If Katy Perry’s seventh album had been released in 2013, it’d have been everywhere. You’d dance to it non-stop in clubs, hear it non-stop on the radio, and slap down your hard-earned cash to sing your heart out at her mega-concerts. But ‘143’ wasn’t released back then. It’s been released now. And time isn’t kind to old ideas.
Unlike Perry, pop has evolved. Its cutting-edge stars — your Charli XCXs, your Chappell Roans — mine deeper wells of emotion, building musical monuments to their pain and evolution. Her attempt at an authentic dive into female empowerment and love’s many forms, though, is consistently undercut by laboured songwriting and outmoded production (a lot of it, controversially, handled by Dr. Luke). If this was supposed to be a warm slice of nostalgia, what we get instead is Wetherspoons fudge cake that’s been nuked in the microwave.
That regressive vibe is everywhere. The 21 Savage-starring Gimme Gimme attempts to course-correct 2017’s Migos-featuring Bon Appétit but only succeeds in sounding exactly the same.
JID, meanwhile, helps Perry plague her own legacy on Artificial, a track that traces 2010’s E.T. so terribly you’d probably rather a five-year-old had drawn you a picture instead.
Worst of all is the Crystal Waters-sampling, Doechii-featuring I’m His, He’s Mine, which goes for it as a feminist anthem but trips over its own clumsy cliches and two-years-too-late lyrics: “You’re creeping in his DMs, I’m sleeping in his sweatpants.”
The mid-album run of Crush, Lifetimes, and All The Love offers a brief reprieve, though, delivering the melodic goods to back up smashing the nostalgia button. Crush could have been a ‘Teenage Dream’ B-side, with a chorus that doesn’t quit, while Lifetimes’ deep house drags you onto the dancefloor, memories of decades gone by rattling around your cranium. All The Love is the Avicii number one that never was.
But even in its brighter moments, ‘143’ is a bittersweet pill to swallow. It’s a 30-minute dose of the pop star that Perry is that only serves as a painful reminder of the pop star Perry once was.
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