Katy Perry – “143” coming to slay/ "The LIFETIMES Tour"

[Coco Yu'Kneek- Saint]

I owe Katy Perry an apology. She said she was contractually obligated to work with Luke or face legal ramifications and that is all I needed to hear. For me personally that is an explanation . I was wrong on her and her character in that case

[Az Paynter]

If you're referring to what I think you're referring to, I've heard that's an unverified tweet and possibly fake news (and I know no further than that).

[Coco Yu'Kneek- Saint]

Sept 26, 2024 19:31:43 GMT -5 Az Paynter said:

If you're referring to what I think you're referring to, I've heard that's an unverified tweet and possibly fake news (and I know no further than that).

I've worked 25 hours in two days lol I didn't verify if that's the case I take back my apology! 😞 I she did an interview and said something to the affect I'm legally obligated to work with Luke for 3 albums and I had no choice or legal stuff.

[Az Paynter]

Okay lol yeah I'm pretty sure that's fake news, I thought that rumour got debunked when it first cropped up back before 'Woman's World' dropped and the lashings had started over the Puke credit. She's never had any contractual obligations of any kind to work with him, this was her and everyone in the room living in bizarro world thinking she could willingly go back to him and it would be a non-issue.

[Caviar]

Sept 26, 2024 15:29:47 GMT -5 wavey. said:

Already bought the digital album and vinyl. She’s not taking more of my coins!

[Ty]

Literally what I'm thinking! I've paid for 2 copies of CD (Target version + signed version). Katy you're rich enough without my extra $5 😂

[Anticonformity]

This album isn't as HORRIBLE as some peeps are making it... is it artificial/just kinda "phoned in" for her at this point? Yes
Seperating the art from the artist, the songs aren't all bad... Specifically adding in the deluxe tracks...

I actually could easily delete 6 songs and have a 9 track really good album:

Wonder
All The Love
Crush
No More Tears For New Years
Gorgeous

Lifetimes
Has A Heart
I Woke Up
Nirvana

[Ryan]

Added two shows.

[Enigma.]

I'm confused by this tour - why the Australia dates are on sale already and nothing else has been announced?

[Dylan :)]

Debuts at #2 on the Australian Albums Chart

[Ｓｏｕｎｄｃｌ🕤ｃｋ]

[Az Paynter]

Sept 27, 2024 3:11:14 GMT -5 Enigma. said:

I'm confused by this tour - why the Australia dates are on sale already and nothing else has been announced?

I'm presuming she's started with promoting Australian dates because she's here right now and getting all the attention from Aussie audiences since she's performing at the AFL Grand Final tomorrow.

Album charted at #2 on ARIA btw.

[Ty]

Good for her! Given that this will be her first world tour in 8 years, I do think she will do quite well. Perched for the announcement of US dates.

[wavey.]

[holdmecloser255]

I can't stop replaying "Truth." It has really grown on me. The "can't look in the mirror" part is extremely catchy.

[Dylan :)]

Debuts at #20 on the Irish Album Charts (you’re welcome, Katy, given most of those streams were me). Also:

[👑 Eloquent ™]

^ Here is the full article if anyone is interested. Interesting read!

Katy Perry’s Latest Album Isn’t as Bad as Her Timing

The pop singer’s latest LP, “143,” has been gleefully panned, but its musical faults aren’t as remarkable as Perry’s failure to read the current cultural moment.

Katy Perry’s “143” comes at a time when the promotion and rollout strategies for albums are often scrutinized as heavily as their content.

