Every Single Album - '143' | Every Single Album: Katy Perry

Episode Date: September 27, 2024

Katy Perry's latest album, '143,' is looking like the late-career comeback that wasn't. Nora and Nathan talk about why this album has failed so badly (1:00), the rote production and lyrics on songs like 'GIMME GIMME' and 'ARTIFICIAL' (20:27), and where Perry goes from here (28:05). Hosts: Nora Princiotti and Nathan Hubbard Producer: Kaya McMullen Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello football fans. Shield Capadia here to tell you that the Ringer NFL show is the best place to be for fun and in-depth analysis of all your favorite teams and players throughout the 2024 season. Join me, Stephen Ruiz and Deonté Lee twice a week for an insightful preview of the weekly slate of games every Friday, followed by the Big Monday Recap Show where we delve into our patented hot takes on all the NFL action. And don't forget about Wednesdays, which will feature me, a special QB segment from Stephen, a breakdown of the biggest storylines around the league from our own Nora Princiatti, plus much more.

You won't want to miss any of it, so make sure you subscribe to the Ringer NFL show on Spotify or wherever you get your podcast and follow at Ringer NFL on Instagram, TikTok X, and YouTube. Welcome to every single album. I'm Nora Princiatti, and I am joined, as always, by Nathan Hubbard, who's a little under the weather and is soldiering through.

which I appreciate in particular because Nathan, we got to talk about a flop this week. It's Katie Perry Tuesday. It's Katie Perry Tuesday once again for us. And we're talking about one four three. And I'm really sorry to do this to you and you're not feeling so great. Why are we doing this? You know what? We decided we wanted to see what this late career comeback attempt was going to be.

And we're going to digest what Katie gave us. have done the diligence of going back in time. We spent some time with Teenage Dream. We revisited the best of what she's given us and talked about our mutual love for this woman and for what she's accomplished. And now we're going to talk about a 33-minute album that it is beyond me why anyone thought it was a good idea to make. Where are you on 143, five days in to its life as a completely released album out in the universe. Here are words that have been used to describe this album by music critics, which does not always mean much.

Katie herself wore the Charlie shirt the other week that said they don't build statues of critics. These are the words, limp, death knell, mindless, flop, which Nora Princiotti also used 30 seconds into this conversation,

genuinely bad, dated as vine, soulless, trapped in a bygone time, cliché, uninspired, forgettable, flat. Nora, this album has been universally banned.

Yeah. As her worst album spectacularly badly. Completely out of place for the 2020s. And generally, speaking an all-around waste of time, money, and effort. So anybody could have read that and pooped on Katie Perry.

And I love Katie Perry. What is there good to say about this album? Oh, that's a nice way of kicking us off. I like the positivity. I like two songs. I like the Dochi song. that is getting some buzz on social media. That's I'm his, he's mine.

The Vajicam song. Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, look, I had my own point of view on the scissoring. But the song is fine. I think it's kind of, it's, it could have done more with the, with the sample Gypsy Woman by Crystal Waters. But I like invoking that, you know, it's not the most tactful use of a song. that's sort of more powerful than whatever Katie Perry is doing here. But there are worse sins than that, many of them present here.

I think it's a decent song. I think it's interesting. There's some interesting textures, again, seeing it all over TikTok. And Lifetime is fine. That's the best I can do for you. I'm sorry. I don't have anything else. Yeah, I mean, I think this is a tribute to house and dance music.

music from the 2010s, maybe. And it would serve well in the lobby of the W. Hotel in Scottsdale, Arizona. Maybe not so well at the pool. Okay, but like W. Hotel lobbies, some of the most chaotic and oddly unpleasant hotel lobbies. I'm saying nice things. Known to a hotel chain. I know, but I think you stumbled on to something there, which is like, like,

something that there's clearly been money invested in it, there's clearly been time invested in it, and why was the end product so unpleasant? Well, we'll get there. I mean, I hear... I'm just telling you how I end up... Like, whenever I... If a work trip takes me somewhere

where there's like a corporate W hotel, I always book it going, oh, that'll be nice. And then I always end the experience being like, that was really purple. Yeah, well, it is purple. I mean, they at least change out the mats in the elevator according to the time of day. So it says, good morning, good afternoon, good evening.

