I mean, it probably was. Katy Perry can't just stop being Katy Perry after all. But to me, it looked a lot like a panic move.
Todd: A desperate step backwards to pull back everyone turned off by the first single.
Clip of Katy Perry red carpet interview
Todd (VO): I'm sure she had to be worried when she'd do interviews about her new left-wing agenda, and then get asked "But where's our summer jam, Katy?"
Katy: Don't worry, you're gonna, you're gonna have some of that good ol' Katy Perry fluffy stuff that you love so much
Todd: So instead, we have something more commercial.
Clip of "Bon Appétit"
Todd (VO): More Katy-like. Plus a rap verse from Migos, who were white-hot at the time. This will surely turn things around.
Katy: I'm on the menu
Todd (VO): Yeah, it didn't do that. "Bon Appétit" bricked immediately, and it deserved to. "Chained To the Rhythm" was a decent execution of a questionable concept. "Bon Appétit" is just a disaster from the get-go. The song's a mess, there's no hook. And a song this explicit is really not in Katy's wheelhouse.
Todd: I think she was trying to keep it light with the food innuendos.
Todd (VO): But this is still probably the dirtiest song she's ever released.
Todd: And it's directly at odds with her...
Clip of Katy Perry - "I Kissed a Girl"
Todd (VO): ...wink-wink, tee-hee brand of sexuality. [clip of...] "Chained To the Rhythm" was considered an underperformer by only getting up to number 4. [screenshot of the Hot 100 showing "Bon Appetit" at number 59] But "Bon Appetit" couldn't even break the top 50 and was gone in a month. Which is only fair.
Todd: Trying to be that sexual while...
Clip of "Bon Appetit"
Todd (VO): ...making her trademark tacky videos. Boy, it does not work. It's too gross to be fun...
Todd: ...and it's way too stupid to be erotic.
Todd (VO): Unless you're Armie Hammer, there's nothing hot about Katy Perry dressing up like a chicken cutlet and jumping into a pot of vegetables. I don't wanna fuck a roast turkey, Katy!
Todd: But of course, this un-appetizing video is not the visual people remember.
Clip from Katy's SNL performance
Dwayne Johnson: Once again, Katy Perry
Todd (VO): What people remember of "Bon Appétit", perhaps the defining moment of the Witness era, was from May 20th.
Todd: When she got booked on SNL.
Katy: Under candle light, we can wine and dine
Todd (VO): Boy... seems alright so far. Let's bring out Migos.
Takeoff: No waterfall, she drippin' wet, you like my ice?
Katy begins dancing awkwardly
Takeoff: She want a Migo night, I ask her "What's the price?"
If she does right, told her get whatever you like
Offset: Offset!
I grab her by the legs and now divide
Text shows up reading: RULES FOR WRITING! 1. Stop saying "cr*nge"
Offset: Make her do a donut when she ride
Todd: [groans]
Todd (VO): I swear to God, I just watched Katy Perry age fifteen years right in front of me. Who choreographed this, my mom?
Clip from The Simpsons
Marge Simpson: We'll have our own dance. Every Simpson dance now. Bom, bom, bom-bom bom
Clip from Katy's SNL performance
Todd (VO): I've watched this moment over and over again, I've never seen anything like it. Ashlee Simpson had a better night on SNL than this.
Todd: Now, if you read the comments on YouTube [scrolling down YouTube comments of the performance] you will see people blaming Migos.
Clip from Katy's SNL performance
Todd (VO): The story is that Katy had a big drag queen performance planned that night. But Migos refused to share the stage with them, forcing Katy to improvise the... thing you're seeing.
Todd: To be clear, the story appears to be false. [screenshot of the article that made these claims] The original article it came from didn't name its sources and then it was deleted for unknown reasons. Everyone, including the drag queens, have denied it. But it sure seems plausible, right?
Todd (VO): I bought it completely at first. For one, it plays into our stereotypes of homophobic rappers, which Migos has gotten in trouble for before.
Todd: But also, it's an explanation.
Todd (VO): Any explanation for an otherwise inexplicable performance.
Todd: Katy Perry's...
Clip from the Prismatic World Tour
Todd (VO): ...entire existence reeks of effort. She often tries too hard, but she never half asses it. She always goes big. [back to the SNL performance] Like, she's a seasoned vet at this point. Even if she did have to ad-lib, how was that what she came up with? My God!
Todd: Was she this lame the entire time?! (Yes.)
