Perhaps there ought to be a separate definition for the Bechdel test when it comes to the pop song, for it appears practically impossible for any singer in the genre, least of all Ariana Grande and Taylor Swift, to keep from talking about a man who fucked them over in love (or is probably about to). And while they’re not talking about it (a.k.a. him) in the form of an A/B conversation with a fellow female, they’re still talking an awful lot about the Big Bad Dick. Which, at this point, has started to come across much like small talk, incidentally the title of Katy Perry’s latest single following “Never Really Over.”
In contrast to the aforementioned, “Small Talk” speaks on the time when it really is over, and one is suddenly faced with the awkward reality: “we went from strangers to lovers to strangers in a lifetime/Now just memories.” While this phenomenon of relegating an ex into the category of “someone never to be talked to again” is most common in the U.S., Perry paints the picture of an arguably worse fate, as further corroborated by the lyric video that takes place in a corporate setting among co-workers à la Dawn and Tim on The Office. In it, the two equally dweebo parties (for Perry is nothing if not a fetishist of nerds as evidenced by the video for “Last Friday Night [T.G.I.F.]”) tiptoe around one another to the tune of Perry singing, “Acting like we never met/Faking like we’d just forget/We were lovers/And now there’s nothing left but small talk.” If it smacks slightly of one of the few songs about heartbreak made iconic by a man, Gotye, in terms of its “Somebody That I Used To Know” lamentations, it might be because the track was produced and co-written by Charlie Puth, himself responsible for singing the latest version of that track, “We Don’t Talk Anymore” (like we used to). So yes, maybe some men have tunnel vision on matters of failed love as well, it just doesn’t seem as oversaturated in the pop marketplace.
Like her supposed “ex”-nemesis Swift (who wielded Perry for spectacle in the “selfless” “You Need To Calm Down” video), Perry has revealed a sudden predilection for dissecting all the angles from which a certain relationship went astray. Because, as is the case with artists of any caliber (maligned pop star or not), the entire draw of art in the first place is to re-address the mistakes of one’s life as a means of coping with and trying to figure out where it all went wrong (and invariably still fail at comprehending). It would appear that either Perry truly is on this path or she suddenly realized that this is the genre of songwriting with the most hit-making potential per the previously named Grande/Swift rule of thumb.
What’s more, when she attempted to test the limits of “purposeful pop” on 2017’s Witness with singles like “Chained to the Rhythm,” it didn’t go over quite as well as her most successful record, Teenage Dream, a title of which speaks to the existence a female pop star needs to live in with regard to the boy-centric thematic content she must stick with if she wants to remain relevant on the charts. So yes, again, one must say that there ought to be a separate Bechdel test instituted for pop songs.
