Katy Perry, Call Her Daddy & The Podcast Problem

Intro um before we get started I just wanted to give a shout out to my best friend in the haai world Noel Noel texted me yesterday and told me that I should make this video and we had a whole lovely conversation about all the places I could potentially go with it she's so smart so talented she's a radio producer in Seattle and one day I will bully her into moving to New York so we can start our own show together [Music] thanks it may be a bad shot but this is real I mean the the bones that's real yeah my bones yeah I'm I'm I'm five seven and thin I can understand what you mean but that's not just thin no what is it Diane tell me do you know so it's no secret that celebrities and the Press have had a hostile working relationship in the past especially during the early 2000s a lot of people remember this Diane Sawyer interview with Whitney Houston first of all let's get one thing straight crack is cheap I make too much money to ever smoke crack let's get that straight okay we don't do crack we don't do that crack is whack where you can see that the tone of the interview is particularly combative and a little bit hostile but at the time talk shows and tabloid culture were pretty much the only way for celebrities to go on record and address their controversies before the rise of social media and from Whitney to Britney journalists and talk show hosts definitely took advantage of this in order to bring up higher ratings and boost their own careers and obviously we look back at some of these interviews now now and we can argue that many of them were in poor taste and a little harsh and in some cases very misogynistic but today I want to talk about how the rise of social media and podcasts and the blending of the internet and celebrity culture has given the celebrity interview a complete 18 180 and how in some cases that's not always for the best I know a lot of people have expressed disappointment and were really upset that you decided to involve Dr Luke on this album why did you choose to work with him look I I understand that it started a lot of conversations and he was one of many collaborators that I collaborated with but the reality is it comes from me but Sponsored By Article! before we get there I wanted to talk to you guys about the fact that I am sleeping so much better these days and that is due in part to the queen size sheet set that I got from our friends at article who happened to be the sponsor of today's video up until this point I don't think I've ever owned like a set of super high quality sheets in my entire life and it is absolutely a game changer they are so soft and so comfortable and you know we went with white because white obviously goes with a ton of different things but article has so many options on their website if you are looking to up your sheet game or anything else in your home for that matter they have so many things to choose from I mentioned in my last video If you haven't seen it that I got that dresser back there we also got these brand new matching green pillows for our couch I love them they're so comfortable and they are truly a design aesthetic upgrade because before this we were using like two mismatched super old couch pillows that were not the best quality the sheets the dresser and the pillows were all put in the same order and they all came to my apartment on the same day the folks bringing the stuff up to our apartment uh were super organized which is important because we had kind of a lot of moving parts to this order uh they also worked with us to get everything up a couple of flights of stairs and we also were able to choose the option uh for the dresser in particular where they were able to like unload it and set it up in our apartment so we didn't have to like do any of the heavy lifting articles products are super quality the price points are super reliable uh I have never had a smoother operation when it comes to like getting Furniture into an apartment building and I cannot say enough good things about my experience with them they also ship to the US and Canada and their online only store is super easy to use and their customer care team is super helpful and accessible every step of the way from ordering the furniture to getting it into your home you could use the link in the description down below or use the QR code here to get $50 off of your first purchase from article over $100 that is $50 off of your first purchase from article over $10000 you won't regret it guys and thank you so much again to our friends at article for sponsoring today's video what is up daddy gang it is your Founding Father Alex Cooper with The Rise of The Celebrity Podcast call her daddy call her daddy is a podcast that your most Normy friend probably likes and I don't necessarily mean that in a bad way the show is hosted by Alex Cooper who is notorious for having raw and open and honest conversations with celebrities about their careers their relationships and even their most intimate moment moments I enjoy some of Alex Cooper's interviews in the same way that I enjoy stuff like chicken shop date and hot ones because the interviews with the celebrities don't usually feel like interviews they feel like more of an organic conversation whether or not you know the person was prepped by a PR person beforehand it gives the