Witness Review

Perry calls this purposeful pop and the album spends fifty seven minutes failing to name the purpose. The pitch is a move from confection to something more grown, and the machinery behind it is expensive: Max Martin, Shellback, Mike Will Made It, and a tropical house palette that was already going stale before the sessions started. What arrives is a record with no center.

Chained to the Rhythm has a real idea about willful ignorance and a chorus strong enough to carry it, Swish Swish is a feud song that forgets to include the feud, and the back half is a run of ballads that mistake slowness for depth. The writing is the weak point by a distance. Lines meant to sound searching land as greeting card, and a singer whose actual gift is a joke delivered with total commitment keeps reaching for a gravity she has not written for herself.

Critics were unimpressed and the common note was not that the album offends but that it drifts, which is worse for a performer whose best work is impossible to ignore. The production keeps it listenable and occasionally better than that. As a pivot it does not land, and as a follow up to a decade of genuinely great singles it has almost nothing to add.