Katy Perry used to be an absolutely dominant pop star, but she’s struggled to land a proper hit in recent years. For the past seven years, Perry has been in pop-star semi-retirement, working as a judge on American Idol, and now she’s jumping back into the game. Earlier this year, Perry announced that she’s leaving Idol, and she gestured at the idea of new music. Tomorrow night, she’ll headline Brazil’s Rock In Rio fest. Right now, we’re learning a few things about what she’s got in the works.

Earlier this week Katy Perry shared the cover art for “Woman’s World,” a new single that’ll arrive next month. She also posted a video of herself lip-syncing to a little bit of the track. Both pieces of information went viral, but not for the reasons that Perry might want. Instead, there were lots of comments on the relative quality of the music — I’m being nice here — and on the image’s similarities to Arca’s KiCk i.

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Now, Rolling Stone reports that Katy Perry has been working on her new album with a list of collaborators that includes Dr. Luke and Max Martin. Luke and Martin worked with Perry on most of her biggest hits, going all the way back to “I Kissed A Girl,” but she hasn’t done anything with Luke since Kesha sued Luke and accused him of abuse in 2014. Kesha and Dr. Luke settled Luke’s defamation lawsuit and issued a joint statement last year.

A Capitol Records source tells Rolling Stone, “Katy knew exactly the album she wanted to make and put together the team to make it happen. And that includes previous collaborators including Luke, Stargate, Max Martin, and Sarah Hudson, and some new heavy hitters such as Vaughn Oliver, Rocco Valdes, and Theron Thomas.”

Kesha has seemingly responded to the news by tweeting “lol.”

These are the same song pic.twitter.com/vpenA985ea

— brandon 🦊 (@bc_fox) June 19, 2024