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    Katy Perry On Expanding And Reframing Herself On 'Smile'

    The pop music power house drops her new album, Smile, on Friday, and she's given birth to her first child. Perry talks about the loss of certainty and rebuilding her confidence while making Smile.
    by Noel King Aug 27, 2020 8 minutes
    "This record is really about hopefulness. It's about resilience, it's about joy," says Katy Perry. "To me, it's not just about noise, it's about me walking through real hell."

    Katy Perry has had nine No. 1 songs since 2008, including "Teenage Dream," "California Gurls" and "Roar." She has this upbeat, candy-coated, not-quite-real human-with-real-human-problems persona. And then in 2017, she released an album called Witness that was supposed to show a more authentic Katy. Critics didn't love it; more importantly, a lot of her fans didn't either. Her response is her new record, Smile, which is out Aug. 28.

    Katy Perry is quarantining in Los Angeles, with all the real-human problems that entails, but she's smiling anyway because when she spoke to NPR's Noel King, she was only a few weeks away from giving birth to her first child — and she was feeling confident.

    "My sister and I are super close and I've been able to observe how she raises her daughters, who are 3 and 6. She gave birth to her daughters in the room, in her living room and on her bed, and I was there and holding the leg back, so I've seen the miracle of childbirth in all its form," she says. "I'm not going to be surprised. Anyone who's been in the room for the miracle of birth is not surprised."

    Perry and fiancé Orlando Bloom had UNICEF announce the birth of their daughter, Daisy Dove

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