appearance that the person who is being interviewed is not being confronted especially in comparison to some of the other interview clips that I played earlier in this video and because the celebrity so disarmed they might tell stories that they've never told before and it makes the viewer feel naturally more at ease and like they know the celebrity a littleit better and I think that's harmless for the most part however the issue is that these podcasts have almost become like the dominant form of communication for famous people in the sense that they know they're going on these shows because they're insanely popular and also because the target audience is likely the audience that they want to reach with whatever new thing they're promoting and because these podcasters want to continue to have this access it creates this Mutual feedback loop where the celebrities aren't expected to be asked difficult questions and the interviewers don't ever feel comfortable asking difficult questions and this became more apparent during Alex Cooper's most recent interview with Katy Perry on call her daddy where she attempted to ask a question about Katy Perry's decision to work with Dr Luke who is a music producer with some very serious allegations levied against him and I'll play parts of the clip but Katy Perry kind of just gave a non-answer and then Alex Cooper who was not a journalist gave no push back the truth is I wrote Katy Addresses Dr. Luke Kinda these songs from my experience of my whole life going through this metamorphosis and he was one of the people to help facilitate all all that one of the writers one of the producers and I am speaking from my own experience like when I speak from when I speak about Woman's World I speak about feeling so empowered now as a mother as a woman giving birth creating life creating another set of organs a brain a heart I created a whole ass heart and I did it and I'm still doing it and I'm still a matriarch and feeling really grounded Ed in that that's where I'm speaking from and so I created all of this with several different collaborators people that I've collaborated with from the past from Teenage Dream era all of that now like I said Alex doesn't ask any follow-up questions and one of the things that I would want to know you know after that kind of response would be you know why did you go back to working with Dr Luke after electing to not work with him for one of your previous albums after all the controversies came out surrounding his legal battle what do you have to say to your fans and people who want to get into this album who feel off-put by the fact that you would actively choose to work with Dr Luke and those kinds of follow-up questions might feel a little harsh and off-putting due to the tone and Vibe of call her daddy but in the grand scheme of things this is probably something that Katy Perry has been prepped on by a PR team anyway and I think this would have been a missed opportunity to address those issues especially considering and this is my main problem here that there's no alternative there was that rumor where The Death of The Interview that that you had a male appendage that you were a hermaphrodite and you you joked about it on the stage last night maybe I do but but it's would it be so terrible but it's interesting a lot of artists would immediately put out some sort of a statement saying this is absolutely not true you have fun with it why the hell am I going to waste my time and give a press release about whether or not I have a penis my fans don't care neither do I you see interviews like that were much more common 10 to 15 years ago just a famous person sitting down with a journalist with the expectation that they might have to answer some difficult or uncomfortable questions Lady Gaga is not sitting there to promote anything during that interview she's not expected to appear relatable by eating some hot chicken she's just talking about herself and her career and I think there is a place in this media landscape for both and we veered toward the territory of podcast hosts being expected by some people to do the work of a journalist because celebrities don't trust journalists anymore and like I said that's all well and good and fun but the problem is that when a celebrity does something problematic or has some kind of cont that needs to be explained from their perspective there is no outlet for that kind of journalistic exchange to be had Alex Cooper is not a journalist but you know Katie Perry who's been in a lot of hot water recently is not going to sit down with the journalist a couple months back after the quiet onset documentary came out Dan Schneider who was in a lot of controversy didn't sit down to talk about his side of the story with the journalist he sat down to talk about it with TBO not only that but he uploaded it onto his own YouTube channel where he had full control over the edit so the mechanism of of accountability is just gone because all of these people are either just like self-publishing and doing Notes app apologies or you know doing interviews on their own YouTube channel where the narrative is whatever they want it to be and there's no person asking questions or forcing any kind of flow of conversation or they're sitting on a couch or drinking lots of milk and getting thrown softball questions while they promote their new