Katy Perry needs a win so bad right now. The once-dominant pop star is currently in the midst of a deeply cursed rollout for her attempted-comeback album 143. Perry invited backlash by getting back together with her widely despised former collaborator Dr. Luke, and she steered right into that backlash with the vague feminism of first single “Woman’s World.” That song fell off the Hot 100 after one week, and Perry had to explain that its video was satire. Meanwhile, the Environment Department of Spain’s Balearic Government is investigating the video shoot for new single “Lifetimes,” which might’ve caused ecological damage. But now Katy Perry is getting some big recognition from MTV, another once-popular institution that isn’t looking too healthy these days.

MTV is in the midst of laying off a big chunk of its workforce, and it recently killed MTV News and wiped the website’s archives, which pissed a lot of people off. This year’s MTV Video Music Awards had to be postponed for one day — to 9/11 — when the original date turned out to conflict with the Harris/Trump presidential debate. Now, MTV has announced that Katy Perry will be the recipient of this year’s Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award, the VMAs’ lifetime-achievement recognition.

The Video Vanguard award is traditionally a big deal, and it’s become the center of the VMAs broadcast in recent years. (Last year, it went to Shakira.) Katy Perry will perform a career-spanning medley, and it’ll be her first time taking the stage at the VMAs since 2017. Perry really has had a lot of big-deal music-video moments in her career — shooting both whipped cream and fireworks out of her boobs — so she makes sense for the award. Still, it seems unlikely that a VMA performance of “Woman’s World” will affect the dark narratives surrounding all these different enterprises.