Clip Katy Perry on Fallon
Todd (VO): In June, the album dropped. It looked like [the camera zooms in on the album cover Fallon is holding up] this, which... how could a Katy Perry album with this artwork have failed?
Todd: Now, I've heard this...
Todd (VO): ...90s prog-metal album cover [clip of the trailer for...] might be a reference to The Neon Demon. An elevated horror movie about an aspiring model, has a similar color palette. Similarly dim view of fame and glamor. I won't spoil it, but there is some eye-in-mouth imagery in there. [back to the Fallon interview] Uhh, if that's what this is a reference to, uhh... You realize you're Katy Perry, right?
Todd: I see this cover, and I think Katy has some [cover art of "Born This Way"] serious Gaga envy. Gaga could get away with a Neon Demon reference. Katy was already stretching it with The Hunger Games. [image of Katy in a pink costume on tour] Stick to Candy Land. Actually, the promotion was just baffling all around.
Clip of Vanity Fair video with Katy
Derek Blasberg: Today's friend is...
He lifts up the serving cover, revealing Katy's head underneath
Katy: Katy Perry!
Todd (VO): For "Bon Appétit", she literally served her head on a plate. Huh? [clip of Witness World Wide livestream] The release itself was accompanied by a weird stunt where Katy moved into a Big Brother type house and livestreamed for four straight days. She cried during a public therapy session, which... I'm not sure is a great way to do therapy. She hung out with various celebrities and activists and talked about politics.
Katy: I've made several mistakes. Even in, like, the "This is How we Do" video about how I wore my hair. But I can educate myself and that's what I'm trying to do along the way...
I don't know what goal this was supposed to accomplish, but I don't think it succeeded.
Unable to Adapt[]
Todd: I'm not gonna go too deep into the album itself, because... quite frankly, no one cares.
Clip of "Teenage Dream"
Todd (VO): Katy Perry is a singles artist, always has been. Her LPs are not worth much, which may be why she never really had that depth of fanbase.
Todd: So most Katy albums are bad, but even by her standards, Witness is pretty damn bad.
Clip of Katy performing "Déjà Vu"
Katy: When you're drunk, you say I'm the one.
Todd (VO): The non-singles are about split into three categories: Katy's despair, Katy's liberation/empowerment. And songs about [clip from Witness World Wide finale concert] a dysfunctional relationship and/or breakup which may explain some of Katy's angst during this time.
Todd: All of them pretty much suck.
Todd (VO): The hooks are weak, the production is thin, Katy's lyrics are as clunky as ever.
Katy: I don't mess with change
But lately, I've been flipping coins a lot
Todd: And look, 2017 was going to be hard for Katy regardless. Because...
Clip of Post Malone ft. 21 Savage - "rockstar"
Todd (VO): ...that now looks like a pretty serious changeover year in pop. [clip of Khalid - "Location"] You look at the big hitmakers...
Todd: ...of that one or two years.
Montage clips of Ed Sheeran - "Shape of You"; Halsey - "Bad at Love"; Bebe Rexha & Florida Georgia Line - "Meant to Be"; The Chainsmokers - "Paris"; Migos ft. Lil Uzi Vert - "Bad and Boujee"; Kendrick Lamar - "HUMBLE."; Zayn & Taylor Swift - "I Don't Wanna Live Forever"; Alessia Cara - "Scars to Your Beautiful"; Shawn Mendes - "Treat You Better"; Twenty One Pilots - "Heathens"; "California Gurls"; Future - "Mask Off"
Todd (VO): Ed Sheeran, Halsey, Bebe Rexha, The Chainsmokers, Migos, Kendrick Lamar, Zayn, Alessia Cara, Shawn Mendes, Twenty One Pilots. Not a whole lot of bright candy colours in there. These are not all "lesser" stars than Katy in her prime. But...
Todd: ...they all certainly shine less intensely.
Clip of Julia Michaels - "Issues"
Todd (VO): They're slow-burn, minor key artists where [clip of Katy's Superbowl performance] Katy Perry's brand of mega, turbo-pop does not fit at all.
Clip of Katy Perry live performance
Katy: Roulette, oh-oh
Rather than go with her old style or the new style, she just kinda splits the difference and winds up sounding like nothing. Many producers worked on this record with very little to show for it. It seems like no one really had a strong sonic vision for the "purposeful pop" era.
Purposeful Pop[]
Todd: The branding of Witness as a message album is very strange, because [screenshot of headline calling Witness a "fine breakup album"] it's much more of a breakup album. But as for politics...
