Pop star Katy Perry has dropped a new album, adding to her six studio albums and 40 singles. Perry has been a big part of mainstream music for years, and her music is still relevant to this day. Some of her big hits are “Hot n Cold,” “California Gurls” and “Firework.” Katy’s prime was in the 2010s, and her music reflects that. Over the years, her music has continued to evolve and grow. Her newest album, “143,” reflects this by being a noticeably different music style than her music in the past. The album dropped on Sept. 19, putting a four year gap between this album and her latest album “Smile” which dropped Aug. 28, 2020. Her past albums have a fun and happy feel to them with upbeat lyrics and music, and her new album has a more robotic feel with less personality, synthetic beats and music fill the soundtracks of the songs.
The first song in the album is “WOMEN’S WORLD.” I had heard the song before the whole album dropped because it was on Tiktok, and overall the whole feel of the song seems to be enhanced for the use of Tiktok. I’ve noticed her newest songs are very different from her old ones because to me they feel targeted to sound better when they are marketed to the public through social media. Lots of songs created for the use of social media sound very similar, and this makes it hard for artists to set themselves apart from others. The songs on this album were all extremely overwhelming. So many different things were happening in every song that it was hard to listen to the album. I didn’t enjoy listening to the computer generated music and all the beats that were slapped on top of each other. The chorus was catchy, but the album didn’t feel like music to me. Katy Perry did not need to change the way she produced music and could have found success in making another album like her past pop hits with the same upbeat sound to them.
The album has four artists featured in it, the first being 21 Savage on the song “GIMME GIMME.” The song is repetitive and repeats the same chorus over and over again, and the background music also doesn’t change. I didn’t love this song because of how repetitive it was — it got annoying far too quickly. Another featured artist in this album is Kim Petras in the song “GORGEOUS,” this was another song I didn’t love because of how repetitive it was. The lyrics in the song “GORGEOUS” weren’t creative and there was no depth, and the rhythm was the same throughout the song with the same electronic high pitched beats repeated in the background of an already computer generated soundtrack.
My favorite song on the album has to be “TRUTH” because it was simple and the easiest to listen to. There wasn’t too much happening, and the song was catchy. I didn’t love the lyrics, but there wasn’t any song in the album where I loved the lyrics, so that didn’t bother me. In recent years, music has changed and her music reflects this. Most new songs sound the same and have a similar feel to others. As you listen to more of the album, her songs have more variety and you can hear some of her old musical habits in the song “TRUTH”. The song is more similar to her old songs because they share similar rhythms and tempos and are more up beat, the song “TRUTH” is not as in your face like the rest of the album and has a more calm melody without having to many parts of the chorus repeating and the background music has a good variety of musical features to bring balance to the song. Even though the background track sounds computer generated it sounds like she put more thought into it because there is a difference in the beats in the song and there is a lot of variety in the different instruments included. Like a bass and snare drum sounding track in the back that supports the whole song. My least favorite song in the album is “I’M HIS, HE’S MINE” featuring Doechii. The song was repetitive and hard to listen to, she repeated the same high pitched bell-like sounds throughout the whole song and they reminded me of something you would hear in a video game. The rhythm is the same throughout the whole song and it has no creativity in it, there are three beats throughout the whole song and they repeat in the same order without change during the whole song. There was nothing really interesting about the song and I got sick of it really quickly because of the same six words being repeated over and over again.
Overall, I didn’t love Katy Perry’s new album, and it was a let down from her past albums. I don’t love her new style of music, and I hope she changeshow she produces music in the future. Her songs were repetitive, overwhelming and just not fun to listen to. There isn’t a situation where I would choose to listen to this album, and I don’t see myself in the future gravitating towards her new music.
“143”: ★★☆☆☆
