US pop singer Katy Perry
Photo:Universal Music
Katy Perry plays Katy Perry. The pop star sits in front of a computer and at the same time, as a video game character version rendered to the essentials, hops through a game of himself, which is called like the song for this music video: "Smile". She has a couple of adventures in the game, and even if things seem bad at first, at some point it says: "YOU WIN!" The game ends with a happy ending, after which Katy Perry, sitting in front of the computer, throws a cream cake in her face.
It is not the song "Smile", the title track of Katy Perry's new album, that recalls her earlier successes. It's the cream cake.
Katy Perry's career only really got going when she made sugar-coated her trademark: Back then, she didn't throw a cream cake at herself, but lolled on a cloud of cotton candy, surrounded by monstrous candies and lollipops, while she was at number 1 -Hit "California Gurls" sang about her sun-kissed skin being "so hot" it would melt your popsicle. That was ten years ago when the Californian pastor's daughter Katheryn Elizabeth Hudson, now 35 years old, released her third album "Teenage Dream", which includes "California Gurls".
"Teenage Dream" broke records. It is still one of only two albums in US chart history, five of which each landed at number 1. The second album is "Bad" by Michael Jackson.
The hits gave way, she stayed in the gossip columns
In the beginning Perry's image moved somewhere between boys' fantasy and self-empowerment poetry, between US kitsch and provocation of prudish America ("I Kissed a Girl", "Ur So Gay"). And of course the "Teenage Dream" was a kind of American Dream, this pop star story was based on the story of a poor Christian socialized with gospel who had achieved something (i.e. money). Ten years ago, the Katy Perry principle somehow corresponded to the principle of fascination with a world held together by plastic, in which in the end the good guys, i.e. those with the Colgate smile, win.
It seemed clichéd and artificial, but more wanderlust. The kind that makes you watch American rom-coms on Netflix today (and a bowl of sweet popcorn from the microwave, please).
Over the years and albums, the hits faded from their pop, and Perry stayed in the gossip columns. In 2017 came out "Witness", their last and most unsuccessful album to date, which sounded like a chilling chapter from a pop textbook, headline: How experiments can fail.
Katy Perry performing in Melbourne in March 2020
Photo: Cameron Spencer / Getty ImagesEven before the artistic and commercial crisis came personal problems, Katy Perry and Orlando Bloom had separated. Perry recently, who is back with Bloom and whose daughter Daisy was just born, said about the period after the release of "Witness" that she often put on a fake smile during that time. In the Katy Perry reading, the "Smile" video must be a metaphor for the happy ending after the crisis.
It can also be interpreted differently. As an abstract of Perry's sixth album of the same name, which has now been released. Katy Perry sounds like she was setting a simulation of Katy Perry to music; like the video game character rendered to the essentials. Unfortunately too much was lost during the conversion.
More dutiful than inspired
You can tell immediately that "Smile" is a Katy Perry album, thanks to her singing, which never omits the grand gestures. The fluffy cotton candy synthesizers also sound familiar. Most of it just tastes bland on "Smile".
PR picture for "Smile"
Photo: Universal MusicMore dutifully than inspired, she declines "Crisis" in pop-speech: Is the opener "Never Really Over" - the album's only hit - about persevering, or the title track about not giving up, or elsewhere about that Keeping your head high leads to "Smile" in postcard set platitudes like "It's not the end of the world" or "Don't lose hope". That seems clichéd and artificial, but more in the Fremdschäm way. Similarly, when she drives anemic with her loved one on the Harley on a heart-shaped highway through Hawaii.
When it comes to repression, she encourages in "Teary Eyes" to just keep dancing, or in "Cry About it Later" she just wants to have fun tonight. And that to a sound that shoots pretty much at will, but still shouldn't bother anyone with anything if it accidentally runs on the radio because it sounds so interchangeable.
Katy Perry on Good Morning America in May 2020
Photo: ABC News / Walt Disney Television / Getty ImagesWhen it comes to empowerment, in "Resilient" it is in full bloom as a flower that has managed to grow through cracks in the concrete. You miss the cracks sung about after the twelve songs on this album as much as "Smile" must long for an eccentric pop hit from "Teenage Dream" times.
Ultimately, the crisis on "Smile" reveals itself primarily in the hollow phrases behind the grand gestures and in a lack of creative courage. After the failed experiments of "Witness", you can't really blame Perry for apparently trying to be on the safe side. But "Smile" doesn't sound like number 1 anymore.
Icon: The mirror