Clip of Witness World Wide finale concert
Todd (VO): ...the most explicit message is "Bigger Than Me", which she wrote after the election. And it's about how, even though Katy is heartbroken, she's part of something much bigger that genuinely matters.
Katy: It's something bigger than me
If that message strikes you as frustratingly vague, well... that's all you get. "Chained To the Rhythm", for all its navel-gazing faults, still strikes me as a gutsy move.
Todd: And she does not have the nerve to be that critical again.
Clip of Witness World Wide livestream
Todd (VO): It doesn't help that she comes from a fundamentalist family, and that from what I can tell, she's reluctant to make their strained relationship any worse.
Todd: So her big "message" era turned out to be pretty underwhelming.
Clip of Access Hollywood interview with Katy
Katy: I'm like "I will have a conversation with you", because we need to have conversations with both sides to be united
Todd (VO): In real life, she mostly said a lot of squishy, centrist things about listening to the other side and understanding each other, and... I'm sorry, that shit does not play.
Todd: Katy is a big pop star, she just wants to be loved by everyone. And in 2017, that just wasn't possible.
Clip of "Swish Swish"
Katy Perry's... Diss Track?[]
Todd (VO): On August 24th, two months after the album dropped, Katy Perry dropped the video for her third single "Swish Swish". Which, on its own, just astonished me.
Todd: How was there a third video? How!? The album had already clearly tanked by that point.
Todd (VO): This is yet another way in which Katy seemed behind the times. She seems like she hasn't adapted to the streaming era. [clip of Katy's SNL performance] And was unprepared for a time when only the very most successful records get a third single. Or even...
Todd: ...a single after the album drops. No one's getting five number ones off one record ever again.
Clip of "Swish Swish" live performance
Pitch-shifted voice (Roland Clark): They know what is what, but they don't know what is what
Todd (VO): But anyway, "Swish Swish". Katy Perry's...
Todd: ...diss track.
Clip of "Swish Swish"
Katy: Swish swish, bish
Another one in the basket
Todd (VO): Okay, the backstory in case you somehow don't know. [image of Katy with...] Katy Perry fell out with fellow pop star Taylor Swift for boring showbiz reasons not worth re-counting here. [clip of Taylor Swift ft. Kendrick Lamar - "Bad Blood"] But Taylor wrote a song about it that became a number one hit.
Taylor Swift: Cause baby, now we've got bad blood
Now, there are Taylor songs that I don't like but I get why people do.
Todd: I have never understood the appeal of "Bad Blood".
Todd (VO): It's a terrible song with a terrible, overrated video. And I can only attribute its success to people just enjoying public drama.
Todd: So, maybe Katy Perry can also ride your tawdry interest in celebrity feuds back onto the charts.
Clip of "Swish Swish"
Katy: Stay winning, lay 'em up like- F**k
Swish swish, bish
Todd: [has his face in his hands]
Todd (VO): "Swish Swish" may be the worst video of the decade. I was already pre-disposed to hate it because it was constantly shitting up my YouTube recommendations [screenshot of "Swish Swish" thumbnail] with that thumbnail of Katy making... what I can only call "YouTube thumbnail face".
Todd: But it's awful.
Todd (VO): Katy gave up trying to look tough and instead went for comedy. And depicted herself as a beleaguered underdog in... what is basically a live-action Space Jam. It completely steps on the tone of the song, and comedy has...
Todd: ...never been Katy's strongpoint.
Todd (VO): [sarcastically] Ha ha, the fat one ate a basketball. [back to normal] There are a bunch of dated memes.
Katy falls down into a "Shooting Stars" meme
Text shows up reading: RULES FOR WRITING! 1. Stop saying "cr*nge"
Todd: [laughs uncomfortably, which morphs into a groan]
Todd (VO): A bunch of celebrity cameos in an attempt to match [clip of "Bad Blood"] Taylor's. But Taylor pulled in the likes of Selena Gomez, Hayley Williams, and Zendaya.
Todd: While Katy had the star power of...
Clip of "Swish Swish"
Todd (VO): ...Molly Shannon, the supporting cast of Glow, Gronk, probably here to sell you some insurance. Can't imagine a lot of Katy Perry fans lighting up for Gronk. (Helpful guide for Katy Perry fans: This is Rob "Gronk" Gronkowski. He is a famous football player.) The one highlight is a solid verse from Nicki Minaj in one of her famous green screen appearances. Not that it comes close to saving the song itself, which is...
