I’m a long-time Katy Perry fan, but after her performance at the Grammys Sunday night, I’ve had enough.
The “Roar” singer and I have a lot in common. We’re both from California, and we both grew up in very strict Christian homes with parents who likened all secular music to Satan’s mouthpiece.
The first time I heard her was when she did an acoustic set for a local radio station that I was definitely not allowed to listen to, but would sneak in whenever my mom left me alone in the car to run a quick errand — like pick up dry cleaning or to run into the bank.
Between songs, Perry chatted back and forth with the DJ and answered questions about her life and musical influences. She was funny, she was charming, and like me, she had overbearing evangelical parents. As a 15-year-old-girl, I related to her.
A few months later, “I Kissed A Girl” topped the charts. My favorite singer had become a pop sensation about the same time I obtained my driver’s license. Whenever I heard her voice coming from the radio of my purple 1993 Toyota Camry, I would BLAST IT.
In 2015, I forgave her lame Super Bowl performance. I figured the infamous left shark was probably a Taylor Swift plant, designed to wreck her televised appearance on the nation’s stage. I turned a blind eye when she embroiled herself in a real estate battle with nuns in an effort to take a convent out from under the sisters.
Throughout the 2016 campaign, I ignored her numerous campaign appearances alongside Hillary Clinton. I figured it was a crime of ignorance. Perry probably was too dazzled by the idea of a female president to notice that Clinton is a liar and a crook who played the woman card to excuse using a fake charity to funnel money from deep-pocketed donors in exchange for favors.
But now, I refuse to continue making excuses for the woman who was once my favorite singer. Last night, Perry reached peak annoying while performing her new song at the Grammy Awards on Sunday night. Not only is her new song “Chained to the Rhythm” objectively awful-sounding, its political undertones are embarrassingly trite.
Are we crazy?
Living our lives through a lens
Trapped in our white picket fence
Like ornaments
So comfortable, we’re living in a bubble, bubble
So comfortable, we cannot see the trouble, trouble
BARF. BARF. BARF. BARF.
To add insult to injury, she donned a “persist” armband — a not-so-subtle reference to Elizabeth Warren’s recent floor speech that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell cut short. At the end of the song, the first words of the U.S. Constitution appeared behind Perry, and she quickly screamed: “No Hate!” before departing the stage.
"No hate!" @katyperry performs at the #GRAMMYs wearing a pantsuit and a "persist" armband https://t.co/7d49FZHGZf pic.twitter.com/hNhX6cZw9b
— CNN (@CNN) February 13, 2017
WE GET IT. You are super sad Hillary Clinton lost and think Donald Trump’s occupation of the White House has rendered the Constitution somehow void — which further proves that you don’t understand our political system. There are checks and balances on the president’s power, and pop culture can be a formidable opponent to those in power, but not when prominent figures in pop culture act like this. Taking cheap shots at the president while using as a tacky decoration the document that preserves the rights and freedoms our creator has endowed each of us with is insulting.
I’m not the only one who feels this way, either. Nearly 9,000 others want the “Teenage Dream” singer to stop lecturing everyone about their politics, according to an online poll by the Association of Mature American Citizens (AMAC). In a completely unscientific Twitter poll, many of my followers share similar sentiments.
https://twitter.com/Bre_payton/status/830148471697133568
It would be one thing if her politically charged song actually sounded good, but it doesn’t. And the publicity stunt debuting her song — literally chaining a disco ball with a headphone jack to a park bench in Central Park — was dumb.
If I’m being honest, my annoyance with Perry isn’t just rooted in her recent decision to be annoying AF. It’s that the quality of her music — and all things with her name on it, for that matter — has rapidly plummeted. Recently, I bought a tube of her CoverGirl mascara and was sorely disappointed.
https://twitter.com/Bre_payton/status/830144734152769538
Despite the tube’s claims of providing a waterproof formula, the mascara smeared within 30 minutes after applying it, and the wand is disgusting and weird. I threw it away after one use. I have purchased every other mascara she’s ever hawked, but won’t continue to do that anymore.
Katy Perry used to be good. She used to put her face on mascaras that actually worked, and sang songs that were fun and had unique lyrics. But that’s all changed. Her brain seems to have broken from the reality that is American politics, and now she just makes a bunch of noise while singing lyrics that are close to gibberish while hyping up shallow politics.
