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“Purposeful pop” is how Katy Perry describes her latest music offering, wrapped up in a bundle of new sounding tracks titled Witness and released in the United States at midnight last night (also note Taylor Swift released her entire music back catalogue on Spotify at exactly the same time in a move called Mad Love, a direct hit at Perry. The bitterness between these two is exhausting).
But unfortunately the reviews from the world’s top critics have been less-than-flattering, scathing even. Rolling Stone described it as “Perry has replaced the eye of a tiger with the heart of a contemporary night owl… A brassy voice that once held long notes and sang lines like ‘I am a champion’ is now devoured in effects and reverb.”
It does get worse, courtesy of The Los Angeles Times. “Witness, whose singles keep stalling out like Trump’s travel ban, diagnoses only Perry’s desperation for a hit…Hey Hey Hey plays like a weak attempt to duplicate the success of her uplifting 2013 Roar, this time with a paper-thin tune and clunky words about ‘Being Marilyn Monroe in a monster truck’.” And then there’s this one from The Telegraph: “Witness suffers from ‘blockbusteritis’, the same kind of over-thinking and over-spending in pursuit of clichéd goals that turns so many superhero movies into empty spectaculars.”
They are pretty harsh, too harsh even. Let’s hold up for a second here, Witness has reached #1 on iTunes in the U.S. and really, as one of the most interesting popstars of the past decade, Perry can’t fail. Will she succeed with this album though? That’s questionable but her level of success will remain. What do you think of Perry’s new tracks? Listen to Witness here.