That's the coolest part about a W hotel. One of the least cool parts of the W. Hotel is, in fact, the soundtrack in the lobby. But I hear Dead Mouse in this album. I hear some Swedish House Mafia. I think in the best of cases, this was Katie Perry trying to create a fun,

I'll be it short, fun dance party. That you could just put it on, push play. The songs never stop. The whole thing is sort of strung together. You didn't have to think hard about the lyrics. You didn't have to think hard about the music. It would all be vaguely familiar. And it would be fun for the whole family.

But I really think that this is what happens when you are incredibly wealthy and you are incredibly famous and you're married to somebody who is also incredibly wealthy and incredibly famous and you've been in a bubble on television for a long time

and what happens in so many cases like this is that people get famous people get people around them who only exist because of that famous person's income and it is whatever the opposite of the way that a Navy SEAL team operates, where you speak the truth lest you die. It becomes the exact

opposite in these situations, which is you get surrounded inevitably by people whose income are tied to your happiness and to your appeasement. And so you become surrounded by sycophantic people who don't step in and tell you the truth. And when you layer on top of that, Nora, what has been going on in the music business for the last 12 months, where label after label after label have been cutting back heads and firing executives and letting people go in service of preparing for this new music business where catalogs make you lots of money, but it's harder than ever to break music out. The frontline team at Capitol Records was decimated in a series of layoffs earlier this year. And executives who maybe would have shepherded this project.

are gone. And marketing people who understood are gone. I'm not saying that they would have made this record end up better. But it doesn't seem to me that in the music business right now, there's anybody on that side of the fence who's willing to stare an artist who is this successful and this famous and this wealthy in the eye and say, you did not do a good enough job. And that is what this record feels like to me at the end of the day. And that is as much on the people around Katie Perry, who they take a paycheck from Katie Perry, either directly or indirectly, as it is on Katie Perry. I don't put this at the end of the day entirely on the artist. Nor do I, and I agree with everything you just said. I have a question to add on top of that.

Do you think people worked hard on this album? Some people worked hard on this album. Who? I think Dr. Luke worked hard on this album. I think Serban Ganea, who has mixed most of the albums that we've talked about in this podcast, probably spent, you know, he gave it the old college try. But you don't put this album on and go, whoa, I better up my game and this is going to, because this is real me. Like the people who mixed the Charlie X, X, X record definitely heard this and went, whoa, I've got something here. The people who mixed the Chapel Roan record said, whoa, I've got the people on the Billy record.

I mean, I don't know if you saw the Amex thing that came out yesterday, Billy and Phineas talking through birds of a feather, and they talked through how they made the song, and he's playing isolated vocal parts, and just the intricacies of how they thought about that song. They took over a year to write just that one song, and they, as they said, they overthought it more than anything they've done. Well, guess what? It's the biggest hit on the album. So it worked. That's not to say that you need to spend a ton of time to make something great. You don't. There are loads of albums that suggest that. But I think you are getting at something here, which is who decided this was good idea and how hard did they work on it? And most importantly, was there any creative tension in the room whatsoever? Because oftentimes from that creative tension comes better ideas. Well, and I think it's a good point on someone like Serban Ganea. You know, there's a lot of people who have a lot of jobs. And I don't mean to, I don't mean to, I don't mean to,

malign people who are just doing what they've been asked to do and doing what is a very professional and in a lot of moments totally glossy and nice sounding, you know, professional superstar person who can get a lot of people to work with her type of album. For Dr. Luke in particular, I don't know. This has always been an issue with him at times. there are a lot of songs here that just sound like vaguely ripped up and pieced back together versions of other songs that he's worked on. Yes.

There are some samples doing a lot of work here, which is not necessarily a problem. I mean, I don't know. No, that's house and dance music at its core, right? Yeah, totally. Totally. And when it works, I think it's totally justifiable. And again, especially when you don't have a lot of your own going on, great. If you're doing that and you're cutting the check and it's making something more pleasant to listen to, I'm all for it. I just, I don't think there was a good idea here.