album and that's not to Discount the work of Shawn Evans in particular at all when it comes to like hot ones I love Hot ones I think sea is great at his job and I think Alex Cooper is good at her job as well I just wish that the these podcasts weren't replacing the traditional sitdown interview format I mean that's the sad irony of the last four years is I've advocated for so long for women to use their voice and then I was silent um were you silent or were you silenced the ladder listen I'm not going to like gas up Oprah here she's Oprah she's good at her job however you feel about her as a person is however you feel about her as a person but this interview that Prince Harry and Megan Markle did with Oprah is like probably the last good celebrity sitdown interview that we have ever gotten just using that short clip as an example Megan Markle says something that indicates to Oprah that there is a deeper problem in her statement that she should follow up on Megan says that she was silent putting the onus on herself in that statement and then Oprah asks a very direct followup were you silenced which kind of forces Megan to answer in in a way that is not like combative like the Diane Sawyer interview clips that I played earlier but it's a clarifying question and she gives a clarifying answer you have to be taught how to do this style of interview and more importantly this kind of conversation cannot be produced in the dynamic of like casual or food-based podcasts they just can at the same time though I do understand the appeal that these other more casual kinds of celebrity interview Back To Katy Perry For A Second podcasts bring to a viewer like was the call her daddy interview with Katy Perry the most hard hitting expose on all the controversies that she's currently found herself in no but the fact that she feels so disarmed and so relaxed in that conversation or is at least trying to appear that way gives me a pretty good insight into Katy Perry as a person because Alex Cooper spends this whole interview like confidently validating her delusions if I come downstairs and the kitchen is clean and you've done it all and you've done all the dishes and you've closed all the pantry doors you better be ready to get your dick sucked I mean like literally that is my love language I don't need a red Ferrari I can buy a red Ferrari just do the [ __ ] dis I will suck your dick it's not easy like am I glad that Katy Perry felt comfortable enough to say that string of words together in a sentence in an interview yes because it tells me all I need to currently know about the state of her psyche and her roll out and all that good stuff because during this whole Katy Perry album era I've been questioning whether or not this is like a bit that she's in on whether or not this is like just something that some outof touch marketing executive is pushing upon her and she's too apathetic to really give a [ __ ] but no after watching this whole podcast interview I truly think that she is like very much confident in this product and in this vision and I also didn't realize that she was like one of those Elder Millennial Fox spiritual types A lot of this interview is just Katy Perry ranting to Alex Cooper about like love and light and energy and meditation but in a way it's like clearly not grounded in any kind of actual practice and then Alex Cooper is just going like yeah no exactly like like exactly exactly and sometimes I Old Man Yells At Cloud just want to watch an interview where the two people having the conversation aren't trying to be like buddy buddy with each other call me old school but I like educated questions and realistic answers where it doesn't feel like two people are constantly trying to one up each other in a bit I like some of the content I'm consuming to feel a little bit challenging and whether or not you feel like that's a personal preference I do think something that's really missing from pop culture right now and you can argue well like that's not important not every celebrity needs to be grilled on every single controversy they've ever been in we don't need to like hear their thoughts on every single like opinion they've ever had or everything they've ever done and I I get that but I want to drive home here that my issue is not even the fact that like you need a journalism degree and all these fancy credentials to interview a celebrity or a person of importance a couple of my favorite interviews that I saw online this year were the ones that Theo Von did with Bernie Sanders and bosam Mev I think there is value in that kind of conversation because it's accessible because you know they're speaking in plain language and I think that mainstream journalism needs to do a better job of incorporating that kind of stuff but what bothers me about a lot of these really big shows is that I feel like a lot of them are just becoming these kind of like vapid sanitized products and that's the only thing that celebrities and you know people of General importance feel comfortable doing anymore and to some extent I think that is the press's fault because we saw how in the early 2000s they treated Whitney and Britney Spears and nobody wants to give up that kind of power in that conversation and nor should they and maybe it's The Optimist in me but I'd like to believe there's some kind of Middle Ground here [Music]