On the Timing Of Her New Album:
“This record has been interesting to put out because it’s during these Looney Tunes times, it’s during a pandemic, a racial revolution, an election year and I’m delivering a baby at the same time,” she expressed about her upcoming album, Smile, which drops Aug. 14.
The 35-year-old star also pointed out how criticism of her 2017 album, Witness, impacted her mental health.
“I’ve always had a playful thing about my music and I lost that… I had really lost my smile,” she said. “You create art and you’re excited for it to be received by the world. When it’s not received by the world, when it’s kind of like, ‘No, thank you,’ you think, ‘Oh s–t, that doesn’t feel good.'”
On Her Struggles With Depression While Making Smile:
“It was more than I had ever faced in my life. I’d had bouts of depression before, but I had been able to avoid falling into the really dark depression by making music,” she explained. “It’s like all these things you do to distract, you eat, you work you get a new boyfriend, you shop.”
Katy added, “I was so ashamed about being on medication because I was like… ‘I wrote ‘Firework.’ But it was one of those things where I’d sprained my brain a little bit.”