To your point, I think somebody needed to say no. Somebody needed to infuse some creative tension. If something was going to come out of this, I think somebody needed to be willing to say, and clearly no one was, Katie Perry, this is a bad idea. Katie Perry, woman's world is tone deaf. Katie Perry, some of these lyrics are so deeply vapid. I don't think you should put your name on them. Most or all of these lyrics are so deeply vapid. I mean, we just did Teenage Dream.

TGIF is ridiculously fun. It's not like, we're not talking about Emily Dickinson, but it is ridiculously fun. And even Peacock captured a bunch of vernacular of the time. There are so many platitudes on this album, it's hard to believe it's real. Now look, there's no sense in piling on and being a hater here

because everybody else has done that. It's why I sort of want to talk about where you take Katie, who is a national treasure from here. This is an album that is lyrically and musically, let's call it light. That's the best probably, which is a euphemism for VAPID maybe,

but it's light. The problem is that every single bit of it, as you just articulated, has been done before. It's made to just push play and turn the room into a dance party, but it borrows so much from music that is outdated now

that it exists in this plane of purgatory, which is to say if we want a full dance party, I'm going and putting on Teenage Dream. Because everybody in the room is going to dance a teenage dream, with a few exceptions, Hummingbird, no way. Give me that.

Hummingbird Heartbeat is fine. It's fine. Whatever. But, you know, if we want a real house... I take Hummingbird heartbeat. heartbeat on this album. Yeah, you're right. You're right.

I'd take Circle the Drain. I would take Not Like a Movie. If it's not like the movie. Or is it just like a movie? Not like the movies. Not like the movies. I'd take Not Like the Movies.

But like if we want a real house and dance album, we're going to go take Honey Dijon. We're going to take Fred again. We're going to take. John Summit or something that is fresh and has impact. And this just sort of exists in, it's almost a statement on the detached nature of celebrity. To me, that's the art in this, is how the hell this happened. Yeah, but you don't think they were trying to do that.

No way. But for us, that's the art. Sure. Sure. It is, at a standalone basis, a fascinating study into how detached and, incredibly successful, talented, wealthy celebrity can be from the reality of the business in which they earned that celebrity fame fortune. That's what this is to me. It's a standalone. How on earth did this happen? And the, you know, documentary into how this happened will be as fascinating

as the incredible documentary that we saw about Katie Perry before about how she sort of persevered and stayed incredibly strong through the demise of her first marriage. Okay. So do you think that there will be anything that that even sniffs at hit status from this? No. It's over. No. Because of the decision that they made coming out of the gate to go with a woman's world, it bulldoze the opportunity for anything behind it because it turned this album in. For some people, into a joke. I mean, yeah, I think if they'd started with lifetimes... It would have done better.

It would have done better. It still would not have been a hit because all of the same things are true. There is not... There are nine songs on Teenage Dream that are more exciting than one song on this album. Yes. But I do think that... I don't know that we would be having quite the conversation that we're having right now, but I also think that it would still, like, this album is troubled enough that the issues would have come through, even if people didn't quite have the scent that putting woman's world first.

Yeah, and there is that old adage, if you want to get out of a hole, the first thing you do is you stop digging. And now, all of the setup of this album, Katie, in a hilarious way that created some really fun online content, handing out shots in the club. Like, her doing all of this work

around sort of dance and club and these are my... The problem is, we just got a revolutionary club album, called Brat. There's just no way to compete and slot in at the same time. Even without Brad, I don't think this album does anything.

It just... Oh, she just was trying so hard. Do you have a best song? Like, do you want to even go there? I mean, is it wonder? I mean, this is Stargate producing. No, don't bring your... Don't bring your kid into this mess.

I'm just saying, like, having Daisy Doves sing on it, Maybe she should have sang the whole album. Quite possibly. Stargate produced this, and they produce Peacock, and they produce fireworks. So, I don't know. No, there isn't a best song. Crush is okay, but it has some Kelly Clarks and Catch My Breath. Yeah.

