Review Summary: Katy Perry's Witness sparkles like a bedazzled turd.
With an average Metascore of 53, it’s safe to say that mega pop star, Katy Perry, has never enjoyed the best of reviews. But what do reviews matter when you’ve already made millions off songs like “Firework,” “Dark Horse,” and “I Kissed A Girl?” I have no idea; but seeing the especially awful reviews for her latest release,
Witness, I was intrigued. I figured the critics and fans were reacting more to her new Trash-Bag-Miley-Cyrus look than her new music, but boy was I wrong. Dead wrong.
The album gets off to a decent enough start with “Witness,” a song whose dance music isn’t anything special, but its chorus is catchy enough for me to be singing it loud enough in my head that I forget my order at Burger King. “Hey Hey Hey” is more memorable with its growling synths, creating a unique contrast to Perry’s sweet voice. The track finds the singer doing a bit of bragging- her money situation is ridiculous, she’s strong and independent. Basically, she’s a bad bitch. She continues the braggadocios delivery “Swish Swish," a confirmed Taylor Swift diss track. Overall, Perry takes some nice shots (Yeezy would be proud) and Nicki Minaj closes out the track in typical Nicki Minaj fashion- flexing on haters while switching deliveries/voices several times over. Is the track dumb? Yes. Is it a lot of fun? Absolutely.
Then the album completely dies.
In classic pop album fashion, this record is front loaded like a mother. After the first four songs, all the effort the album puts in to convey Perry’s strength as an independent woman is deconstructed by a series of sappy love songs that harp on unrequited romance and “what if” scenarios. The sparkling turd in this pile is “Miss You More.” It dials up the cringe to 11 as Perry exclaims in the chorus, “I missed you more than I loved you.” Everyone’s experienced puppy love before but no one wants to talk about it, let alone hear a 3 minute song about it.
In addition to the smh-love-songs, there’s some “party anthems” (“Chained To The Rhythm”) that are about as energetic as Chris Cornell’s corpse and sex songs that fail to titillate (“Bon Appétit”). Not to forget, all of this “fresh” material is delivered to you, the listener, courtesy of some lukewarm club music.
If you really want to get some joy out of this album, listen to it for the hilariously awful metaphors/analogies that litter the album’s lyrics. Let’s check some out-
You’ve got me spread like a buffet (“Bon Appétit”)
I take a deep breath and save as draft (“Save as Draft”)
You came in like a sailor with your heart that anchored me (“Into Me You See”)
Life’s a pendulum/It all comes back around (“Pendulum”)
The entirety of “Tsunami”
There's loads more, but I'd like to close this out with one of my own-
Reviewing Katy Perry is like trying to make love to a Hoover Vacuum Cleaner, it sucks.
-Andrew Larrea
