Ethan Miller / Getty Images, Kevin Winter / Getty Images

As soon as Taylor Swift started teasing her latest single — the rainbow-burst “Me!” in May — the speculation game began. Was she unveiling a clothing line? Could the timing mean she was part of the Avengers franchise? Was she coming out? No such luck, as Swift ultimately unveiled an unremarkable pop song about being yourself. The music and video — a rare Swift collaboration with Panic! at the Disco’s Brendon Urie — were like a kid’s confetti bomb explosion. The pastel colors signaled a softening from the black-and-gray palette of her Reputation era, and the simplicity of the “Shake It Off”–style chorus seemed like a — less mature — return to her usual happy-go-lucky style. The song peaked at No. 2 thanks to her massive fanbase, who bought it in droves, but like most of the music off her last album, it failed to match the impact of previous hits, and it’s already falling out of the Top 10. The critical reception has also been the worst of her career. Katy Perry, who, like Swift, found big success by collaborating with famed Top 40 producer Max Martin, has also been struggling; her last album, 2016’s Witness, famously flopped. Her latest single, the hopefully titled “Never Really Over,” released last week, is being promoted as her “comeback” solo release after two years of silence. But the song and accompanying video, which features Perry floating around a field in hippie muumuus while she sings about a never-ending relationship, initially trended on YouTube but quickly fizzled out. (It’s topped out at 30-something million views, low compared with both her and Swift’s 100 million–view average.) Perry and Swift used to effortlessly dominate the conversation as they sent their sonic earworms shooting up the charts and into gyms and Starbucks everywhere. These minor missteps hardly mean their careers — especially Swift’s — are in crisis. But they are at similar moments in their trajectories — Swift is now six albums into her career, and Perry five — and in many ways their current releases illustrate some of the perils of being centrist, risk-averse pop stars in a music world that’s becoming more niche. At some point, striving for the biggest audience starts sucking the fun and whimsy out of pop. And without the goodwill generated by risk-taking in service of a deeper artistic agenda — à la Beyoncé starting with her 4 album — the strategy of trying to mean everything to everyone starts looking, and sounding, rather pointless.

Capitol A still from "Never Really Over"

The strategy of trying to mean everything to everyone starts looking, and sounding, rather pointless.

During Perry’s last album cycle, critics pointed to the way that her queerbaiting and desire for hip-hop cred made it seem as if her musical incarnations were just costumes. “I guess, like, everybody has to stay in their lane?" she said when she grappled with those accusations. Her current New Age moment is similar to Madonna circa Ray of Light — but without the self-seriousness, Orientalist fantasy, or inventive electronica sounds, it just appears generic. "Oh, we were such a mess,” she belts in the chorus for “Never Really Over,” “but wasn't it the best?" Like almost all Perry songs, it’s the kind of universal anthem that one can imagine playing at the end of a blockbuster rom-com. But it seems to have no specific role or impetus in her own career arc. As for Swift, her current single "Me!" seems equally random, more like career management to de-escalate her “controversial” Reputation era and reingratiate herself as the older sister of her young fanbase, rather than make a grown woman’s artistic statement. (This has nothing to do with leaning into girlish imagery — Mariah Carey’s Rainbow is a masterpiece.) Swift’s trajectory has been somewhat different — and initially more successful — than Perry’s. When her nonmusical life and Kanye controversy got her in trouble for playing into a self-victimizing white girl narrative, Swift seemingly disappeared. When she returned, rather than engaging the political zeitgeist in any way, she released the lead single for 2017’s Reputation, “Look What You Made Me Do,” which was all about her: She entertainingly reclaimed the feuds, the image, and the controversies on her terms. “At that time I coined this phrase, ‘There will be no explanation, there will just be reputation’ — ’cause I am dramatic,” she told Ellen DeGeneres about that era, owning her flair for overreaction. “That’s a very dramatic thing, but it rhymed. It was kind of catchy, so I stuck with it.” In terms of promotion, Swift played to her fanbase and initially came out on top. The song was No. 1 for two weeks and dominated Twitter chatter; whether people thought it was good or bad, they reacted to the subtweety lyrics, the lack of melodies, the creepy music box chimes. But that only worked for the feud-centric first single; none of the singles even remotely matched her earlier overwhelming success. (Reputation, unlike Perry’s Witness, ultimately got good to great reviews.) Swift then finally came out politically, raising questions about whether this would play out in her music in some way. But what the arrival of “Me!” made most clear is that Swift seems to want to wipe the slate clean from her last album — and a palate cleanser as a lead single is smart marketing, but boring art. Swift turns 30 this year, but her music sounds more childlike than ever, and not in a fun way.

Taylor Swift Productions A still from "Me!”

Pop music doesn’t have to be personal, original, political, or transgressive to be great.