What Katy Perry Can Learn From Gen Z Pop Stars

The 25-year-old, 5-foot-11 former Disney star (of the hit TV series Girl Meets World) has become the world’s most prominent rising talent, with her last two singles – Espresso and Please Please Please – reaching No. 1 on charts around the world. Her level of exposure first exploded in 2021, when Olivia Rodrigo released her chart-topping single Drivers License.

The song contained the lyric “And you’re probably with that blonde girl / Who always made me doubt”, which was widely interpreted as a tale of Carpenter’s rumoured affair with Rodrigo’s ex-boyfriend, actor Joshua Bassett. A pop-obsessed corner of the internet went into overdrive, and for a time, the enduring image of Carpenter in the public consciousness was a negative one: a woman who stole another man’s man. (Interestingly, as Carpenter’s star status has risen, little has been said about her relationship with actor Barry Keoghan, who has a daughter in Ireland.) It was a tale as old as time in the music industry, where successful women have long been pitted against one another.

But what followed was proof that while the industry still operates on the same sexist premise, artists now refuse to play by its rules. Refusing to sit idly by the criticism, Carpenter released her fifth album, Emails I Can’t Send, in 2022, which featured the Rodrigo response Because I Liked A Boy. Interestingly, it also featured Carpenter’s commercial breakthrough, Nonsense, a pithy, breezy pop number that builds to an impromptu, innuendo-laden verse. When Carpenter performed it at Radio 1’s Big Weekend in Luton in May, she – apparently warned in advance by the Beeb – opted for the lyric: “BBC said I should keep it PG / BBC I wish I had it in me / There’s a double meaning if you dig deep”. Sorry, Tim Davie.

Carpenter has shed her pristine Disney image, and her live performances of the song—most notably as the opening act for Taylor Swift’s Eras tour—have catapulted her to viral fame on social media. Along with Roan, she’s now the pin-up girl for a generation of sexually liberated girls who won’t be told what to do.

Song to listen to: Espresso