Todd: ...also very bad.
Clip of Katy performing "Swish Swish" on SNL
Todd (VO): It's a shame, because "Swish Swish" is one of the few "Witness" tracks with a solid beat. But...
Todd: Ugh, Katy's attempts at shade.
Katy: A tiger don't lose no sleep
Don't need opinions from a shellfish or a sheep
Todd (VO): Wow, shots fired. Directly into her own foot.
Todd: The fuck does a tiger have to do with shellfish? [image of a meme about sheep being stupid] Like, sheep I get, "sheep" is an insult. But shellfish? [image of very large crab] Many shellfish I wouldn't fuck with at all.
Clip of Katy's Performance on The Voice Australia
Katy: Your game is tired, you should retire
You're 'bout as cute as an old coupon expired
Todd: [beat] Huh?
Todd (VO): I don't even have a joke, just, just what?
Todd: Can you imagine, like, Taylor just [image of a woman crying in bed] crying in her bedroom, like "I can't believe she called me cute as an expired coupon!"
Clip of "Swish Swish"
Todd (VO): Turns out, it didn't really matter what Katy threw at her, because Taylor destroyed her anyway. The day that Katy Perry dropped this awful video.
Todd: The day. The very day.
Clip of lyric video for Taylor Swift - "Look What You Made Me Do"
Todd (VO): Taylor Swift absolutely wrecked her shit by dropping this little bomb.
Taylor: I check it once, then I check it twice, oh!
Ooh, look what you made me do
On August 24th 2017, Taylor released "Look What You Made Me Do". Sweeping away the old Taylor once and for all, overshadowing every last mention of "Swish Swish".
Todd: And worst of all, not mentioning Katy once. [image of Kim Kardashian and Kanye West] Having moved on to feuds with people that actually mattered.
Clip of the music video for "Look What You Made Me Do"
Todd (VO): The fact that Taylor's song was even worse and the beginning of an extremely rough three year period for her, that's all completely besides the point. The point is that no one was talking about Katy anymore.
Todd: But even if Katy had won the feud, would that have been a good thing?
Clip of "Swish Swish"
Todd (VO): Wasn't this about being purposeful pop!? [clip of The Voice Australia performance] Katy tried to put a positive spin on it by calling the song "anti-bullying"-
Todd: Yeah, don't piss on my leg and tell me it's raining, Katy.
Todd (VO): The only appeal of this song is watching a mega-diva being a catty bitch. [clip of "Swish Swish"] And you couldn't even do that right.
Todd: So how did Katy not come out of this with any good singles?
The Delayed Flop[]
Clip of ABC News interview with Dr. Luke
Todd (VO): The obvious conclusion was that Katy needed Dr. Luke. No one wants to say that, considering what he's accused of, but people have said it.
Todd: I am not gonna say that, though. In fact, I have a counter-argument. Maybe Witness didn't kill Katy's career. [cover art for...] Maybe, Prism killed Katy's career.
Clip of Katy Perry - "This Is How We Do"
Todd (VO): Prism was the album right before and it did have a bunch of hits, but... come on. Anything Katy released after Teenage Dream would've been huge.
Todd: There's a phenomenon that I call the "delayed flop". Where something becomes successful just through hype or momentum, but turns out no one really likes it, and you end up paying for it on the next installment.
Clip of "Roar"
Todd (VO): I mean, let's look at Prism. Its biggest hit was "Roar". [clip of Katy Perry - "Firework"] Closest thing to it from the previous album was "Firework", which was obviously better than "Roar". [clip of Katy Perry - "Birthday"] My favorite Prism single was "Birthday", "California Gurls" was obviously better than "Birthday". [clip of Katy Perry ft. Juicy J - "Dark Horse"] The other number one hit from Prism was "Dark Horse". [clip of Katy Perry ft. Kanye West - "E.T."] Uh, I didn't love "E.T.", but "E.T." is obviously better than [back to...] "Dark Horse", now often called one of the worst number ones of the decade.
Todd: And you barely hear any of those songs anymore.
Todd (VO): Witness was probably always gonna suck, but Prism had already put Katy...
Todd: ...in a losing position. Even if it wasn't clear at the time.
Marie Antoinette[]
Clip of "Hey Hey Hey"
Todd (VO): In December, the final video from the album was released. Which... what, how?
Todd: At this point, this isn't even promoting the song or the album, it's just a vanity project.