Which is much better. I don't hate lifetimes totally. I'm with you. I think all the love is fine. I guess it has a lot of, you know, don't you worry child by Swedish House Mafia in it. I hear the song. But part of the problem of this album is they're just, you know, for all of the joking that we did last week about Teenage Dream

and the fact that it was at the same time a collection of some of the most popular songs of all time and the most clustered collection of popular songs of all time, coupled with some of the weirdest not-so-good stuff of all time, you know, there at least you had a full album. Here, it's a job. giant collection of weirdly, not weirdly, just sort of been done before produced meh. That's what it is. That's a good question.

Is what's, is the average song on this album worse than Circle the Drain? No, I like Circle the Drain in the big picture because it taught me something about Katie Perry. There's nothing on this album that teaches me about Katie Perry. And in fact, there's things like, you know, if you want my body, you've got to blow my mind on gimme, gimme. Like, really? Like, you're in a loving relationship with Orlando Bloom. Like, I know that. You also just said in the run-up that you're giving out BJs for doing the dishes. So it's like, if I come downstairs and the kitchen is clean and you've done it all and you've done all the dishes and you've closed all the pantry doors. You better be ready to get your dick socks. This is not, I just don't believe it.

It's just a total platitude, not anything that gave me anything. I'll take most of the stuff, at least hummingbird heartbeat, like, I understand the Russell Brand stuff better. I don't know. It teaches me something about the artist. It's something that I as a human being can connect with a human being. There are jokes about this album that if you trained AI, on a data set of the songs that play in the W Hotel Lobby, basically. You know, just sort of mid-2010 to 2020-era house dance music.

This is what you'll get. I mean, we're going to talk about artificial intelligence and Katie Ferry's thoughts about it in a second. But the other thing is, like, even beyond her personal introspection and lyrics that teach me something about her, there are one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, eight songwriters on Gimmy Gimmy. It took eight people to get to Gimmy, Gimmy, baby, stop wasting my time. Kitty, Kitty, want to come party tonight?

Yeah. I get that, you know, the counting the songwriters thing, like, people do this to Beyonce, and sometimes there's validity in it and sometimes it's not. Sometimes it's, you know what? They actually did bring in one person to get one little intricate part of a song, right? And that's cool. And I think that's art and that's really exciting. When this is the result, I'm sorry.

I am looking at this fat credits list and going, this is what you all put your heads together and came up with. Like, it's embarrassing. It sounds like what 40-year-old people think the club should sound like. But you know what that's like? Like I was at an old person's birthday party in Arizona this past week. And that's how I graced through the W hotel lobby in Scottsdale. And we all walked in to some freaking ASU bar at like 1230 in the morning. And we all walked out of some freaking ASU bar at 1231 in the morning.

Because nobody wants to see us there. Nobody. And that's what this album is. It's like, get out the club. Let's talk about the cuts because I just, I, I need to talk about artificial. Okay. Talk to me. This is the worst song.

This is the worst effect. I mean, most of these songs are bad. Most of these songs shouldn't have been released. It's artificial for you. Yes. Because you know what? I can, I can actually, I can live in a weird way with, I'm going to love you for lifetimes.

Like, it doesn't teach me anything. It's not terribly interesting, but whatever. Can you touch me in a simulation is too much for you? So can you touch me in a simulation? This is the worst lyric on this entire album. This offends me so. I'm just a prisoner in your prison. Where else would a prisoner be?

What else do they do with prison? Again, again, like eight people. Eight people with a writing credit for coming up with that. JID is pretty cool, but... Sure, fine, whatever. Like, get... I think Casey Musgrave's interpolated one of his songs. But anyway, whatever.

Cash the check, not his fault. But here's why I think this song is representative of a lot of what's going wrong here. It's like, I don't really want to hear the dance pops. song about how AI is going to disrupt relationships and all of

Katie Perry's questions about this. I don't want to hear this from this woman who just spent her summer in the Mediterranean with Jeff Bezos. Yeah.

There's just a level of introspection and why your message matters right now. And again, somebody's got to help her because Katie Perry has a lot to still contribute to the creative and the fun of the world because she's really good at it. She's good at making fun. She's happiness, magic, and fun, just like Travis.

