Forget Dylan and Baez. The greatest activist performer of our time is Katy Perry.
The pop star, known for her whipped cream-squirting bras and dancing sharks, will debut her new politically tinged single “Chained to the Rhythm” at Sunday night’s Grammy Awards.
Perry, whose Twitter bio now reads “activist” and “conscious” alongside “artist”—because why not?—is using the song to take aim at the “fake news” culture she seems to conclude led to Donald Trump’s election as President.
According to The Sun, Perry held off publication of her latest studio album so that she had time to write “healing” songs about Hillary Clinton’s electoral defeat, and take musical aim at Trump.
The delay may not have paid off. Although she had several extra months to pen her political opus, Katy’s “incisive” lyrics about the 24-hour news culture and the spread of alternative facts border on the banal.
“Are we crazy? / Living our lives through a lens,” Perry sings over a backup track mixed by Max Martin and featuring Bob Marley’s grandson, Skip. “Trapped in our white picket fence / Like ornaments…“living in a bubble” where people simply “dance to the distortion.”
Bold. Original. and dare we say, world-changing.
Perry was an ardent supporter of Clinton’s Presidential campaign, appearing in several spandex dresses, and once actually disrobing completely, in order to encourage her millennial fans to turn out to the polls. She claimed that she was “using her body as click bait” to “change the world,” but was, sadly, ultimately unsuccessful.
Initial reviews for the single—and for Katy’s recently bleached blonde locks—were mixed on social media.