Katy Perry's Soured Reputation Will Never Recover After Her Massive Downfall From Fame

Katy Perry transformed from a relatively unknown gospel and Christian singer into a pop star with her hit song "I Kissed A Girl" in 2008, and her follow up album "Teenage Dream" in 2010 cemented her fame. Then in 2015, Perry gave what some think was one of the best Super Bowl performances of all time. But over the years, her career and reputation seem to have taken one hit after another, with her fails seemingly outshining her wins. Whether it's real estate drama, her much derided flight to space, drama with fellow celebs, or some questionable song choices, it seems unlikely that Perry will regain the level of fame and general goodwill from the public that she had a decade ago. And what's worse is that many of these missteps seem like unforced errors on Perry's part.

The negative spotlight on Perry appears to have started in 2014 with a much publicized, years-long feud between Perry and Taylor Swift. It involved reports of stolen tour dancers, and it involved each of the women writing not so nice songs seemingly about one another. In Swift's case, it was "Bad Blood," and Perry wrote "Swish Swish."

The two seem to have made up by 2019, but at the same time that she was able to make up with Swift, she wasn't able to make strong album sales. Both "Witness" and "Smile," albums that dropped in 2017 and 2020 respectively, performed poorly with fans and critics.

Katy Perry followed up her lackluster album sales with a residency in Las Vegas at Resorts World. It earned her a lot of money, but the venue apparently lost money on the deal. Then in 2024, she dropped a new album, called "143" in what some thought would be a comeback. Third time's the charm right? Well, not so much for Perry. "Woman's World" was the lead single for the album, and the song itself as well as the music video got a lot of backlash. The idea behind the song seems to ostensibly be about women's empowerment, but it fell flat for a lot of critics. Perry explained that the video, which featured her as a sexy "Rosie the Riveter" among other things, was satire; people didn't really buy it. Another issue was that she produced the song with Dr. Luke, who was sued by singer Kesha for sexual assault.

Then there was "Lifetimes," the second single off the album, which had its own problems. The video was filmed in part at the Parc Natural de Ses Salines, an UNESCO World Heritage Site on the Balearic Islands. The issue was that she didn't have permission to film there, and the video's production company was later fined €6,001, via Majorca Daily Bulletin.

In April 2025, Katy Perry was a part of an all female space flight with Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos' space company, that lasted just over 10 minutes. Perry was joined in space by celebrities Lauren Sánchez Bezos and Gayle King, as well as filmmaker Kerianne Flynn, aerospace engineer Aisha Bowe, and a bioastronautics research scientist Amanda Nguyen. The latter two did actual experiments while in space. Perry, on the other hand, sang a bit of Louis Armstrong's "What a Wonderful World" and held up a butterfly with the names of the songs for her upcoming "Lifetimes" tour on them. She also brought up a daisy with her, in part to honor her daughter, Daisy Dove Bloom, and she kissed the ground after the flight was over.

Social media roasted Perry for the stunt. The overall theme of the criticism was that it was a waste of money and resources for self promotion. In the Instagram comments of the post that Perry shared to her page about the flight, someone said, "Stop branding privilege as achievement. It is very embarrassing."

A range of celebrities also had negative things to say, with Emily Ratajkowski, Olivia Munn, and others doubting the value of the flight. Even fast food restaurant Wendy's came after Perry. In an X post, the Wendy's account said, "can we send her back" in reply to a post about Perry having made it back from space.

Katy Perry had a dispute with the Sisters of the Most Holy and Immaculate Heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary starting in 2015, when the sisters sold what had been their convent and grounds in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles to Dana Hollister, a restaurateur and hotelier. However, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles didn't approve the sale, and he instead sold it to Perry.

The issue ended up in court, and a quip from Perry about having sold her soul to the devil for her success was apparently particularly upsetting for the nuns. "In selling to Katy Perry, we feel we are being forced to violate our canonical vows to the Catholic Church," Sister Catherine Rose Holzman said, according to The New York Times. Holzman collapsed and died during a 2018 court hearing connected to the case.

In July 2020, Perry and Orlando Bloom signed a deal for a house in Montecito. They made an offer of $15 million to Carl Westcott, the owner, who was recovering from back surgery at the time. By August 2020, Westcott said he hadn't been in a fit state to sign anything, and he attempted to back out of the sale. The lawsuit eventually settled in Perry's favor, but the damage to her reputation couldn't be stopped. Her battle inspired the proposal of the PERRY Act, which stands for the Protecting Elderly Realty for Retirement Years Act.

In April 2024, Katy Perry posted a picture of herself next to a Tesla Cybertruck on X, said "thx for the delivery," and tagged Elon Musk. Musk's reputation hadn't tanked completely at that point; it took Musk's up and down relationship with Donald Trump in 2025 to accomplish that. But plenty of people still weren't impressed with Perry's flex of the new Cybertruck. One person pointed out the problems that Cybertruck has had and that they didn't think it was a safe vehicle, saying, "Katy it has been recalled." To which someone replied, "So has she."

thx for the delivery @elonmusk #idol pic.twitter.com/nKB8Dqwig4

— KATY PERRY (@katyperry) April 23, 2024

Another said, "Yuck not the Elon Musk mention lol." While someone else wrote, "You really are an industry shill perry." It wasn't just on Musk's own social media platform that Perry got called out for seemingly associating with and supporting Musk, and some people thought that it was showing that she was more conservative than you might guess from someone who sang a song titled "I Kissed A Girl." On Reddit, one person posted, "fangirling for Elon musk is a pretty enormous red flag."

The Lifetimes Tour, promoting Katy Perry's "143" album, kicked off in April 2025, and it has given Perry a big paycheck. The show has a futuristic, sci-fi vibe that involves, among other things, Perry fighting to save butterflies. But not everyone has been that impressed with the quality of the performance, especially when the tour first opened. Footage of Perry's dance moves from opening night in Mexico went viral on TikTok for all the wrong reasons. The dancing seemed, well, awkward seems like the best word for it. One person commented on TikTok, "I want a refund and I didn't even go." Another brought up her space flight, saying: "Guess those 11 mins she spent in space could have been better spent on choreography."

The comments kept going, and the comparisons weren't great. "This is the dance me and my friends made up at recess," one TikTok critic posted. Some thought it was a lackluster version of Taylor Swift's The Eras Tour, and some compared her to the controversial Australian breakdancer who had a subpar performance at the Paris Olympics.

Perry has been doing her best to shake off the haters and continue doing her own thing. But with her ongoing career mishaps and personal life drama, Perry's downhill trend seems to just keep going.