It's been nearly three years since the release of Prism, which means we're sort of, kind of in a Katy Perry [1] music drought. Of course, this Summer has yielded "Rise," an brazen anthem [2] for the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio. And, well, Katy's been dealing with a lot lately. Her ongoing feud with Taylor Swift [3] hasn't really lost steam, and she's been globetrotting with boyfriend Orlando Bloom [4], most recently on an NSFW vacation in Italy [5]. Amid all the craziness, we have little to no details about the next Katy Perry album. That said, there's a very small trail of breadcrumbs for us to follow that sheds quite a bit of insight on the mysterious project.

• January 2015: Perry's manager first mentioned the album. According to Idolator, Steven Jensen said Katy Perry has made plans to release her next album by 2016 [6].
• February 2015: Katy Perry hints at a Taylor Swift [7] takedown. Just before her balls-to-the-wall Super Bowl halftime show [8], Katy spoke to Billboard about her performance. She also hinted that she was coming for Taylor Swift [9]: "If somebody is trying to defame my character, you're going to hear about it."
• February 2016: Katy Perry teases her album again in a new interview. Just ahead of this year's Grammys, Perry talked about her new music with the New York Times. She said she was in the research and development phase [10] when it came to her new album. She also said, "I do my records in a more traditional way, where the cycle is three years." Seeing as Fall 2016 marks three years since Prism, we can definitely start to get our hopes up about a release date.
• July 2016: Katy Perry drops "Rise." After over a year and not much to show for it, Perry released an anthem meant to time perfectly with the Summer Olympics in Rio. The music video for "Rise" [11] dropped a couple weeks later.
• August 2016: New rumors about Katy's album surface. With no real information to go off of, the internet began to do what it does best: speculate. Maybe it was the old quotes from before the Super Bowl. Or maybe it was the fact that Perry stills seems to strongly dislike Taylor Swift, as evidenced by her shady Twitter antics this Summer [12]. Hollywood Life alleges that Perry has some Taylor Swift clap backs [13] up her sleeve, and that the album on the whole will address her feud with Swift. Many sources claim that a specific "Bad Blood" comeback is brewing, and other rumors report "Crocodile Tears," "Last Cry," "She's So Creepy," and "Victory" have been registered as song titles. There are a few other allegations that suggest her relationship with Orlando Bloom will surface as well.

The bottom line is that very little has been confirmed about the album. In fact, nothing at all has really been verified except for the fact that there is, in fact, an album. We're sure you can feel the storm brewing. All there is to do at this point is brace ourselves and wait.