143

The increasingly distant past when Katy Perry was one of pop's most fun, relevant exports only feels further away each time she returns. Since 2013's Prism, Perry has abandoned her tongue-in-cheek puns and trademark liveliness, unable to grasp why her audience is so disillusioned. Maybe that's why she's taken the no-publicity-is-bad-publicity approach on 143 — an album that doesn't even live up to its trainwreck of a press run.When the singer cautioned us to "get ready to pop off" before the release of "Woman's World," it was already assumed it would kick off her third consecutive flop era. At this point, it's tired to detail what went wrong, but the song's total failure is true to everything wrong with the rest of 143. If it was offensively bad, at least it'd be camp. Instead, each track is an ADHD simulation — so understimulating you forget what it sounds like seconds after it ends.This conveyor belt breaks the fourth wall on "Gimme Gimme," where Bezos must have paid 21 Savage to say, "I'm like Amazon, 'cause I got what you need." Like so much of 143, Savage's arrival feels woefully outdated, spitting over the same trap beat that plagued radio airwaves in 2018. It's almost sad that Perry thought a project with an utter lack of target audience would revive her, especially when she's now up against stars who've been breathing life back into pop all year.The term "recession pop" has been thrown around a lot recently, as our new main girls are a little extra and not too phased about getting messy. Perry was in the original cohort in the late noughties/early 2010s, no doubt inspiring today's Chappells, Charlis and Sabrinas. Returning to what made her so compelling — and record-breaking — seems like the obvious answer, but at worst she's half a decade behind, and at best blandly copying dance music's RENAISSANCE-aided resurgence.Sampling Crystal Waters's "Gypsy Woman" on "I'm His, He's Mine," Perry and Doechii scrub the four-on-the-floor drive of the original in favour of dated hi-hats and slang (has anyone called someone their "main" since the mid-2010s?). She attempts to make up for it on tracks like "Nirvana" and "Crush," as well as the environmentally detrimental single "Lifetimes." The latter two are the closest 143 gets to highlights, but still feel DOA as she's barely trying to sing behind the Auto-Tune. It's hard to ignore that these production blunders are happening under the watch of Max Martin and Dr. Luke — clearly, the risk of hiring an alleged abuser did not pay off.With Luke comes his other longtime collaborator Kim Petras on "Gorgeous," with its distressed-chimp synths and a new layer of misanthropy. Ironically, Perry sings, "Can somebody promise me / Our innocence doesn't get lost in a cynical world?" on album closer "Wonder," despite her and Petras's "who cares?" late capitalist attitude to working with Luke. To be fair, why would she care when she's clearly only making music to put out a product?It's confusing why Perry continues to make such soulless music when she has enough resources to quietly quit and be remembered dearly. Instead, she's on a Sisiphysean path reserved for pop's dullest burnouts — one that terrorizes retail workers, soundtracks your high school bully's MLM conference, then rolls back down the hill.