Katy Perry, Smile, and Musical Resilience

Photo courtesy of Universal Music Group.

Katy Perry is not the same woman that she was ten years ago.

It is easy for one to think of Perry and automatically see Candyland dreamscapes and neon synthesizers. Her career, founded on carefree idealism, propelled feelgood pop music through the late 2000s and early 2010s, with Katy at the forefront of the musical trend. Her sophomore albumTeenage Dream tied Michael Jackson’s record for most #1 hits off of one record, and Prism’s “Dark Horse” was one of the first charting hits to combine bubblegum sensibilities with trap beats and drum loops. Even the commercially underperforming Witness, the follow up to Prism, still managed to push the boundaries of the Katy Perry pop music canon. 

When looking at Katy’s decade-plus career, she has always managed to mature not just in sound, but in theme. Witness, an album that (in the opinion of the author) is her best work, is founded upon principles of “purposeful pop”; themes of liberation, femininity, and overcoming trauma are found in repurposes of house music (“Swish Swish”) and foot-stomping stadium fillers (“Pendulum”). All the while, Perry expresses an explicit desire to stay true to her pop roots (“Hey Hey Hey”) and handle mature subject matter (“Bigger Than Me”). 

However, Witness was released in 2017. A lot has changed since then, and the world is in a much different place than it was six months ago, let alone three years ago. People grow, people change, and people find themselves in much different spaces in their life than they would’ve imagined.

Enter Katy Perry and her new album, Smile. Propelled by singles “Never Really Over” and “Daisies”, the album takes us on a journey through a now thirty-five-year-old Katy. A Katy Perry that is not “shooting whipped cream out of her boobs [anymore]” (direct quote), but a Katy Perry with a daughter. A Katy Perry engaged to actor Orlando Bloom. A Katy that feels more empowered and stable in both her sense of self, and of her career.

Smile, according to Perry herself, was born from what she calls “one of the darkest times in [her] life”, and the experience of “walking through [hell] to become stronger”. With this in mind, songs like “Teary Eyes” and “Only Love” become pinnacles of perspective, of ways to look at and perceive the life around you. Hopefulness and resilience are recurring themes, the latter receiving a whole track dedicated to the power of standing tall (“Resilience”), and overall, the album seems to be founded on one larger principle: clownery. She speaks on this in-depth with statements of “I’ve always felt a little bit like the court jester, and I’ve always had a little bit of humor injected into everything I do”, and this reflects in everything from the musical palette to the cover art, featuring Katy in clown makeup and aesthetic. It’s the “shooting whipped cream from the boobs” of 2020. 

On Smile, that Candyland dreamscape sensibility is still present. The lead singles, “Never Really Over” and “Smile” still have the bounce about them that one would expect from Obama-years pop, and other tracks like “Not the End of the World” (an album highlight) feel like Dark Horse taken up several notches. The album feels like a more developed amalgamation of her previous work, all wrapped up in twelve compact tracks. “Cry About It Later” invokes dark eighties synthpop, a la Soft Cell’s “Tainted Love” or Corey Hart’s “Sunglasses At Night”. “Champagne Problems” is a nu-disco hit with the energy of a Donna Summer single. 

All in all, it expresses the inner workings of Katherine Hudson: a mother, a pop star, and most importantly, a human.

Smile is out now, on all streaming services, courtesy of Capital Records.

— Reanna Cruz, Head of Content