Okay. So then what is it? Travis isn't going to play tight end when he's 40. Travis is barely playing tight end when he's 35 or whatever he's now. If I was driving this project, I would have given her a, a folklore moment. I would have tried that. I would have tried to put her into something that's so different than the way that we expect her. That it's not a, you know, that it's not like a, oh, this is like a link between all the previous albums, but you just sort of appreciate her as an

artist. And the problem, you know, again, the art here is, is in the lack of self-awareness. and at least trying something new that was different that showed her in a different light would have been... I mean, this is sort of... I mean, it's dark horse... It's dark horse to a worse beat, almost. Baby, do you dead...

With worse melodies. I don't know. It's just like, you can sort of see in this album. Another way to say it is, you can see the degradation over time. Now when we plot these albums and the emotional, visceral response to them on a graph.

You know, the regression, I mean, the line goes down and to the right, which is to say it feels like it's in decline. And I would have liked to have taken her out of that and done something different. Gaga goes and does something with Tony Bennett. And maybe you're into it, maybe you're not. But you still step back and be like, wow, that's an artist. Gaga goes and does a star as born and stares Bradley Cooper in the eyes and you believe it. And is that your favorite song of all time?

I don't know. She's working with Lucas Nelson. Fine. My rant on this is just let's try to push the boundaries of her as an artist. And when you deliver this, it suggests that those, the box of Katie Perry is just small. And I think it's unfair because I think she's a bigger artist than this. That's, that's interesting. I mean, I think it would be worth trying, right? She has such a household name. She's had such high highs. it certainly would have been a more worthwhile pursuit than this. Katie Perry sings the songbook, the Great American Songbook. Yeah, I mean, why, like, why not? At this point, the, why not is, is a totally worthwhile reaction. I think, to be totally honest about how I feel, I'm a little bit more negative on it than that in the sense that this,

I think the damage of this album to her is that, It has really reminded me that she has really had one mega, mega successful album. Correct. You could call it too, because one of the boys, I think, was really good. I think there's good stuff on Smile, and I think there's some good stuff on Witness, but both of those records were disappointing. And both of those records didn't really do what she set out for them to do. And it is hard for me to not start reframing her as an artist where at a certain moment in time,

she made great choices. She did something really good. And a lot of things clicked and went right in a sort of right place, right person, right time way. Rather than this is someone who actually really has something to say that's going to hold up over time or hold up in. different contexts. And it makes her feel more of a specific moment, which when, you know, when I tried to think about, like, where do you go from here? I mean, I'm, I admire your optimism, and I think it's worth trying, just, like, go out of left field and see what happens. I mean, why not? Why not? Why not? There's very little downside. If that doesn't work,

I do think that this is damaging enough that, like, and not that this is so horrible, but you move into the era where she decides if she wants to do sort of tour the greatest hits. Well, that's what the Vegas residency was. Do the, yeah, focus on stuff like that. There's nothing wrong with that. I just, it's, it's, I feel like I would be pulling it out of my ass a little bit too much to say, yeah, here's where she could go from here. Maybe I've already framed it this way, but let me do it again. This is somebody, teenage dream was an encapsulation of culture in a moment. And she was a great vehicle for that. Her conservative Christian upbringing coupled with her sort of at worst by curiosity,

her ability to sort of speak her mind as a woman in a moment in which that was interesting and not controversial, but maybe a little bit risky to be sure and brave. When you take somebody like that out of culture for 14 years or 15 years and you put them in a bubble, it's just really hard to then re-inject yourself into culture. It's the thing I would worry about with somebody like Sabrina, who, by the way, first show crushed it. She's performing these songs incredibly well. I'm going to go check in and see it in New York this week. Can't wait. Sabrina is a translator of culture. She's got her finger on the pulse. And as long as she's able to do that, she's going to be an awesome artist. If you pull her out of it and she gets off into the ivory tower, it'd be hard for

anybody to sort of re-inject themselves. Yeah. And then the question is sort of like, can you hang on to the shred of normalcy that tells you? You know what? This is not for me to do. This is not for. You bring in other songwriters to help you get there. Beyonce is certainly in an Ivy Tower. You know what she's done? She's become a historian. And she started making music that's rooted in history with her own artistic interpretation of that history. And that's what I think these projects have been and why they've been fascinating and why they've sort of mattered because they haven't been so dependent on her, you know, talking about the traditional trope or meme of, aren't I cute, don't you want me? And there's just so much of that

