Katy Perry’s Blue Origin Space Mission Is Tone-Deaf Marketing

Katy Perry’s art has recently been criticized as out of touch, and going all the way to outer space hasn’t helped her image.

On Monday, Perry boarded one of Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin rockets for roughly 10 minutes of commercial space tourism. The six-person crew, which also included CBS News anchor Gayle King and Bezos’ fiancée Lauren Sánchez, flew just above the Kármán line, the imaginary border of Earth’s atmosphere, before returning safely to Texas.

In the days and hours leading up to the journey, Perry was the subject of a deluge of posts on social media that were alternately silly and furious that a pop star would be going on a promotional mission to space. For every funny post joking about the length of her trip, others lambasted Perry for being part of a mission they deemed wasteful and self-indulgent.

After Perry safely landed back on Earth, the comments continued rolling in.

“Today Katy Perry burned more emissions than Taylor Swift did during the entire Eras Tour. Taylor brought millions of dollars to local economies and the space trip contributed nothing to society…. Just a trip funded by a billionaire….” one user wrote.

“thinking ‘we have to protect our mother’ about the earth after going on a vanity space flight funded by a billionaire whose company is destroying said planet is just so funny, she’s got jokes,” another wrote.

The media also got in on the action, writing columns like “So Katy Perry went to space. Wasn’t there anyone else we could have sent?” (the Guardian) and articles like “20 musicians who should get to go to space before Katy Perry” (NPR).

It didn’t help that Perry had embarked on a media circuit ahead of the mission, ostensibly attempting to explain its value but giving her critics more fodder. Speaking with AP News, Perry recycled buzzwords — like “feminine divine” — that she often used to promote her latest album, “143,” and waxed poetic about how the mission would fuel her personal interests.

“I was winding down from a [tour] rehearsal the other day and I was listening to ‘Cosmos’ by Carl Sagan and reading a book on string theory,” she said. (In a useful bit of cross-promotion, Perry is also in the middle of her multi-continent Lifetimes tour and literally showed off the tour setlist in space in a video clip.)

“I’ve always been interested in astrophysics and interested in astronomy and astrology and the stars,” Perry continued. “It’ll be exciting to see them twinkle from that sight.”

It begs the question: Exciting for whom? Perry’s quotes about STEM and stars have drawn mockery on social media, while actor Olivia Munn openly criticized the Blue Origin mission as “gluttonous.”

Blue Origin doesn’t publicly disclose pricing for their private flights, but requesting to reserve a seat via the company’s website requires a $150,000 deposit. Forbes reported that each passenger’s ticket likely cost millions. The company’s slogan is, “For the benefit of Earth,” but to detractors, it looks an awful lot like a bunch of rich people taking an ego trip.

Many critics have noted the potential pollutants produced by rocket launches, especially frivolous ones — a reaction Perry could have foreseen, given all the heat celebrities like Taylor Swift and the Kardashians have gotten for flying on private jets.

It’s the latest PR misstep for the singer, whose attempted pop comeback fell flat last year. The backlash started with her would-be hit single, “Woman’s World,” which took a swing at satire but missed the mark by a wide margin, leading to a full-blown “career crisis.”

As the most instantly recognizable name in the crew, Perry’s involvement with Blue Origin invited a lot of extra attention to its first all-female trip — and, by extension, to space tourism more broadly as a rapidly growing industry for the superrich.

Perry told Elle she has wanted to go to space for her entire adult life. “I was investigating all of the possible commercial options,” she said.

During her interviews about the space mission, Perry has thrown in some talking points about inspiring the “next generation” of young girls to follow in her footsteps. Still, it’s hard to think of a 10-minute joyride in a privately funded rocket as more than a vanity project — literally fulfilling a pop star’s dream to “make space and science glam” and “put the ‘ass’ in astronaut,” in Perry’s own words — when the majority of Americans are worried about earthly concerns like affording a carton of eggs, staying employed, and paying off student-loan debt.

If Perry was hoping to remind fans that her once-fun brand, full of relatable teenage dreams and harmless dancing sharks, now seems out-of-touch— well, then, mission accomplished.