Katy Perry has everything riding on her upcoming tour and she’s firing herself up, big time, while being under no illusion that this potential comeback is a defining, make-or-break moment for her floundering career, a source exclusively tells In Touch.

“It’s no secret that Katy had a very rough time this past year, her album did not do the numbers she was expecting, a lot of people labelled it a flop, which was mortifying,” the insider says.

The “Roar” singer, 40, failed to live up to her early 2010s heyday as 143 disappointed on the charts – peaking at No. 6, a far cry from her best-performing albums Teenage Dream and Prism hitting No. 1 in 2010 and 2013 respectively. The same can be said for the album’s engagement with fans and critics, prompting many to consider her a has-been desperate to recapture her previous popularity. 

The reaction to her album drop was rough, with Metacritic, which assigns a numerical score based on weighted scores from professional critics, giving it one of the lowest ratings in the past decade and fans deriding her most recent songs on social media as “corny,” “corporate” and “out of touch.”

The Los Angeles Times‘ review critic, Mikael Wood, declared: “In a year of great pop music, Katy Perry’s latest is pop trash … The problem for Perry is that these songs are bad, and not even in a fun way. 143 is an oddly cold dance-pop album with boring melodies, utilitarian grooves and vocal performances that feel vaguely AI-derived.”

The source notes that beyond the general malaise with which the album was welcomed and lackluster sales, “there was all that backlash over her song “Woman’s World” that was being pushed as this anthem for strong women and it didn’t connect with the audience, which was a huge shock for Katy,” as, “that has never happened to her before.”

Possibly at the lowest low of her music career, “she’s now in this position where she’s got to prove she’s still got what it takes to pack the stadiums.” 

This means just about everything now rests on the success of her upcoming The Lifetimes Tour, which kicks off in May. She’s hoping that, despite the reactions to her work online, people will still want to come to her shows to relive her greatest hits and that will hopefully make them warm up to her newer sound, as well.

“This is an ambitious tour,” the insider continues. “She hasn’t done a world tour since 2018, so in a lot of ways it’s a whole new ballgame.” 

“It’s also in support of an album that didn’t do the numbers that her previous albums have, so it’s only natural for her to worry that it might not draw the fans, which would be so embarrassing.” 

Avoiding embarrassment may be the best-case scenario for Katy’s tour, even if she has her hopes set much higher. “She’s going into this with the goal of reclaiming her crown as a queen of pop, but at this point there are no guarantees she’ll be able to accomplish that.”