Todd (VO): And boy, is it ever. Like, it's a shame no one saw this or cared by that point, because this video will tell you pretty much everything you need to know about how Katy Perry sees herself. She's a Marie Antoinette... who fantasizes about being Joan of Arc.
Katy: Hey hey hey, you think that I'm a little ba-a-by
Wow. That's horribly depressing.
Todd: Like, that's a level of self-hatred that even I can't relate to.
Todd (VO): Like, I don't think that's what she was going for, I think it's supposed to be empowering. But it's not, because we already know she's not going to become the Joan of Arc. And also because the song is just absolutely terrible, the hook is atrocious.
Todd: Lyrically, it's about how she can be soft and fierce.
Katy: Cause I'm feminine and soft
But I'm still a boss, yeah
Todd (VO): Yeah, she's a... girl boss, you might say. Mmm-hmm.
Todd: Since 2017, so-called [screenshot of article "The death of the girlboss"] "girlboss feminism" has become controversial for reasons that I'm not gonna parse out here. Except to say that I thought the whole point of this era is that she shouldn't have to be expected to be pretty all the god damn time.
Katy: A big, beautiful brain with a pretty face, yeah
Todd (VO): Still, you know, it was an attempt to be uplifting and inspiring.
Todd: Which would've made it a much better message to lead the album with, if... you know, the song didn't suck so much.
Clip of Katy performing "Pendulum"
Katy: It's a pendulum, it all comes back around
Todd (VO): Despite this being a thoroughly un-cohesive record, Katy managed to write a pretty solid album closer called "Pendulum". For some reason, it's not the album closer, she made it the song before the closer. Which...
Todd: [sighs] Katy...
Todd (VO): But, if there is a deep cut on "Witness" worth preserving, it's probably this one.
Katy: Oh, all the way around
"Pendulum" is a song about how even when things are dark, you can ride it out and things will eventually swing back. Which is kind of the hopeful message that Katy herself needed.
Katy: Life's a pendulum
Todd (VO): I don't think she expected Witness to be the dark times she would have to swing back from. And... tragically, I'm not sure the pendulum is ever gonna swing back for her. But on the other hand...
Todd: ...maybe it already has.
Outro[]
Clip of Witness World Wide finale concert
Todd (VO): Witness was the tipping point for Katy Perry. It wasn't just a bad album, it convinced everyone that Katy Perry was a bad artist and always had been. She had just been too obnoxious for too long, she was banished forever, and she's never come close to restoring herself to the top of the charts.
Todd: But despite that, it seems like there's a lot more affection for her now than there was at her peak.
Clip of Katy's 2022 SNL performance
Todd (VO): Part of that is just nostalgia, we can now admit that she had some very good songs. But also, if Witness was supposed to humanize Katy Perry, turn her from a plastic doll into something real. In its strange way, it kinda succeeded.
Todd: Every good diva or icon needs some kind of dark period or narrative, right? Something to make her story resonate.
Clip of Katy's 2017 Brit Awards performance
Katy: Turn it up, it's your favorite song
Todd (VO): Witness is unquestionably a failure. As art, as a commercial product, as a social statement, everything. But what happens without Witness? What happens if Katy Perry just makes another Katy Perry record? Probably wouldn't have been great either.
Todd: She's a firework. Fireworks don't last very long.
Todd (VO): Even most of the biggest stars don't make hits forever. Most likely, she would've just quietly petered out and gone away, like Fergie or Pitbull.
Todd: It was hard to care about Katy Perry before this. But falling on her face made Katy Perry into a figure of real pathos.
Todd (VO): She became someone you could feel bad for, embarrassed for.
Todd: And maybe subsequently root for.
Clip of GMA story going behind the scenes of Katy's Vegas residence
Todd (VO): Katy's in Vegas now, and her setlist still has "Chained To the Rhythm" and "Bon Appétit" and "Swish Swish". [clip of "Hey Hey Hey"] So unlikely as it seems, maybe she does owe Witness something. And in fact, maybe because of it, that comeback has a chance.
Todd: I mean, she's on Trainwreckords because... yeah, her career is probably over. But just because it's over, doesn't mean it's really over. Good luck, Katy.
Katy: Cause we're all chained
To the rhythm
Sponsor[]
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Clip from Contemporary Color
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Todd: Thank you for listening, and good night.
Closing Tag Song: Todd plays "Chained To the Rhythm" on the piano
THE END
"Witness" is owned by Capitol Records
This video is owned by me
THANK YOU TO THE LOYAL PATRONS!!