By Lindsay Zoladz

Sept. 27, 2024, 5:01 a.m. ET

Less than 24 hours after its release last Friday, Katy Perry’s seventh studio album, “143,” had already earned a place in pop musical infamy.
It debuted on Metacritic, a website that collects and quantifies music reviews, with a score of 35 out of 100, becoming the site’s lowest-rated album since 2011 and the worst-reviewed album by a female artist in its 23-year history. Seemingly the kindest thing any critic said about “143” was that it “falls short of total catastrophe.” Online, dunking on Perry became a semiprofessional sport, as representatives of rival stan armies posted about her supposed downfall with irrepressible glee.
But is “143” really that bad? It certainly lacks the sparkle, personality and campy wit that characterized “Teenage Dream,” Perry’s blockbuster 2010 album. (Along with Michael Jackson’s “Bad,” “Teenage Dream” is the only album to spawn five No. 1 hits.) But none of the songs on “143” are as ostentatiously awful as some of Perry’s previous failures, like, say, “Bon Appétit,” the Migos-assisted nadir of her 2017 album, “Witness,” or the track from her 2013 release, “Prism,” on which she sang about a night out doing (gulp) “Mariah Carey-oke.” The defining qualities of “143” are its blandness, anonymity and deadeyed seriousness — rather surprising for a woman whose 2022 Las Vegas residency, “Play,” found her singing beside a 16-foot toilet.
Unfortunately, dull, uninspired pop albums come out all the time, and plenty of Perry’s pop star peers have also recently had to reckon with diminishing sales. It was highly unlikely that a new album was going to launch Perry, who in recent years has been appearing as a judge on “American Idol,” back to pop’s epicenter. Despite a lead single (the anthemic synth-pop number “Never Really Over”) far superior to anything on “143,” Perry’s 2020 album, “Smile,” failed to make much of an impression. But it also did not prompt the outsized scorn and schadenfreude that has accompanied her latest release.

I can’t say I’ll be putting “143” in heavy rotation, but I also do not think it is the worst album I have heard since 2011, nor the most odious collection of music made by a woman in over two decades. (It is also not a total commercial failure, projected to debut with around 40,000 units sold in its first week.) The album’s anodyne jams might not tell us much about Katy Perry, but the Great Flop of “143” says a lot about the way pop is consumed, evaluated and discussed in this particular moment, when music is just one part of the package. Listeners are more aware than ever how the cotton candy is made, debating the merits of various figures who were once tucked behind the curtain: producers, writers and in some cases even managers and publicists. In a time when an album’s promotion and rollout strategy are often scrutinized as heavily as its content, Perry was already doomed to fail.
A mediocre album from a pop star past her commercial peak, “143” probably would have come and gone without much notice were its rollout not prone to so many cringe-inducing gaffes, like the controversy surrounding the music video for the blithe, house-inflected single “Lifetimes,” which prompted a government investigation for filming on a UNESCO World Heritage nature reserve off the coast of Spain.
Then there was Perry’s decision to reunite with the producer and songwriter Dr. Luke, who worked with Perry on four of the No. 1 hits off “Teenage Dream.” Dr. Luke, born Lukasz Gottwald, had a Midas touch in pop’s mid-aughts and early 2010s, but his reputation was significantly tarnished by a 2014 lawsuit filed by the musician Kesha, who claimed that Gottwald sexually assaulted and harassed her while she was signed to his label. (They reached a settlement in June 2023.)

Image

Katy Perry collaborated with Dr. Luke on four of the five No. 1 hits from her 2010 album “Teenage Dream.”Credit...Chris Pizzello/Associated Press

To her discredit, Perry has been spectacularly mealy-mouthed when she has been asked to account for her decision to work with someone publicly accused of such behavior. “I understand that it started a lot of conversations,” Perry told Alexandra Cooper on a recent episode of the podcast “Call Her Daddy,” when asked about Gottwald’s involvement in “143,” “and he was one of many collaborators that I collaborated with, but the reality is that it comes from me. The truth is, I wrote these songs from my experience of my whole life going through this metamorphosis.” And of course, it is easy to be cynical about Perry enlisting a man accused of sexual assault to co-write and co-produce a pop-feminist anthem like the flaccid “Woman’s World.”

