Why ‘Swish Swish’ Marks An Important Moment for Female Pop Visuals In 2017
Pop music is not the same as it used to be. Hell, music isn’t the same as it used to be. And no, I’m not referring to the style or sound.
In 2010, Katy Perry released ‘Teenage Dream’. It was possibly the best pop album the 21st century had seen thus far & with the most number 1 singles from an album by a female artist ever, Katy seemed unstoppable. (She still is, this is not an ‘Oh Teenage Dream was perfect and everything must be compared to it’ article.) It debuted at #1 on the Billboard charts and went on to be triple-Platinum Certified in the United States. Pretty impressive. But this is no longer 2010. In the past seven years alone, the music landscape has changed dramatically.
A big amount of the change is due to a little streaming service named Spotify. When Spotify finally became available in the United States in July of 2011, everything changed. No longer were you obligated to purchase a song/album in order to listen to it. You could instead stream it, which in turn gave the artist a much smaller percentage of monetization per listen, instead of $1.29 per song download. The problem with this? It no longer mattered how many people downloaded the song. If you listen once and aren’t obsessed, the artist gets a mere fraction of a penny for your one-time listen. Just to mention — that’s less than a penny for months of work in a studio, perfecting their craft & creating their artistry.
As Spotify grew, album sales seemed to decrease faster and faster with every passing day. At the time, all of the major A-List artists seemed to be expressing a level of hyper-creativity. Nicki Minaj, Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, etc. were all on top of the world, showing their avant-garde fashion creations when suddenly — the general public seemed to want more relatable music than high-fashion.
Almost overnight, female pop icons were trying to show their authentic selves in an attempt to relate to the average consumer. Indie artists started to emerge and become more ‘mainstream’. And welcome to 2017. Physical album sales are at an all-time low. So how does this relate to Miss Perry’s most recent video?
In every artist’s career, there’s a period where they receive an enormous amount of hate for seemingly no reason. Gaga had her time during the Artpop era, Britney had 2007 when she was going through some health problems, etc. … And in 2017, it’s become the ‘cool thing’ to hate on Katy Perry.
In ‘Swish Swish’, Katy Perry follows her gut, releasing 1 video that’s more light-hearted and silly.
Katy Perry’s More Light-Hearted Visuals:
Teenage Dream — Last Friday Night
Prism — Birthday
Witness — Swish Swish
Despite her first few singles from Witness not performing as expected, Katy turns the situation around and makes fun of herself. Though the video does have the subtle digs at T. Swift (see the wolf in sheep’s clothing mascot), it shows Katy struggling to make a slam-dunk, much like the trouble she’s had with this album’s public reception thus far.
At a certain point, Katy gets hit with the ball and has to be dragged off the court. Just when you think she’s down for good, Nicki Minaj appears for her rap during the bridge of the song. At the end of it, Nicki stops and looks at Katy, and says “Get it together, Katy.” She then stands up and regains her confidence, and ends up winning the basketball championship.
The importance of this visual is one that seems light-hearted on the surface, but relays an underlying message of strength.
Katy could’ve easily made a glamorous video simply focusing on Taylor Swift with a look-a-like & gotten much more attention (Hi, Justin Timberlake). Instead, she made a video that points out some things that we tend to forget in our current state of an Instagram-obsessed, picture-perfect world.
- It’s okay to not be okay.
In the video, people in the stands hold printed images of Katy crying during her live therapy session in June. Most celebs would shy away from sharing those often unflattering images. Beyonce’s team tried to ban unflattering images of her SuperBowl performance — and she wasn’t even crying in them. - It’s okay to fail sometimes.
Though her team starts out pretty weak & pitiful, sometimes failure is necessary in order to succeed. Not many celebs let failure or weakness show when referring to their own work. Katy and her team’s awareness of how Witness has performed thus-far puts her ‘in on the joke’. - Finding humor in a negative situation is sometimes what you need to get through it.
Often times, it’s hard for us to take criticism when it comes to what we love the most. We’ve especially seen this to be true with mega-stars and their art over the last decade. Katy’s ability to poke fun of herself has always been something that resonates with the general public, and it’s more present here than ever before.
Though these are simple principles, there’s hardly any artists of Katy’s stature that are showing the same amount of true vulnerability in their visuals. While every artist is trying to show their ‘authenticity’, Katy manages to do so in the most honest way possible: the way she’s always done it.
The video is truly a hot mess with all of the people featured, but it kept me smiling throughout and I love it. I look forward to the other singles/videos that Katy will release from Witness. Wishing you good luck on winning that trophy, Katy. ❤ xo
— Theo M.
PS- Taylor, if you’re reading, although I don’t care for you after the Kim/Kanye situation… Good luck with ‘Reputation’. Please just own up to your faults (not own them) & I’ll be rooting for you.
