Album Review: 143 by Katy Perry

Katy Perry’s newest release is the nail in the coffin.

Courtesy of Capitol Records.

In the music industry, few practices are more despicable than record labels preventing artists from releasing their own work. We’ve seen it happen time and again with artists like Normani, Kim Petras, Sky Ferreira, and JoJo, where profit-driven executives halt the momentum of blossoming careers. Yet, with the release of Katy Perry’s seventh studio album, one can’t help but wonder why nobody intervened to stop it.

Following two unsuccessful comebacks—one so spectacularly disastrous that Witness became a textbook example of a flop era, and the other so quietly forgotten that few recall Smile even exists—this third attempt was critical for Katy Perry. If she couldn’t regain pop culture’s favor with this release, it might be time for her to step out of the spotlight.

From the teaser of the first single, warning signs were evident, and with each phase of promotion, concerns grew. The reaction to the snippet of “Woman’s World” was a collective plea: please don’t! The reality turned out even worse than anticipated. The song sounded as if it was composed for an Activia commercial. To further tarnish her image, she opted to collaborate with Dr. Luke on her supposed feminist comeback single—a controversial decision given his contentious history. That said, this didn’t do the song any favors. Everything about “Woman’s World” felt as feminist as a tabloid op-ed.

She attempted to use satire as a defense but without a solid foundation to support it. Consequently, she fell even deeper into promotional disaster. For her next single, “Lifetimes,” which was equally unremarkable, she filmed a video in Ibiza and reportedly faced legal issues for allegedly shooting without the required permits. Her humiliation deepened when the song failed to even enter the Billboard Top 100.

By this point, no one would have blamed Capitol Records if they had pulled the plug and gone back to the drawing board. Let it fade away: pretend it never happened, regroup in a few years. Instead, they allowed their former pop powerhouse to continue charging headlong into the oncoming backlash that had been sharpening on social media for weeks.

Surprisingly, 143 isn’t the cringe-worthy disaster we had been bracing ourselves for over the past months. On the contrary, the album’s impact is barely felt. Listening to it in full, any lingering questions fade away, only highlighting the glaring absence of a true identity. This isn’t a musical catastrophe we’ll laugh about in a decade. It’s not even half as intriguing as the drama that led up to its release.

143 reflects the career of an artist who has been rapidly losing momentum and is now desperately grasping for any semblance of relevance, utilizing any industry gimmick she can find: feminism, pandering to the LGBTQ+ community, rap features, hyperpop elements, her own previous hits, and when all else fails, even bringing her own child into the spotlight. Katy Perry recognizes that these themes have become marketing tools, but the zeitgeist has long moved on. This album feels like an outsider’s perspective on current trends—a replica of a modern party playlist curated by out-of-touch executives whose only interaction with contemporary pop is when their kids involve them in a TikTok dance.

The fact that none of the other tracks sink to the lyrical, visual, and musical depths of “Woman’s World” isn’t exactly a compliment to the rest of the album. It simply underscores how disastrously bad that opener is. While one could pen entire essays on that complete failure, the remainder of the album is so forgettable and generic that it’s nearly erased from memory in the brief moment between the final note and reaching for the keyboard.

“Gimme Gimme,” her stab at a sultry dance-pop track, comes off as more awkward than a game of Twister at a retirement home. In “I’m His, He’s Mine,” Perry fails to make any substantial use of a “Gypsy Woman” sample, all while incessantly reminding us of her supposed bedroom antics with Orlando Bloom. Yet, for a song seemingly designed to convince us of her wild side, it sounds remarkably tame—like a brief, routine encounter before calling it a night.

“Crush” feels like a song penned by a screenwriter for a fictional pop star in a Hollywood film—not the show-stopping finale number, but the generic tune that plays softly in the background during an action scene, barely noticed as Charlize Theron or Milla Jovovich takes down adversaries. Speaking of movie comparisons, “Nirvana” comes across as a subpar version of “Double Trouble” from the Will Ferrell Eurovision movie, complete with a cheap drop that drains any remaining substance.

At 39, Perry has never been known for deeply evocative or personal lyrics, but the midlife crisis she unloads on this album reaches a new low. It’s hard to believe that multiple human songwriters signed off on lines like: “Kitty, kitty come party tonight/Trippy, trippy daddy take me on a ride,” “Stimulate me, baby, with your fantasies,” or “I’m just a prisoner in your prison.” Metaphors like “Say the right thing, maybe you can be/Crawling on me like a centipede” don’t help her case. Including a song about the dangers of artificial intelligence is just the icing on this misguided cake.

Over the course of the album, it scarcely feels like we’re listening to a real person. The Katy Perry who embodied the Teenage Dream in the early 2010s, giving voice to youthful, carefree pop, seems to have vanished. What’s left is an artificial shell spouting market-targeted nonsense with all the charm of an aunt at a family gathering who’s just learned the meaning of “cringe” and is emboldened by a few drinks to prove to her nephew how “hip” she is. Except, in this case, Perry isn’t attempting to connect with kids but with the LGBTQ+ community waiting in line for a Charli XCX concert.

The album’s lack of direction and target audience is further highlighted by its choice of featured artists. What on earth, besides a sizable paycheck, brings JID or Doechii here? While they have crossover potential, pairing them with Katy Perry feels mismatched. Instead of elevating the tracks, they adjust to her style, delivering performances that border on lackluster. Then there’s 21 Savage, whose contribution is so uninspired it’s as if he phoned it in without a second thought—I bet he doesn’t even remember recording the verse, let alone for which song.

If you’re determined to find something positive about this album, you might note that Kim Petras delivers a decent performance or that the throwback tracks “Lifetimes” and “All the Love” shamelessly attempt to recapture the magic of Perry’s past hits and occasionally manage to be catchy. However, they never stray far from the generic feel of an H&M commercial soundtrack that likely served as a songwriting blueprint.

But these small glimpses of adequacy don’t rescue the album, nor do they revive Perry’s career. 143 doesn’t just hint at the decline that’s been evident for years; it cements it, potentially marking the end for one of the past decade’s biggest pop stars. After previous attempts to evolve musically failed, resorting to reassembling her old team and relying on familiar songwriting formulas seemed like a last-ditch effort.

It’s not just Perry who has lost her touch since Teenage Dream and Prism. Even the collaborators who once propelled her to stardom seem out of step with the current music landscape. This album highlights that Perry and her team aren’t just unwilling to adapt to modern pop—they’re simply unable. In the end, the question isn’t whether this crash landing could have been avoided had her label hit the reset button. It wouldn’t have spared her the embarrassment; it would have only delayed the inevitable.

Poor (★☆☆☆☆)

Favorite Track(s): N/A