Friday Notebook

When the Encore's the Main Act: Iona Rangeley-Wilson on the the Never-Ending Era of Rebrands and Reconcilliation

Will the Eras Tour ever end? I thought London was the last of it but it’s set to pick up again in a month’s time at the Hard Rock Stadium in Miami. Yes: that’s owned by the same people who own the Hard Rock Café. Given that Eras is all about Taylor Swift’s personal transformation from country singer to global pop star to someone who can literally make or break a country’s GDP, it makes sense that the next stage of her career would be to go into the sort of partnership some might call Crack Capitalism. If not with the Hard Rock Café itself, maybe Coca Cola (Jamie Dorman has reportedly taken over from Kate Moss, but Swift is not Miss Americana for nothing).

Anyway, onto Oasis: rock music’s most notorious brothers; the Cain and Abel of Greater Manchester. Rumours that they might dethrone Swift’s record eight nights at Wembley stadium were dispelled this week when they announced they would only be playing four concerts at the arena in West London in 2025. Tickets go on sale tomorrow following a kerfuffle with the presale ballot (now resolved). Oasis are completing their own transition from fraternal bandmates to loutish men heckling each other and smashing up guitars, to — 15 years down the line — supposedly reconciled cash cows. 

(On the reconciliation part, I have my doubts – these are two of the most volatile men in the industry and the internet is already awash with memes of Ticketmaster selling their cancelled event insurance for the Oasis gigs. Also remember that, in 2006, Liam Gallagher “allegedly” had a drunken brawl with the football player Paul Gascoigne at the Groucho Club which ended with him setting a fire extinguisher in Gascoigne’s face.).

Call it a rebrand, a realignment, a reconnaissance, or simply a necessary cash-in for Noel following his £20m divorce last year: this is nothing new. Henry VIII did it when he wanted a divorce and declared Catholicism out for 1534. Probably a monkey did it several million years ago when it decided the ground looked pretty neat and walking might be more efficient than climbing. But we do seem to be stuck in an age where reinvention isn’t so much a quirk as a prerequisite. A few well-timed interviews and the smoke and mirrors of a PR team can turn anyone from one incarnation into a different – and often entirely contradictory – one. At great speed, with ever greater regularity; and to sometimes hilariously miscalculated results. To see it done badly, follow JoJo Siwa’s move from glitter-bow dance star to gothic (yet still glittery) Aquaman-esque “bad girl”.

What to make of the most quixotic reinvention of recent times: that of former Miss Americana, Ms Katy Perry? The firework singer is back on the Capitol Records gravy train after what felt like an endless stint aboard Jeff Bezos’ yacht. Woman’s World, the lead single of her upcoming seventh studio album, 143, announced her most recent transformation-apparent in advance of the album itself, which launches three weeks today. Having helpfully drowned out the misery and angst of the post-Recession years with delightfully meaningless pop bops about Daisy Dukes and bikinis, Katy has been struck by the feminine divine (her words) and is seemingly reinventing herself as a symbol of women’s empowerment. (Though Katy herself would insist this rebrand is only a logical next step, having retrospectively realised how integral her hit ‘Firework’ was to women’s liberation in 2010.)

Under the reign of 2024 Katy, any woman experiencing self-doubt need only listen to Woman’s World to remind herself that ‘She’s a flower, she’s a thorn’, ‘She’s a sister, she’s a mother.’ Because, yes, the greatest thing about womanhood is that women can be both nice and nasty, and defined by their position within the family unit. A tough blow for middlingly-friendly childless cat ladies everywhere.

And my god — the music video. Dressed as a lewd Rosie the Riveter, Katy and several other scantily clad friends dance around on a construction site squidging their breasts and playing with sparkly drills and… are those dildos? Rosie the Riveter is then crushed by a giant falling anvil and turns into a new, more powerful woman, this time in a bikini and with giant robotic horse legs – like if one of Sam from Transformers’ interchangeably hot girlfriends went behind his back and shagged Megatron. Her and her friends do various empowering things like filling their butts up with petrol and dragging monster trucks around. She then steals a black woman’s phone and flies off in a helicopter. I’m shocked her new best friend Lauren Sanchez wasn’t in it somehow.

It’s all a bit confusing, and everyone was a bit confused. So much so that Katy was forced to retroactively declare the video satire, because she was only satirising the commodification and sexualisation of feminism while she was busy commodifying and sexualising feminism.

Personally, I preferred Perry’s music when it didn’t pretend not to be vacuous. We all want to feel like sun-kissed California gurls sometimes, and perhaps owning that would be the most feminist thing Perry could do. Was it also satire, meanwhile, that Woman’s World was co-written and produced entirely by men, including one (Dr Luke) who has been accused by a musical contemporary of Perry’s (Kesha) of emotional, physical and sexual abuse? And as Justin Curto of Vulture pointed out, satirical music video or not, the feminism in the song is also just a bit 2014. I for one do not feel particularly transformed or empowered by the idea that there is fire in my eyes and I was born to shine. And I highly doubt it would be particularly empowering to women in Afghanistan, recently banned from using their voices in public, either. One has to wonder if Perry watched the Barbie movie too many times.

But in an era where personal transformation is about publicity rather than genuine change, does authenticity matter? The overwhelmingly negative reaction to Katy Perry’s feminism or JoJo Siwa’s rebelliousness would say yes, but the number of people talking about them would say no. Ultimately, a hate watch/listen still leads to royalties (14m views so far for Woman’s World on YouTube and about as many scathing comments). Oasis may well produce new music between now and Wembley; but if that flops, they may be well advised to take Gauche’s advice and stage a good old-fashioned bust up.