Life can be unfair, and Katy Perry can’t be alone in finding herself having to take the rough with the smooth. Still, anyone would have thought that with the excessive pearl clutching that accompanied the July release of 143’s lead single “Women’s World” that she’d put out a Nazi marching song, not a clunky attempt at a feminist anthem.
The Guardian’s Laura Snapes, for one, claimed that it was “a song that made me feel stupider every sorry time I listened to it” – and that was one of the tamer responses. Similarly, the rather anonymous second single, “Lifetimes”, with its retro Italian House piano riff and over reliance on autotune, got a good kicking from fans and media alike, but was certainly no worse than Beyoncé’s clueless reworking of Dolly Parton’s “Jolene” – and that got plenty of plaudits when Cowboy Carter came out.
The rest of her first long-player in four years, however, is unlikely to do anything to rescue her reputation in the short-term and choosing to work with modern musical bogey man, Dr Luke was never going to help nor was naming it after her “angel number”, whatever that might be. Indeed, the vacuous trap-pop of “Gimme Gimme” with a rap from 21 Savage that features such lyrical gold as “I’m like Amazon ‘cos I got what you need” and the clumsy “Gypsy Woman” sampling “I’m His, He’s Mine” are only two examples of Perry missing the mark. So, when she sings “I wanna know the truth, even if it hurts me” on penultimate track “Truth”, it’s likely that the response to 143 will do exactly that.
Still, as one of the world’s wealthiest musicians, with a net worth of over $350 million, this is likely to be a storm that Katy Perry is more than capable of weathering. Whether she’ll be releasing any more albums for a good while is another story altogether though.
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