It’s not looking good for Katy Perry. The singer released her new album, 143, on Friday, and I’m here to report that it’s not very good. The charming, witty woman who gave us One of the Boys and Teenage Dream is long gone, and while she was briefly replaced by someone who made serviceable earworms (“Harleys in Hawaii,” “Never Really Over”), the new Perry is someone whose lead single can’t even crack the Top 40. The tracks on Perry’s latest are stuffed with cliché platitudes about love set to uninspired Dr. Luke beats. It’ll make you wonder, “She went back to him for this?”
But, hey, I’m not a professional music critic; maybe they see something in 143 that I don’t. Let’s check in with what they have to say.
Variety writes, “Across many of its 11 songs, Perry sounds disaffected and removed, as if she’d just punched in between American Idol tapings.” Yikes. NME calls it “a serviceable but slightly dull collection on which Perry struggles to relocate her old sense of fun.” The Independent
dragged Perry for the album’s title — “Everything on 143 — the number of letters in ‘I love you’ on a pager — feels painfully dated, steeped in a misunderstanding about the Nineties nostalgia that permeates much of 2020s culture” — and the Associated Press piled on. “She may love us, but the album is more like 144 — ‘I made mush.’”
Okay, so the critics are not loving it. Who cares? Perry recently shared a photo of herself wearing a shirt that read, “They don’t build statues of critics.” (Charli XCX was the first person to make waves for wearing the same shirt back in 2022.) She doesn’t give a damn what they say! What are her loyal stans thinking?
One KatyCat on X gave the album an 8.5, writing, “She came to have fun and brought with her dance music as good as a gospel singer turned pop star can deliver.” I can’t really tell if that’s a compliment. Over on the r/KatyHeads Reddit page, no one could decide how to feel. The words “average,” “okay,” and “pleasant” were thrown around, but so were words like “good,” “banger,” and “catchy.” (The phrase “the worst album she ever released” also popped up.)
On the bright side, one person wrote, “The Queen of Pop returns with a killer new album! She sounds better than ever and is serving look after look this era!” So, that’s positive.
