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It was one small step for Katy Perry when she stepped grandly out of the Blue Origin space capsule earlier this month, bent down and kissed the Texas terra firma — but it was a giant leap backward for her already sputtering career.
Perry, 40, got hit with much of the considerable backlash from the showy and what many called “cringeworthy” 11-minute trip into space with fellow “astronauts” CBS anchor Gayle King, Lauren Sánchez (the fiancée of Blue Origin’s Jeff Bezos), civil rights activist Amanda Nguyen, ex-NASA engineer Aisha Bowe and film producer Kerianne Flynn.
Much of the blowback came from an astonishing number of fellow celebs, and not just provocateurs like podcaster Joe Rogan — who sarcastically deemed the trip “very profound” and sniped, “I don’t know if you’ve seen Katy Perry talk about it, but she’s basically a guru now.”
Olivia Munn called the flight “a bit gluttonous.” Olivia Wilde shared a carousel of memes mocking the flight on Instagram and said, “Billion dollars bought some good memes I guess.” Emily Ratajkowski weighed in with, “That’s end time s–t. Like, this is beyond parody.”
On X, Jessica Chastain shared an op-ed from the Guardian headlined, “The Blue Origin flight showcased the utter defeat of American feminism.”
Musician Trace Cyrus, meanwhile, accused Perry of copying his sister Miley’s career.
“I first knew Katy Perry and her team were lame as f–k when her career was first dying,” he said in a lengthy rant posted to Instagram after the Blue Origins flight.
“And they were like, ‘Hm, what can we do? Well, what worked for Miley? She cut her hair off and it broke the internet and everyone freaked out and she bleached it blond. We should do that with you, Katy,’” he continued.
Perry’s new status as the most unpopular woman in pop couldn’t have come at a worse time — right before her first global tour in eight years, which kicked off in Mexico City Wednesday.
Adding to the sting: Her latest album, 2024’s “143,” debuted at No. 6 on the Billboard 200, it had disappeared from the chart less than a month later.
Perry — who said before the flight that she was going to “put the ass in astronaut” — was widely mocked for using her three minutes of weightlessness in space to promote the setlist of The Lifetimes Tour.
It was all a far cry from Perry’s splashy arrival onto the music scene in the early aughts, and her subsequent domination of the charts. Her third studio album, 2010’s “Teenage Dream,” was the first ever to have five number one singles by a female artist — with hits like “California Gurls” (feat. Snoop Dogg), “Firework,” “E.T.” and “Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.”).
But Perry’s bad press has been building since last fall when “143,” her 7th studio album, was released to tepid to nasty reviews. Lead single “Woman’s World” was dismissed by some as white-woman feminism, and it may not have helped that she worked with songwriter/producer Dr. Luke — who settled a defamation lawsuit with Kesha over rape-accusation claims, which he has denied — on the tune.
Taking it a step further, some online pundits have even suggested that Perry’s downfall is the result of a nun’s “curse.”
The singer had been in a real-estate battle over a convent in Los Angeles for years when Sister Catherine Rose Holzman, on her way into court in 2018, told reporters, “To Katy Perry, please stop. It’s not doing anyone any good except hurting a lot of people” — then died on the scene hours later.
Adding to her bad PR, earlier this year Perry was slammed as “unforgivable” by the family of a disabled veteran, who claim the man wasn’t cognizant when he sold his Montecito, Calif., property to Perry and longtime partner Orlando Bloom. (A lengthy court battle was ruled in Perry and Bloom’s favor in 2023.)
But sources close to Perry say she’s shaking it off, in the spirit of her one-time friend Taylor Swift, and throwing herself into her new 81-date tour — the first with Bloom and their 4-year-old daughter, Daisy.
She took to the stage Thursday in Mexico City in a silver bodysuit, flying above the stage and defiantly addressing her haters by asking: “Has anyone ever called your dreams crazy?”
After all, Perry is known for her resilience in the face of tough times.
She famously was dumped via text by her ex-husband, Russell Brand, on New Year’s Eve 2011 just minutes before she had to take to the stage for a concert.
“What I find interesting now is that she’s become that very rare thing: a female artist who can be criticized,” NPR pop music critic Ken Tucker told The Post. “Her recent album ‘143’ was mediocre, but the reviews were negative, mean, vitriolic. The music wasn’t that bad. So, why?”
Tucker suggests that some of the venom comes because attention-hungry Perry is working too hard to be edgy and stay relevant.
“But the bad reviews are really notable because, for the past decade, woke culture has decreed that you can’t say anything negative about a female artist — just try to find anything critical written about, say, Beyoncé or Joni Mitchell. It is verboten. But Katy Perry is perceived [as being] just old enough, just un-hip enough to make dumping on her OK.”
The “Lifetimes” extravaganza, a year in the making, features Perry in what described to Entertainment Tonight as a rather “cyborgian” show — with her playing a video game character — that involves some live audience participation.
Bloom will reportedly be on hand for many of the dates and little Daisy will be backstage for the whole tour, Perry told the outlet.
After high-profile flings with celebs including John Mayer and Josh Groban, for whom she wrote “The One Who Got Away,” and her unhappy marriage to Brand, Perry seems to have settled into domestic bliss with Bloom.
The two met at the Golden Globes in 2016 and broke up briefly the next year, but got back together and Bloom proposed in 2019.
Though Perry has always guarded her private life, one source said she’s opening up like never before.
“She’s not ruling out bringing Daisy or Orlando on stage,” one insider said. “This tour is about love, and they’re a huge part of that story.”
Perry has asked fans on social media to recommend good coffee shops and parks for her to take Daisy to while on tour.
But while the singer was the world’s highest-paid musician as recently as 2015, she could do with an image makeover as she enters her 40s.
“Fifteen years ago Katy Perry was red-hot,” a veteran music industry insider told The Post. “Now her name never comes across my desk. It happens to a lot of artists. They have their moment and it goes away. It seems like a very long time ago that she and Taylor were viewed as rivals on a similar playing field.”
Perry, he added, “is at this point a pop confection, more of a cartoon. Artists like Billie Eilish are taken very seriously, but that’s not who Katy Perry is.”
English (US)