Katy Perry, 143 ⭐️❌❌❌❌
You know how when a person is sick and about to die, they relive the good old days in their mind. They’ll say things like, “Oh man, I wish Chuckster from down the street would come over and play.” And you’re just like, I don’t know who this “Chuckster” is, but he’s probably been dead for 20 years. Yeah, this is the musical equivalent of that. This is Katy Perry saying, “Man, I wish I could still work with Dr. Luke without the controversy. Remember the early 2010s?”
Katy Perry has nothing new to say, nothing provocative to say, nothing new musically, nothing provocative musically. Everything feels tired and dated. Hell, even her bumper sticker-esque brand of feminism feels tired and dated. Which, I know this has been discussed to death at this point, but bringing the disgraced Dr. Luke on board as producer on an album that’s supposedly some grand feminist statement and celebration of womanhood is tone deaf at best, and just plain ignorant at worst.
Overall, this is not just a bad album. It’s a failure of an album. It misses the mark on everything it attempts to do.
Favorite song: “NIRVANA,” just because the title made me think of the band Nirvana, and for a second I drifted away and thought about their album In Utero, and how much I love that album and how that’s an album that actually succeeds in making a statement. In fact, go ahead and listen to that instead of this.
