Perry: I mean, like, I am not invincible. I am not perfect. I have fallen flat on my face so many different times and learned from that growth and have been living in the public, in the spotlight for over 12 years, and have had moments that were really intense. For me, I don’t necessarily like to avoid or ignore, I just like to come to terms. I’m like, “Look, I needed that. That was a humbling experience.” Obviously when you’re in it, you hate it. But I do believe that you have the choice when you can zoom out just a little bit from the situation and say, “OK, what am I getting from this? Where is the lesson? Where is the growth?” Not just like, “F-it all to hell, Joyce Ann, just burn! Everything should just burn!” But where is the gratitude for this obstacle?

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AP: You namedrop your parents on the song “Only Love.” What was their reaction to that?

Perry: I played it for my mom, she was very touched. This song really talks about if life were to hand you a curveball, and the weird thing is that I was putting the finishing touches on it, vocally, in my bedroom during that week of March 13 when everyone went into lockdown and everybody was, like, scrubbing their lemons and buying thousands of toilet paper rolls. Nobody knew what the hell was going on and there’s so much intense feeling and emotion.

And I was almost finished with my record. This was the last song that I put on the record and it’s funny ’cause it kind of paralleled the feeling at the time. “Holy crap, life is handing me a curveball, and what is precious to me anymore? What’s really important?” You start to go, “Whoa, this is what’s important. Forget about all the B.S. and even the career stuff. I gotta take care of my mom and my dad. I gotta take care of them.” And I think that everybody kind of shifted gears a little bit.