Katy Perry’s cringe comeback is a trashy, flesh-flashing nightmare! And, says CAROLINE BULLOCK, it’s sad proof that women have humiliating midlife crises, too

Three months before Teenage Dream singer Katy Perry’s big comeback, the painful comeback turns into a midlife crisis nightmare.

The successful hitmaker is struggling with a vulgar, razor-sharp video clip and disappointing sales figures.

She is currently busy promoting her new album ‘143’, which she claims is a reference to her ‘symbolic angel number’, but given its current form it is more likely to be an optimistic chart entry.

It’s clear that the aging star’s attempt to stay relevant after a four-year hiatus from releasing music has fallen through.

The signs were ominous when she attended Balenciaga’s latest couture show in Paris in June, bare-chested and wearing only an open fur jacket.

Three months before Teenage Dream singer Katy Perry’s big comeback, it’s become a midlife crisis nightmare.

The signs were ominous when she attended Balenciaga’s latest couture show in Paris in June, bare-chested in an unzipped fur jacket and nothing else.

The surly Perry looked more like a wannabe Bianca Censori than a credible, global pop sensation – it was a foretaste of things to come.

Then her single “Woman’s World” fell off… a cliff, limping to #63 on the Billboard charts.

The synth-pop shocker, which masquerades as a feminist “girl power” anthem, has come under fire for being co-produced by alleged rapist Dr. Luke and for its much-discussed accompanying music video that is all about the male gaze.

Dated and desperate, it’s a crude mess of phallic gas pumps, vibrators and underboobs — with Perry using urinals and singing laughably bad lyrics like, “She’s a flower, she’s a thorn, superhuman, number one.”

Amid the negative reactions, Perry has tried to dismiss the video’s tasteless attention-seeking as some kind of satire, but no one is fooled.

And as her mother dances through this Gaga-lite B-side, the joke is all on her.

Dressed in a bikini and with a broad grin, she roams the big clubs in Ibiza with the children, organizes ‘listening parties’ for the new album in Paris and London and even pays for drinks in crowded bars while bragging to the cameras that ‘I’m rich’.

It all smells of desperation – and it is certainly a far cry from the past few years.

The Santa Barbara-born singer and dancer has never been much of a vocalist, but she’s still enjoyed her time under the California sun.

She now has an estimated net worth of $350 million and is one of the richest musicians in the world, thanks to her quirky, humorous style.

Her 2008 debut, “I Kissed a Girl,” has more than 850 million streams on Spotify. In 2010, Perry became the second artist ever (after Michael Jackson) to have five No. 1 hits from a single album (Teenage Dream), while her 2015 Super Bowl halftime show was until recently the most-watched show in history.

She also appears to have a happy family life with actor Orlando Bloom and their young daughter – but clearly, at 39, that’s not enough for a diva addicted to the cheap oxygen of fame and validation.

She also appears to have a happy family life with her actor husband Orlando Bloom and their young daughter – but clearly, at 39, that’s not enough for a diva addicted to the cheap oxygen of fame and validation.

It’s a delusion that recently led her to endorse Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris by sharing — how could it be otherwise? — an edited video of the vice president recorded on “Woman’s World.”

And it is this kind of complacency that assumes people will gobble up her old junk so that her coffers remain full, regardless of the quality.

But the public’s patience for vulgar, banal pop music presented as fake feminism is running out.

The clever collaborations with artists like Kanye West (before the anti-Semitism) seem like a lifetime ago, while the audacity that produced her successful hits may no longer suffice.

Especially as the material gets weaker and the fans get older.

Unlike successful contemporaries such as Beyoncé and Taylor Swift, Perry seems not to have developed artistically.

And it has left the 39-year-old, who recently quit her job as a judge on American Idol – the major source of income for many a fading pop star – feeling particularly vulnerable.

Despite all the efforts of the beach sports association and the money poured into this increasingly humiliating campaign, Perry’s ill-judged comeback turns out to be more of a failure than a fireworks display.