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 fairly generic pop banger about female empowerment. Fine idea, but rarely has someone so misread the room. Crammed with cartoonish, fleshy pop-pinup imagery, the video was in line with Perry’s earlier, Day-Glo clips. But this one was widely savaged for being heavy-handed, empty of meaning, stereotypically sexualized, or out of step with the way women present themselves on record and in videos. (Seeing the controversial Dr. Luke’s name in the credits didn’t help, either.) In a video posted on her Instagram, Perry pushed back, insisting the whole thing was meant as satire and “a bit sarcastic” and “very slapstick” — even, apparently, the moment when she sticks a gas pump into her backside.
If Perry meant to mainline herself into the cultural conversation, mission somewhat accomplished. But the video also triggers something she and her team probably didn’t intend. It certainly recalls the main-character role she played in one of the great pop moments of recent memory — that sublime period, roughly 2008 to 2013, when she, Lady Gaga, Rihanna, Kesha, and many more commandeered and reinvigorated pop, practically competing with each other for who could come up with the wildest, most creative, and jacked-up single. The craving for attention felt in the “Woman’s World” video (it practically screams: “I’m still relevant!”) is a jarring acknowledgement of just how far off that period now is and how pop and the world around Perry have changed.
But first, let’s revel again in what an astounding era that was. Maybe it was the arrival of Barack Obama in the White House, and the relative youth and idealism he suggested; maybe it was the thirst for undeniably addictive pop after a decade when exciting developments in hip-hop and a new onslaught of indie rock acts had dominated. Back in 2008, little else had the club rush of Gaga’s debut, The Fame; its one-two-three punch of “Poker Face,” “Paparazzi,” and “Just Dance” recalled the heady time of Madonna’s conquest, the days when hooks mattered more than melisma overkill. Two years later, we got Perry’s Teenage Dream, whose first four tracks — the title tune, “Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F),” “California Gurls” and “Firework” — were a hit parade unto themselves.
For a few years, you could turn to whatever outlet you used to hear pop (SiriusXM’s two Top 40 channels, in my case) and hear one inventive and undeniable record after another: Gaga’s “Bad Romance,” her and Beyonce’s unrelenting “Telephone,” Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep” and other singles from 21. Even Gotye’s sulking “Somebody That I Used To Know” sounded like the commercial record Peter Gabriel declined to make after “Sledgehammer.” (“No, you didn’t have to stoop so low/Have your friends collect your records and then change your number” is a breakup-song line only a record geek could love.) From the singing to the production, the songs were commanding and alive. Just as in the prime Motown era, the height of bubblegum and disco, the synth-pop boom of the Eighties, and the boy-band and Britney era of the late Nineties, we once again found ourselves in a moment when pop felt utterly confident in its ability to intoxicate us all.
As most of that list shows, that moment truly was a woman’s world. Rihanna’s cascade of singles were themselves a one-person array of sound. The sky-high “Diamonds” didn’t sound anything like “Stay,” the most moving power ballad of the time, which in turn didn’t sound like anything like the pumped-up “Don’t Stop the Music” or the stuttering grind of “S&M.” Each one of those records was sonically and vocally different from the one before, but you never doubted they all emerged from planet Rihanna. (If and when she ever releases a proper greatest hits compilation, it’s going to be killer.)
Rihanna’s “S&M” also managed to slip the phrase “chains and whips excite me” into the Top 40, a risqué ploy not confined to that song. Hits of that time were especially brash. Kesha’s “Tik Tok” and “We R Who We R” and Perry’s “Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.)” — parties at rich dudes’ houses, but on record —were unabashedly hedonistic and loving it. Carly Rae Jepsen’s 2012 hit “Call Me Maybe,” one of the last great salvos from that time, didn’t hide its 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 would begin to sputter out. Starting with parts of 2011’s Born This Way and into 2013’s Artpop, Gaga’s music became overtaken with musical tchotchkes that cluttered up her records, and she briefly lost the plot. Perry’s 2013 single “Roar” felt strained compared to the effortless charm of her Teenage Dream era (although it works terrifically in the musical & Juliet, based around the catalog of another contemporary master, Max Martin). Rihanna has been laying musically low for nearly a decade now; maybe she realized a cultural moment was ending and headed for the exits. Hip-hop has again asserted its creative dominance, and the rise of a new wave of female indie stars, most prominently the Boygenius gang, has made much of what preceded it suddenly feel bombastic and unsubtle.
It’s telling that one of the prime songs of the summer of 2024 has a shimmery pulse, a wink-wink lightheartedness, and a cheesecakey 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 feel as if it cost zillions, another aspect of “Woman’s World” that feels out of step, and it signifies that pop is in the hands of a new generation. Now let’s see if it can reach the transcendent highs of the era that, for a long moment, made Katy Perry someone worth vibing to.














Taylor Swift and Bad Bunny in a split image
Taylor Swift and Bad Bunny Dealt With Trump Quietly. It’s a Smart Move
Taylor Swift and Bad Bunny are both major superstars — and they’ve shared some parallels in their careers and discographies for several years. Now, they’re even using the same playbook to deal with taunts and baiting from Donald Trump and the White House’s social media teams.
