With a Grammy performance and now an even more politically charged music video for “Chained to the Rhythm,” Katy Perry wasn’t content to stop at just that for the 37th Annual BRIT Awards on February 22nd. Building (no house pun intended) on her love of using 50s suburban-style housing as a metaphor for the Eisenhower era-on-acid turn America has taken of late, Perry featured some stark imagery to get the audience’s attention–highlighting one of the main problems with a political leader trying to take his constituents back to the dark ages: they’ve experienced too much light to allow it to happen.
As such, Perry wants to make doubly certain she gets her two cents in on the matter, parading skeletal versions of Donald Trump and British Prime Minister Theresa May in their signature ensembles while careening among the houses whose lives they seem to be undercuttingly destroying with their Godzilla-like presence–though one house didn’t quite get to endure this type of persecution.
While Perry seems to be coming from a place of ardency with regard to speaking out against a regime that still seems to make decisions that deliberately defy all the wishes expressed by the various public protests throughout the U.S., there can be no denying that a political message fits in quite neatly with the song she wants to promote at the moment. Depending on her next single, and the direction it takes, we may need to call bullshit on Perry’s commitment to “the cause.”