Still, Perry is not the only high-profile artist to work with Gottwald in the wake of Kesha’s lawsuit. In 2022, Nicki Minaj (“Super Freaky Girl”) and Latto (“Big Energy”) both had hits co-produced by Gottwald. He was nominated for the 2020 record of the year Grammy for producing Doja Cat’s breakout No. 1 single “Say So.”
Amid considerable backlash, Gottwald has stayed busy and even intermittently successful by evolving his production style to reflect current trends, working frequently with female rappers on tracks that utilize easily recognizable and sometimes heavy-handed samples. In reviews of “143,” some writers have suggested that Perry’s sin wasn’t working with Dr. Luke per se, but refusing to adapt her hit-making strategy as adeptly as he has. In his review for The Los Angeles Times, the critic Mikael Wood cited “Say So” and “Big Energy” to suggest “that audiences would forgive her decision” to reunite with Gottwald, “provided she came with bangers.”
To listen to pop music these days — or even just to participate in pop culture writ large — is to be wracked with seemingly endless and possibly futile questions about ethical consumption. Is it more permissible to enjoy an old Dr. Luke-produced song than a new one that was made with full awareness of Kesha’s accusations? Is it OK to stream a newer Dr. Luke track if everyone thinks it’s a “banger?” When one of those record-tying five No. 1s from Michael Jackson’s “Bad” is played at a wedding, should you vacate the dance floor in protest?
It is worth noting that Perry’s latest album was released days after Sean Combs, once one of the most powerful figures in the music industry, was arrested on charges of sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy. While rumors have long swirled about Combs’s behavior, the speed at which he has gone from being a celebrated as a pioneering music mogul to accused of horrific crimes has been whiplash inducing. A cloud of sickened anticipation now hangs in the air, as fans are left wondering if any other artists will be implicated in Combs’s charges, which fan faves might be exposed as problematic and what other secrets may lurk beneath the music industry’s platinum facade.
In the midst of all this moral queasiness, Perry has emerged as a convenient scapegoat for larger cultural ire and anxieties. Perhaps it is a welcome distraction to condemn and joke about Perry’s beaming obliviousness rather than consider the music industry’s systemic problems and widespread complicities in all manners of abuse.
Perry certainly deserves a good deal of the blame for her album flopping. Part of being a successful pop star is knowing how to read the room, and in that she failed completely. But the overwhelming scorn directed at her latest release feels more about the moment than about the music itself. I don’t think “143” is the worst album of the last 13 years, but it might just be the easiest target.

www.nytimes.com/2024/09/27/arts/music/katy-perry-143-review.html


I agree with points, though I am surprised a journalist didn't cite the fact that both Nicki and Doja received backlash from working with Luke and that they have very different audiences than Katy which makes all the difference and is a whole other discussion! Good read overall!

[Ｓｏｕｎｄｃｌ🕤ｃｋ]

Sept 27, 2024 10:05:05 GMT -5 👑 Eloquent ™ said:

Perry certainly deserves a good deal of the blame for her album flopping. Part of being a successful pop star is knowing how to read the room, and in that she failed completely. But the overwhelming scorn directed at her latest release feels more about the moment than about the music itself. I don’t think “143” is the worst album of the last 13 years, but it might just be the easiest target.

this.

[👑 Eloquent ™]

Agreed. I don't think 143 is the worst female album of all time at all or the worst album since 2011.

[Caviar]

When are the US dates going to be announced?

[wjr15]

Sept 27, 2024 9:25:34 GMT -5 wavey. said:

I guess we’re gonna get another year of CLC being pushed (music video one year, vinyls another year). I ain’t mad about it, CLC is a cute addition to any Christmas playlist. I still think Katy should do a Christmas album or EP one day.

[daddy]

I've listened a few times through with an open mind (I really pull for Katy!), and I don't think it's as bad as the Internet makes it out to be... but the lyrics are just so basic.

I know most listeners have never listened to Katy's music for her lyrics, but I wonder if in this current musical climate (with recent pop albums like TTPD, The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess, Short n' Sweet, etc) maybe her (lack of) talent as a lyricist just stands out more?

IDK.

It just sounds like they had a timer running while writing these songs and never went back and tried to improve them lyrically.

On a positive note, it's kinda fun.

I like this more than Witness (which I listened to maybe twice) and will give it additional listens in the right time and place (gym, getting ready to go out, etc).

[Ｓｏｕｎｄｃｌ🕤ｃｋ]

143 debuted at #6 in the UK and Italy, #9 New Zealand, #16 Germany.

[Ryan]

Week 1: 29.82M on Spotify.

[wavey.]

Wishes came true💙🧡🩵❤️

[Ｓｏｕｎｄｃｌ🕤ｃｋ]

^^ Smile debuted with 32.6M, basically the same because 143 has one track less.

[Nick]

KATY PERRY 143

44,089  34,386  404  9,298

[Az Paynter]

Katy's AFL set list:

- Roar
- Dark Horse
- Gorgeous
- California Gurls
- Teenage Dream
- I Kissed A Girl w/Tina Arena
- Chains w/Tina Arena
- Lifetimes
- Firework

It was mainly one giant medley, none of the songs were done in full (IKAG/Chains each had the least, Tina showed up basically for a verse & chorus of IKAG before taking the lead for one chorus of Chains). There was also a sprinkle of 'Woman's World' in the intro.

[Ty]

She did "Gorgeous"???

[Ryan]