Katy Perry has responded to backlash following criticism of her new music, tour and Blue Origin space flight earlier this month, writing in a social media comment that she’s felt “battered and bruised” but has “kept looking to the light.”
On April 14, the pop star was part of an all-female crew — also including “CBS Mornings” anchor Gayle King and journalist and philanthropist Lauren Sánchez — who took an eight-minute trip to space via the Jeff Bezos-founded tech company. Though its purpose was to bring attention to women in aeronautics, the flight resulted in a flood of criticism and ridicule online, even from Perry’s fellow celebrities like Olivia Munn and Amy Schumer as well as the fast food chain Wendy’s. Perry also recently faced fallout over her most recent album, “143,” which failed to reach the commercial and critical heights of her past work, and its accompanying Lifetimes Tour.
Though Perry did not address the flight directly, she responded to the general online hate in a lengthy comment under a post from the fanpage Katy Perry Brasil featuring a billboard purchased by fans to promote her ongoing tour.
“I’m so grateful for you guys. We’re in this beautiful and wild journey together. I can continue to remain true to myself, heart open and honest especially because of our bond,” she wrote. “I love you guys and have grown up together with you and am so excited to see you all over the world this year! Please know I am ok, I have done a lot work around knowing who I am, what is real and what is important to me.”
Perry then referenced advice her therapist gave her, writing: “No one can make you believe something about yourself that you don’t already believe about yourself.” She continued, “When the ‘online’ world tries to make me a human Piñata, I take it with grace and send them love, cause I know so many people are hurting in so many ways and the internet is very much so a dumping ground for unhinged and unhealed.”
She said that she keeps positive by focusing on “what’s real”: “seeing your faces every night, singing in unison, reading your notes, feeling your warmth. I find people to lock eyes and sing with and I know we are healing each other in a small way when I get to do that.”
Perry added that she’s “not perfect” and has even “omitted that word from my vocabulary.”
She concluded: “I’m on a human journey playing the game of life with an audience of many and sometimes I fall but… I get back up and go on and continue to play the game and somehow through my battered and bruised adventure I keep looking to the light and in that light a new level UNLOCKS.”
In defense of Perry, Variety chief correspondent Daniel D’Addario wrote in a column this week that becoming a laughingstock has only proven her star power. “She is owed consideration not just for her past achievements but for the painful fact that she compels as much in failure as she previously did in success,” he wrote. “On a wrongheaded space flight or crying on stage while singing a 15-year-old song, Perry still holds our gaze. That may not be artistry, exactly. But it’s what makes a star.”
From Variety US