Katy Perry and the Philanderer’s Tones: Why did 143 stink?
In the words of esteemed Parisian food writer and primary antagonist of the rodent-themed Pixar classic, Anton Ego, “the work of a critic is easy”. Indeed it may be; to be a critic is to consume without the pressure to create. In this sense, we have all become critics in some realised or unrealised capacity. But to consume has its own dangers. Sometimes we are fed so well that when a massive stinker of an album rises like scum to the top of our Release Radars, the world becomes so incensed in the face of Bad Art™ that the natural response is to dogpile. We will return to this.
In stark contrast, you may be tempted to think that the job of an empire-building, platinum-selling, hardened popstar is easy. The brand has already been built! The fillers injected! The ghostwriters hired! Yet somehow, Katy Perry’s 143 makes a compelling argument that such a job is very, very hard. Why? Because the process of recruiting a vapid menagerie of (alleged) sexual abusers and otherwise jejune pop-house Youtube channel producers to craft such a hysterically awful tracklist, only to reap no adoration save that of a select few Brazilian Twitter stan pages (that likely will lose access to the platform by the end of the tax year thanks to Elon Musk) without doubt must wreak havoc on the psyche of a post-pixie cut pop princess.
Indeed it is that from the first fateful utterance of the opening words of “Woman’s World” [sexy, confident, so intelligent], Katy Perry had sealed her coffin with Gorilla Glue. The lead single is currently sitting at a feeble 38 million streams on Spotify, and Doechii and Kim Petras features have only garnered 10 and 3 million plays respectively. For context, the least-played song on Perry’s Spotify came out half a decade before streaming became the predominant way to listen to music and is sitting at a comfortable 800 million streams. Three other songs from the early 2010s have breached 1 billion listens.
I am far from the first to declare this rollout an epic tragedy, in which all players (e.g. Perry, Petras, Dr. Luke) lose some degree of remaining dignity. But this will not kill Perry, nor the appeal of her earlier catalogue. Choices are not endings; only portals. This portal may take Perry back to American Idol, to some paparazzi-shielded Barbadian hideaway with Orlando Bloom and Baby Perry, or maybe to the classic late career, apologetically confessional acoustic album. Alas, this is bigger than Katy Perry. 143 is moronic, but it represents something tectonic.
I don’t think it’s harsh to say that for a short while, the contemporary popgirlscape was looking dire. The cast whittled down to arguably no more than Dua Lipa, Doja Cat, and Billie Eilish. We might make a mark soon after the 2019 release of Ariana Grande’s thank u, next where the cast of really popular female powerhouses felt purged. After the heyday of this genre of musician that was the 00s and early 10s, dance pop’s hold on the charts gave way around the COVID era to the proliferation of acoustic, confessional pop albums and substantially less campy afrobeats and trap bangers. In the wake of Gaga’s transition to theatre whore, Selena Gomez’s kidney situation, the Mumford-and-Sonification of Taylor Swift, Nicki Minaj’s marriage to a rapist, and many other such tragedies, a number of failures to transition stars-in-the-making (Camila Cabello, Normani, Olivia Rodrigo etc.) into household names left us with a poor set of players.
An influx of minimalist, cinematic pop motioned by the success of Lana del Rey and sustained by Swift’s folklore and evermore (2020) tanked the necessity for drastic reinvention, shock value, and viral live performances. Thus, the VMAs became redundant, dance pop’s presence on the charts became almost entirely TikTok-sponsored one-hit-wonders, and true, campy, theatrical pop seemed to be relegated to online queer communities until they eventually found a new darling genre to mass-enjoy. This makes what we have seen in 2024 all the more shocking.
Sabrina Carpenter, as I write this, occupies spots #3, #8, #9, #20, #55, #74, #97, and #100 on the Billboard Hot 100. Chappell Roan holds #4, #15, #27, and #72. Charli XCX has taken #53 and #64, and Tate Mcrae and Addison Rae have #32 and #96 respectively. Between these five women, all of which I doubt would’ve been considered A-list two years ago, nearly one-fifth of the spots on the Hot 100 are held. On this same week in 2022, I count six spots taken by female-led pop music, with only two or three of said songs being dance pop. So what is the common denominator? Why is the world interested again?
Well, although we can theorise about the effect of the pandemic, TikTok and other recent phenomena, the answer may not be that we lost interest in dance pop, but rather that dance pop ceased to be interesting. As said earlier, many of dance pop’s main players either stopped making music or found a new main gig around 2020 (cough cough, Rihanna). Many of them had careers spanning 20 years, their fingers in makeup- or fashion-related pies, or an army of label-funded producers that leeched the desperation for stardom from their sound. It wasn’t so much that dance pop’s audience had dwindled; the interest of its creators had. What results from a genre in this position is a life-or-death dichotomy; either the genre fades into redundancy, or its dynasty is usurped by a new line.
And here we are! Sabrina, Chappell, Charli and the rest have undeniably been the popular mainstays this summer, rather than the usual cabal of established musicians that pass the baton back and forth between themselves every June. Furthermore, in them we see underlined what appeals to an audience with an appetite for dance music: stylistic consistency, tongue-in-cheek lyricism, playful sexuality, and some level of conceit. This is not new! In many ways, this music is no more than a rehashing of the waves of shiny new popstars we saw at the start of the naughties, and again around 2009. But in conversation with albums like 143, Chromatica (2020), and Pink Friday 2 (2023), we see that what is done away with is the echoes of what is already on the charts, the fear to play it dangerous, the diluted nostalgia of a better portion of discography. Chappell has declared herself a drag queen, Charli has peeled back branding to its bare bones, Addison Rae is playing the part of a nymphomanic virgin. It all feels a little tacky, a little performed, somewhat saccharine. But pitted against the polished plastic, echo chamber attempts by older popstars to expand their legacy without risking destroying it, the people have made their choice.
Pop music hinges on extremity, bloodlust, and bad taste. And this is the ouroboros, because nothing backed by a 28 billion industry can remain bombastic and desperate for long before the greenware is clay-fired. 143 was bound to fall flat, because it exists only in conversation with itself, conversations in writer’s rooms full of business-minded safe choices, not in conversation with the currency of the culture. The currency of the culture being the risk of self-destruction. What is on the charts now is that which will be redundant tomorrow. Duly, I might say 143 had already secured its “spectacular flop” classification from Pitchfork the second the first mouth was opened at the concept meeting. As much as the pop industry machine still has us in the palm of its hand, the general public has grown an incipient distaste for the illusion of authenticity, preferring sardonic self-awareness, a window to the scaffolding behind the facade. Should other legacy popstars not respect this shift in the culture, they should expect similar disasters incoming.