Since Trump took office during his second term, he and his administration have been using social media as part of their communication strategy. The propaganda-like, rage-bait-style clips often lean into internet culture and use popular music to make light of Trump’s most egregious actions, like his immigration policy and war-hungry foreign policy.
Olivia Rodrigo, Katy Perry, Ariana Grande, and Noah Kahan are just some of the artists who have had their music used in these videos without their permission — and vehemently spoken out against these actions and against the president. In the past couple of weeks, the Trump administration seems to have wanted to provoke a response from two of the world’s biggest superstars: Bad Bunny and Swift.
On July 30, the official White House TikTok used “La Mudanza” for a particularly tone-deaf video about immigration that celebrated the number of deportations under Trump. A week later, a video with text that said, “mood because it’s August and Donald Trump is your president” set to Swift’s “August” was uploaded by Team Trump, the president’s official campaign account. The caption was an overt provocation: “I’m sure Taylor Swift is going to be super excited we used her song,” it read. Days later, another clip from the same account featured an edited version of Swift’s Red album cover with text that said, “Did you know that Taylor Swift wrote a whole album about the color of the Republican Party?”
Neither musician has released a public statement denouncing the use of their music in Trump’s videos. Instead, two of the world’s biggest superstars quietly removed their songs from videos posted by official accounts linked to the Trump administration. (It’s unclear if there is a TikTok feature that allows selective sound muting on videos or if the respective teams reached out to the social media accounts directly.) The tracks are still available for other TikTok accounts to use in their videos, making their silence a pointed — and smart — approach. Both Bad Bunny and Swift seem to recognize the president and his administration’s tactics for what they are: antagonizing moves that keep the Trump conversation centered on his social media presence, rather than his actual policies and the harm they commit. Why would they add their star power to the conversation and stoke the flames when that’s exactly what the White House appears to want?
Some people argue that celebrities should wield their platform to denounce Trump at any chance if they are truly not politically aligned with his MAGA politics. But because they hold so much influence, these superstars need to be strategic about how they use it.
Benito, in particular, has been incredibly outspoken about his politics. He stood on two of the world’s biggest stages and used them to voice pro-immigration messages, denounce Trump’s policies, and highlight Puerto Rico as it struggles with the effects of U.S. imperialism. “Before I say, ‘Thank God,’ I’m going to say, ‘ICE out,’” the Puerto Rican superstar said at the 2026 Grammys. “We’re not savage. We’re not animals. We’re not aliens. We are humans and we are Americans.” Last summer, Bad Bunny’s music video for “Nuevayol” used a voice that sounds a lot like the president’s to deliver a pro-immigrant message. “I made a mistake. I want to apologize to the immigrants in America. I mean the United States. I know America is the whole continent,” the voice bellows out of a Seventies radio toward the end of the video. “I want to say that this country is nothing without the immigrants.”
Fans were convinced that Benito would speak out against the official White House TikTok account when it used one of his most political songs. But commenting on the video would only blow up the discussion for a wider audience. When Rodrigo, Perry, Grande, and Kahan made public comments, spokespeople for the White House used the opportunity to spread hateful rhetoric. “We’ll say this one last time: what’s actually barbaric, inhumane, and heinous are the criminal illegal aliens who have injured and murdered innocent American citizens,” Abigail Jackson said in a statement to Rolling Stone after Grande spoke out. It’s the antithesis of what Benito said during his Grammys speech this year: “The only thing more powerful than hate is love.”
Swift, on the other hand, has dealt with Trump and the right-wing’s instigations for years, each one crazier than the last. The TikTok videos from the last week aren’t even the first time that the administration has used the singer’s music for social media videos. Last fall, both the official White House TikTok account and Team Trump used songs from Swift’s then-newly released The Life of a Showgirl in separate videos. One plucked the lyrics “pledge allegiance to your hands, your team, your vibes” from “The Fate of Ophelia” to celebrate Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and the first and second ladies. The others boasted about Trump by using “Father Figure” and honored Melania Trump’s Patriot of the Year award with “Opalite.” As of Aug. 10, the audio is not available under all of these specific videos.
The pop superstar has not spoken publicly about these instances. But she has made her disdain for Trump clear. Over the years, Swift has criticized Trump’s autocratic leadership. On X, she wrote “we will vote you out” and endorsed Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in the 2020 and 2024 elections, respectively. In 2019, Swift told Rolling Stone, “There’s literally nothing worse than white supremacy. It’s repulsive. There should be no place for it.”
Even though she’s shared her liberal viewpoints on issues like abortion, LGBTQ+ rights, and racial inequality, Swift has still faced ridiculous claims of being MAGA-aligned and folding in right-wing dog whistles to her music — and that’s without ever naming Trump. If Swift were to make a statement about her music being used by the Trump administration, the attention-seeking president would absolutely revel in it. Getting Swift and Bad Bunny to weigh in is exactly the type of headline grabber he would love to draw attention from his remarkably unpopular presidency.