Katy Perry Releases Cover Art, Teaser For New Single

Most of the time when a high-profile pop artist decides to put out album, he or she wants to have a moment.This is especially true of divas. For months leading up to an album’s release, a diva will put out singles and plenty of over-the-top promotional moments. It’s not unprecedented for more than one diva to put out an album in a year, but Katy Perry’s recent announcement that she will put out a new album in October puts her in direct competition with Lady Gaga, who is releasing her newest effort on November 11. Perry’s latest bid to drum up up publicity is to release some brand new cover art for her single, “Roar,” that looks like it was made with some Lisa Frank sticker products. The news comes the same day that Lady Gaga released a nude video for a Kickstarter campaign. Let the battle of the divas begin.

Between the roaring big cat jacket that looks like the sort of thing Ferris Bueller’s girlfriend, Sloane, would be into and the neon tiger print border on the cover, Perry looks ready and raring to get her new single out to the masses, and while a lot of Perry’s fans are from the post-Lisa Frank generation, she may have won some twenty and thirty-somethings over thanks to the new cover art. In any event, it’s a heck of a lot more chaste—and work appropriate—than throwing out a bunch of photos leaving very little to the imagination as Gaga has been big on in recent months.

We’ll get an earful of “Roar” when Perry releases the full track on August 21, and her full-length album, Prism will follow in just a few short months. In the meantime, you should keep an eye out for all that predictable promotional stuff, including her giant gold album announcement bus, a reported collaboration with on-again off-again boyfriend John Mayer, and the new teaser for “Roar” which you can just go ahead and check out, below.

The latter few months of 2013 are certainly shaping up to be interesting and I can’t wait to see whether Perry or Gaga inspire the larger Nielsen SoundScan numbers. Both gals have totally different images, but both inspire loyal audiences (with some crossover). Only one can be the biggest diva of 2013. If Beyonce could get her act together with her new album, we might even have three strong acts competing at the end of 2013. I can’t even speculate on what that would be like. Part of me thinks she may be holding off from announcing a new album to avoid the crazy train that is the Perry/Gaga face off. I know that would be my plan, but King Bey is far fiercer than I am. I guess we will just have to wait and see.