Luke Bryan Defends Katy Perry After Season 21 ‘American Idol’ Backlash: ‘Katy Gets Picked on For… Trying to Have Fun Making a TV Show’

Luke Bryan wishes people would give Katy Perry a break. In a Fox News interview, the country star weighed in on some of the criticism his fellow judge got this season on American Idol and why he doesn’t think it’s fair.

“Katy gets picked on for going out and trying to have fun making a TV show,” he said. “You can’t be so safe in the moment that you’re so homogenized, you can’t ever go for a joke. Or go for a fun moment. Sometimes you just gotta say stuff. It may be my year next year.” Perry, Bryan and Lionel Richie have anchored the judge’s desk since Idol jumped from Fox to ABC in 2018 and this year the “Roar” singer came in for some criticism for her comments about several contestants, some of which resulted in her gettin booed by the studio audience.

“Katy Perry’s been dealing with stuff like that her whole career,” Bryan added. “We all get it.… I mean we’re judging kids that people at home fall in love with.… We’re not gonna bat 1,000 as judges.” In fact, Bryan said he thinks the judges get “set up” and sometimes they have to “fall on the sword” to keep the train rolling amid a torrent of commentary on socials.

“My thing is, I think when me and Lionel and Katy sit down at the desk, in our hearts, we’re doing the best we can,” he said. Perry was criticized this season when she joked that singer and mother of three Sara Beth Liebe had been “laying on the table too much.” Liebe accused Perry of “mom-shaming” her and later dropped out of the show even after Katy tried to convince her to stay. Perry also took heat — and got booed — during another episode when she told contestant Nutsa Buzaladze to tone down the glitter on stage.

“You can’t be so safe in the moment that you’re so homogenized, you can’t ever go for a joke. Or go for a fun moment,” Bryan continued, saying that entertainers get conditions and “calloused” to the backlash they often face. “It makes me appreciate her even more, just how big of a scale she’s had to deal with that her whole career.”

Season 21 recently wrapped with the crowning of Hawaiian singer Iam Tongi.