Katy Perry Lumbers Hollowly Through Her Flop Era on 143

It used to be Katy Perry’s world, and we were all just living it in. There was a sweet spot around the turn of the 2010s when the global pop star communicated with fans through fully-developed universes: raw scrapbooks of breakups and misadventures on One of the Boys; candy-coated, carnivalesque depictions of youth from Teenage Dream; Prism’s lush oases and shimmering discotheques.

But by 2024—11 years since her last #1 song on Billboard’s Hot 100—her world-building skills have diminished greatly, and we’re left with the vacuous recycling center that is 143. Perry’s sixth studio album is a processing plant that distills already-hackneyed topics with lyricism so generic that the end result is too hollow to entice even the lowest common denominator of listeners. The LP repackages timeworn ideas about love and sex alongside largely forgettable beats, and borrows from itself on multiple occasions, relying on redundancy to lumber through an already-meager 33-minute runtime.

Described by Perry as a “bold, exuberant, celebratory dance-pop album,” the record instead presents an impenetrable wall that blocks out the personal details and winking camp that previously catapulted Perry into the role of a consummate pop star. This fortress may sparkle with glossy Europop, but sheen can’t supplant sincerity, a quality that’s rarely apparent here. The best features of 143 are the seamless transitions between songs, which operate like well-oiled conveyor belts that shift listeners from one stream of recycling to the next.

Perry can’t even manifest a liveable universe in a song that has the word “world” in the title. “WOMAN’S WORLD,” the record’s lead single and a so-called rallying cry for women’s empowerment, fumbled the launch of 143 with a woefully outdated approach to feminism. Perry blandly paints women as “heaven-sent” and “champions,” but also as “sisters” and “mothers”—identities that women can certainly take pride in, but that also define them strictly in relation to other people. Even singing “she’s a doctor, she’s a lawyer” would have been an improvement here, and that’s essentially an ad for career-themed Barbies.

Instead of subverting stereotypes, “WOMAN’S WORLD” subverts good taste, introducing Dr. Luke’s presence on the album. After working with the producer on her first three records, Perry sought out other collaborators for her more recent LPs—Witness and Smile—once fellow pop star Kesha came forward in 2014 with allegations that Dr. Luke had subjected her to physical, mental, and sexual abuse. Despite this, Perry inexplicably returned to Dr. Luke for 143, and his fingerprints cover every song except the final track, “WONDER.” Perry’s choice conveys a message of apathy for other women’s experiences and nullifies the already-vapid “You go girl!” attitude that permeates “WOMAN’S WORLD.”

Unfortunately, the remainder of 143 is just as sparse on memorable sentiments. “GIMME GIMME” and “GORGEOUS”—collaborations with 21 Savage and Kim Petras, respectively—posture as libido-fuled temptations, but are more likely to arouse boredom than chemistry with their lyrically stale measures of seduction. “I’M HIS, HE’S MINE,” a duet with Doechii about locking down a man’s loyalty, is meant to be a flex for Perry, yet finds Doechii’s flow running laps around her often stiff delivery. The song leans on the lazy hook “la-da-dee / la-da-da,” which Perry reuses almost verbatim on the following song, “CRUSH.” “My heart goes la-da-da-dee,” she sings on the chorus, inciting instant déjà vu (and not the clever, self-referential kind).

“CRUSH” begins a slew of basic love songs whose half-hearted execution deflates Perry’s messages of infinite adoration. “CRUSH” plainly quantifies falling in love by the presence of “those palpitations / those boom-boom-booms.” The album’s devotional second single “LIFETIMES” offers a slight improvement, if only because its giddy, maximalist pop overshadows the simplistic lyrics: “I know you feel it / Can you believe it? / I’m gonna love you ‘til the end / And then repeat it.” “LIFETIMES” is the clear peak of 143, burying the efforts of the thinly-veiled sex song “NIRVANA,” a noirish yearning for a climax that it never delivers. It’s one of 143’s many moments of wincing irony, along with Perry’s cry of “how do I connect if I can’t feel ya?” on “ARTIFICIAL” (we could ask her the same) and her declaration that a new romance has sparked “poetry in every moment” in “ALL THE LOVE.”

Where’s that poetry, exactly? Not in repetitive lines like “I’m just a prisoner in your prison” (“ARTIFICIAL”) or “Show me the fire / Show me the flames” (“TRUTH”). Even Perry’s few truly creative quips inspire little more than confusion. “Say the right thing, maybe you can be / Crawling on me like a centipede,” she sings on “GIMME GIMME”—a great line if you’re trying to charm Tim Burton, perhaps. The closest Perry comes to sharing true depth on 143 is “TRUTH,” which captures the gut-gnawing suspicion that a partner has been unfaithful. The track molds anxiety into sleek, confrontational pop that evokes Perry’s prior heart-bursting revelations, from the melancholic piano ballad “Not Like The Movies” to the kaleidoscopic romp “Never Really Over.”

That’s mainly why 143’s blasé offerings are so frustrating. Katy Perry has proven time and time again that she can fold camp, lust and romance into breezy pop that dominates the sound of entire seasons, if not years. “Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F)” detailed so many shameless remnants of a bender—from shattered chandeliers and hickies to Barbies on a barbecue—that the mention of a ménage à trois was barely a footnote. Prior to that, “Thinking Of You” stretched the pain of being “second best” into a skyscraping power ballad. She is capable of stirring everything from unabashed chaos to pangs of fresh heartbreak among millions of listeners.

But Perry is also capable of fleshing out her share of filler. Even during her early reign of the 2010s, when she was tying records set by Michael Jackson, her albums often combined smashes and saccharine filler. When juxtaposed with culture-shaping singles like “Teenage Dream” or “Dark Horse,” it was more difficult for listeners to discover they were consuming little more than well-packaged air. Without any true hits on 143, that empty space becomes glaringly apparent. And unlike other surface-level deep cuts from Perry’s catalog, these ones aren’t particularly fun or enjoyable.

Even if Dr. Luke wasn’t involved and even if Katy Perry was still a Top 40 heavyweight, 143 still contributes nothing original to modern pop’s dialog. The record lacks new ideas, concepts and sounds; not even Perry’s fall from pop’s Parthenon is engaging enough to qualify as a car crash that you can’t pull your gaze away from. Averting your eyes and ears from this tedious trainwreck would be a relief.

Victoria Wasylak is an award-winning music journalist, a music columnist for The Boston Globe, and the Boston music editor of Vanyaland. Her work has appeared in Paste, NYLON, GRAMMY.com, and Under The Radar, and she’s written over a dozen episodes of the world-renowned music and true crime podcast, Disgraceland. Last year she appeared in Forbes’ inaugural 30 Under 30 list for Boston.