Perry’s ‘ Witness’: Nice end to a horrible prelude
Katy Perry’s
Witness album was in trouble before it was even officially announced. Negative headlines have plagued Perry throughout her album cycle for Witness, her fifth studio album out Friday. First, she positioned her album as “purposeful pop,” releasing lead single Chained to the
Rhythm and promising a political album in interviews. Then, she switched gears and released the ill-advised Migos collaboration Bon Appetit and the potential Taylor Swift diss track,
Swish Swish. Both singles subsequently underperformed on both the charts and the Internet, with critics mocking her for dabbling in hip-hop and dabbing on Saturday Night Live.
The biggest shame of all? Perry didn’t have to do any of this. Despite everything its lead singles and marketing campaign led listeners to expect, Witness is neither Perry’s political manifesto nor an album of embarrassing hip-hop appropriation. The album Perry actually re- leased is sonically coherent and entirely uncontroversial, with decent songwriting mostly focused on her wounded heart. Arguably, it’s one of her most personal records to date, and yet the marketing focused on everything but.
Witness finds Perry in a troubled mood, dominated by gloomy synth-pop that’s sonically cohesive but rarely joyful, a departure from candy-colored singles of her earlier career. Part of the reason for Perry’s soured mood may be the current political climate. Tracks like Witness and Bigger
Than Me hint at the socially aware pop Perry promised her fans.
The album’s most salient narrative isn’t one of protest, but one of heartbreak. Many of Perry’s best tracks have been revealing postmortems on her previous relationships, from her triumphant 2010 hit Part of Me to the revealing piano ballad By The Grace of
God from 2014’s Prism. While those previous tracks addressed Perry’s divorce from Russell Brand, Witness sees Perry haunted by the high profile of another famous ex, likely her former beau John Mayer. She spies his SUV on Sunset Boulevard on the poignant
Save As Draft, an ode to busy schedules and electronic communication wreaking havoc on love. “Saw your picture on accident/ Your face has changed, the lines are sinking in” she sings on Miss
You More, before pressing play on one of his songs. Perhaps that song was Still Feel
Like Your Man, Mayer’s new single from earlier this year, which he publicly admitted was inspired by Perry. Ironically, despite the fact that Perry’s profile rose following their split, her ex’s promo cycle would’ve suited her album far better than her fake-woke, Swift-baiting antics.
Instead, Perry sold Witness as a political statement and paired it with an alienating marketing campaign, a self-defeating process that undermined the album’s many strengths. Five albums into a successful pop career, she deserves some credit for trying to do something new. Still, Perry should’ve listened to the advice on the penultimate track Pendulum, “Don’t try and reinvent your wheel, ‘cause you’re too original.”