Katy Perry Struggles to Reclaim Past Glory on ‘143’: Album Review

Following a breathless medley of hits at the MTV Video Music Awards last week, Katy Perry clutched her gold-plated Moon Person to accept the Video Vanguard trophy. “There are so many things that have to align to have a long and successful career as an artist. There are no decade-long accidents,” she defiantly stated. “One of the biggest reasons I’m standing here right now is because I learned how to block out all of the noise, that every single artist in this industry has to constantly fight against — especially women.”

She’s right, in that she didn’t stumble into success. But tuning out the world around her has had a slogging effect on her creative output, at least on her sixth album “143,” out today. In many ways, “143” was set up to fail in the wake of its very rocky rollout (more on that later). It arrives on the back of her quickly forgotten last album, 2020’s “Smile,” a record released at the peak of the pandemic that slumped off the charts as soon as it was released (despite the spark of singles “Never Really Over” and “Harleys in Hawaii”). Perry felt not just out of lockstep with the times — by then, pop music had pivoted away from candy-striped bombast in favor of soul-baring confessionalism — but also with her own creative merits. Much of the spryness of some of her best work had evaporated; even the self-deprecation of Perry posing as a sad clown on the album cover felt forced.

Effectively, “143” strips away the remnants of the perky personality that catapulted Perry into early 2010s superstardom. The album is flat, coasting on cascades of lyrical cliches and musical ideas that rarely crest. Across many of its 11 songs, Perry sounds disaffected and removed, as if she’d just punched in between “American Idol” tapings. Little of the clever wit that emboldened some of her biggest hits peeks out on the album, a disappointing slide away from the savvy she once so effortlessly exuded.

Which isn’t to discredit what she’s accomplished thus far. Perry is one of the most successful artists of the millennium — not many pop singers can claim an album with five consecutive number-one singles (she tied Michael Jackson’s “Bad” streak with “Teenage Dream”). But she’s lost creative momentum throughout the years. 2017’s “Witness” marked an inflection point for Perry, who for the first time was working without frequent collaborator Dr. Luke, likely due to the reputation-shattering sexual harassment lawsuit that Kesha filed a year prior. That album took big swings — some might call it tasteful, others purposeless — but proved that deviating from a formula that consistently yielded fruit was an error she couldn’t avoid.

“143” attempts to recapture that magic, with Luke sitting at the helm of the majority of the record. Perry faced instant blowback when news emerged of Luke’s return to her creative orbit. Luke and Kesha had settled their ongoing legal battle but the dust hadn’t settled; fans were hyper-critical of Perry, just as they had been of other artists who have continued to work with him over the years. The miscalculation instantly soured the tone of a record poised as her comeback with the release “Woman’s World,” a hollow anthem predicated on self-empowerment platitudes that anyone would pick up in Feminism 101. Add to the fact that Luke was involved and the hypocrisy rang clear.

As such, “143” was stained by the narrative surrounding it. Perry barely explained why she reunited with Luke: “I wrote these songs from my experience of my whole life going through this metamorphosis, and he was one of the people to help facilitate that,” she said on the podcast “Call Your Daddy.” Some fans theorized that she was contracted to continue working with him, but the truth of that is uncertain. And if that were the case, then admitting it would brand the album as disingenuous. Of course, Perry is not responsible for Luke’s actions, but working with him is a choice, no matter how it’s spun. And so it was a lose-lose for Perry from the start, and she ignored the discourse despite a shudder rippling through the album’s rollout.

A potent product can be the ultimate solvent for controversy — just ask Kanye West, who secured a number-one single earlier this year — yet “143” makes an unconvincing argument. It’s an album about the prismatic nature of romance, named after an antiquated code meant to signal “I love you” to anyone who once carried a pager. Perry is intoxicated by the idea of romance, surely inspired by her longtime engagement to actor Orlando Bloom. On “143,” love saves (“All the Love”), love stings (“Truth”), love satisfies (“Gimme Gimme”).

But Perry struggles to infuse her songs with persuasive emotion. Part of what’s bolstered Perry’s artistic merit is her performative acuity. Even when her songs are presented in their most simplistic form, Perry has had a cheeky way of infusing specificity and humor into them — “Barbies on the barbecue, is that a hickey or a bruise?” comes to mind — and her work on “One of the Boys” and “Teenage Dream” oozed character because of it.

Like with her past few albums, the lyricism on “143” is rife with cliches, as though it was generated through AI. “Yeah I got those palpitations, those boom boom booms / I’m on a new vibration / Yeah I need some medication / Your ooh, ooh, ooh,” she sings on the mechanical “Crush,” which plays like a Vengaboys B-side. Elsewhere, on “Nirvana,” her love takes her to skyscraping heights: “You make me feel, make me feel so high / You make me feel, make me feel alive.” “Algorithm,” featuring JID, transforms technological tropes into romantic come-ons: “You got me hooked on your algorithm,” she winks.

Luke’s instrumentation is notably not rooted in guitar — he’s a gifted instrumentalist, and once played in the house band on “Saturday Night Live” — and he instead skulks towards the dance floor with synth-heavy sounds. These are easily some of his limpest productions in recent memory. Like he did with the Alice Deejay sample flip on Kim Petras’ “Alone,” he disassembles Crystal Waters’ “Gypsy Woman” for “I’m His He’s Mine” featuring Doechii, slowing the pace to a lumbering crawl. “Gorgeous,” featuring Petras, is a tinny retread to “Dark Horse,” as is the moving-on anthem “Truth,” which comes near the album’s end. His work here has little variation, and the songs in turn tend to go nowhere.

There are, however, rare glimpses of vitality in “143.” “Lifetimes,” one of the album’s pre-release singles, got dismissed in the growing swell of bad will towards the album. But the denouncement felt misguided. Yes, it may be more aligned with the dance-pop that commandeered the 2010s, but it executes that philosophy with precision. If you close your eyes, you can almost picture this song finding a home on playlists at the dawn of Spotify.

“Wonder,” which concludes the album, is the closest approximation to tangible sincerity on “143.” Like “Lifetimes,” it’s an ode to her daughter Daisy, who makes an appearance on the song itself. “Don’t let the weight of the world be heavy on your wings,” Perry sings. “Stand pure beautiful girl / Don’t let the fear in the world burn out what you believe.” Amid the lyrical banality, Perry finally sounds the most like herself: unafraid to be as cheesy as she wants to be, and unapologetic for it. 

“143” could have been a record that harnessed that exact integrity, the same that punctuated the love-yourself smash “Firework” or triumphant “Roar.” But so much of that has been lost over time, perhaps because of the ever-changing landscape of pop music, or the shifting tide in celebrity culture. Perry seems unsure how to reclaim it, but as “143” proves, looking back isn’t always the best path forward.