In a series called Mondo Ironico, let us discuss how fucking antithetical something in pop culture is.
When Katy Perry showed up at the 59th Annual Grammy Awards in 2017, it had been four years since her last album was released. And the one that followed 2013’s Prism, Witness, wasn’t exactly met with the same level of commercial and critical success (marking the downward spiral that Perry has been on ever since) that she had grown accustomed to in the earlier part of the 2010s (especially with Teenage Dream, a record whose glory she’s consistently failed to recapture). In fact, after realizing just how panned Witness ultimately was, she ended up feeling suicidally depressed (something that Perry revealed later on, after the dust had settled on that album rollout). Yet perhaps this mental health nadir was presaged by her decision to throw some very overt shade at Britney Spears’ illustrious public mental breakdown in 2007. And Perry did it not once, but twice while making the rounds on the Grammys red carpet in 2017.
Although Witness wouldn’t come out until a few months after that year’s ceremony (with the Grammys airing on February 12th and the album being released on June 9th), the lead single from it, “Chained to the Rhythm,” had already made its way onto radio airwaves and streaming platforms just two days before the Grammys went live. Which is why no-time Grammy winner (despite her thirteen nominations) Perry managed to finagle a place onstage for the debut performance of the single on TV, complete with getting Skip Marley to join her (and, in the process, executed some very awkward dance moves next to him). However, rather than her music taking the spotlight at the event, it was her callous, cavalier comments referencing Spears’ shaved head that made the rounds on the internet afterward.
The first time Perry mentioned it, it was because she was talking about her newly-dyed blonde hair, remarking, “[Blonde is] the last color in the spectrum that I can do, I’ve done all of them and the only thing left to do is shave my head, which I’m really saving for a public breakdown. I’m down for that.” Though, if she actually had to endure one like Spears, she wouldn’t have said such a thing.
Indeed, it doesn’t get any blunter than that comment in terms of making a very specific allusion to what Spears did at that Tarzana hair salon ten years earlier. One might even speculate that it was Perry’s way of “honoring” the anniversary of the event, since it also happened in February. But to mention it twice was overkill, also telling Ryan Seacrest when he asked how it was for her to take a break from music for her mental health, “Fantastic, and I haven’t shaved my head yet.” This beating of a dead (dark) horse of a “joke” is part of what made Britney stans refuse to give her a pass on the matter, with some Twitter comments from fans including, “Ironic how yalls woke queen Katy Perry screams ‘no hate’ an hour after making fun of Britney’s mental stability on the red carpet” and “I don’t care who you are, you never make fun of mental health and Britney Spears’ breakdown. What an asshole comment, Katy Perry.”
And so, perhaps Perry did learn from the lessons of her insensitive remarks after inevitably noticing some of what was being said by the public in response to what she said about Spears (and no, it wasn’t even the first time either, with a resurfaced 2008 interview wherein Perry not only refers to Spears as “nuts,” but also urges her to “wear some frickin’ underwear”). At least, that’s how it presently comes across when seeing that Lola Young, in her April 2026 cover story for Rolling Stone, named her as one of the musicians that reached out to her in the wake of her onstage collapse and subsequent retreat from the limelight to recalibrate and work further on her already well-known addiction and mental health issues. For not since Ariana Grande has there really been someone so outspoken about and protective of their mental health (well, fine, now there’s Chappell Roan, too). A phenomenon that grew among pop stars as a direct result—whether consciously or unconsciously—of what befell Spears in the mid-2000s.
Ironically enough, however, Grande wasn’t on the list of people Young mentioned to have contacted her in some form or another following the “incident.” No, instead, it was Elton John (already a known fan and friend of Young’s), Kesha, Lady Gaga, Charli XCX and, finally, Katy Perry (what, no Chappell Roan?). While all the other names make plenty of sense (with XCX also being a more “undercover” mental health prioritizer [as she alludes to in her 2015 documentary, The F-Word and Me], even if it doesn’t always seem that way because of her workaholic tendencies), Perry’s stands out as something of a “which one of these is not like the others?” instance. Not just because her music isn’t even in the same league as this set of musicians, but because, frankly, her attitude toward Britney during that infamous moment in 2017 (and, as mentioned, in 2008) didn’t exactly immortalize her as a “warm beacon of light” for those struggling with their emotional and mental turmoil.
Of course, there are those who could say Perry was merely trying to “poke fun” because she herself was feeling “unwell” and/or insecure, but, in truth, she was still riding high during that period before she understood just how much Witness was about to flop. In any case, one supposes it’s a “good thing” she’s decided to amend her own brand of crazy ways by choosing to be there for someone still fresh in the industry and trying to learn how to navigate its ups and downs. Though, naturally, one imagines that the gesture don’t impress Britney Spears much. Nor, probably, does Lola Young, who got in her own dig at 2007-era Britney via the lyrics of her breakout hit, “Messy.” So yeah, now that one thinks about it, maybe there was something more pointed to Perry reaching out Young than meets the eye.
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