on this album. We know too much about Katie. She is a grown-ass adult at this point that it's just hard to connect with as an artist. But I don't like that we're doing an entire podcast. I hope people don't feel like we're doing an entire podcast just to like poop on Katie Perry. Go read all the reviews that poop on Katie Perry. You are talking to two people. I mean, I literally with my family and my kids, every Tuesday, we have Katie Perry Tuesday, where we play, like, driving them back from whatever activity they're doing.

We play Katie Perry and we make tacos and we have a great time. This is a woman who made some art that endures. And Nora, you have pushed us incredibly hard on this podcast to do Katie Perry because you love her so much. So this is more of a feedback session because I don't think there's debate that this is Katie Perry's worst album and it really should not have been put out from a career perspective. So what we're trying to figure out is now what? Is it salvageable? How would you resuscitate the career of somebody who I think matters? I hear you saying that you're questioning whether she was maybe, you know,

whether she was Carly Ray Jepson as opposed to Taylor Swift. Wrong spectrum. First of all. First of all, first of all, we will not be doing Carly Ray Jepson's slander on this podcast. Yeah, I mean, look, like we are music fans and I don't want to spend a ton of time just like shitting on someone. But also, we talk about a lot of great music. And I think it is a disservice to the amazing album.

that we spend time with to not acknowledge when something doesn't work. And when... Yeah, it's just more interesting why. Like, I don't think there's going to be too many conflicting opinions that this is not an album that anybody's going to spend a lot of time with. It's getting playlisted now and it's sort of being injected into people's Spotify feeds. But, like, it's got a tiny fraction of the streams that most of the pop hits that are not a tiny fraction, but I'm saying 20, 40, 50 percent of the streams right now.

now that the other big pop hits have, and it will have a much steeper decay curve, which is to say once it gets out of the algorithms and other things replace it, people aren't going to keep coming back to this music. They're just not. There's some Katie Perry stands. If this is for you, all in, go for it. And we'd be open to that. It's just that what's more interesting is how did we get here? Is it salvageable? And where does she go from here? Because there's no debate. This will get an F for me. I'll give you one more possible why that we haven't talked about. And we actually didn't get to when we were talking about Teenage Dream, which is that for all of the names and the credits on this, one that's not there is Bonnie McKee. Right.

Who is a songwriter who collaborated with Katie on California Girls Teenage Dream, TJF, part of me, wide awake, roar. Like, there's a lot to be said for the ways in which she seems not to have pushed herself by sort of going back to, you know what, I'll go to the, if Dr. Luke is my security blanket, we're going to do that. And we're going to sort of try to capture a lot of that sort of reductive 2010 stuff that has been in her bag. There's, there's one particular person that she's not still working with who maybe it makes you rethink, you know, how big of a part of the, how big a piece of the pie. goes to Bonnie McKee here.

And that's a compelling argument to me. Yeah. Well, it certainly is a major missing ingredient. But again, I think there's a broader awareness of your own place and culture and where your lane is that just missed here. And I, and I, there's a part of me that blames American Idol. Because you get really popular on TV, right? The Osbournes, the Ozzy Osborne and Sharon Osbourne. born. They were huge rock stars.

What was Ozzy anyway, before he started that show. And television just totally up-leveled and changed his celebrity status. And I think it can tend to, once you get to those heights, you just, you can't go out as much. And the reason is people know

exactly what you look like. And there is some visceral thing that maybe is going away now that we see everybody on Zoom, but like there's some deification that happens looking at these people on a big screen. that changes the nature of their celebrity. And I think it is a very, very isolating thing.

And it removes you from an ability to create art that comments on what's actually happening in society and culture. And it probably leads you to think that stuff that sounds like a club that you once went to is for you. A club that you once went to in, like, 2014. So you said you're giving this an F. I was even good. Yeah. I was going to be generous and go D-minus, but I think it's an F. No, this is a failure.

This album is a failure because it needed to be good. You, you as a young woman who grew up loving this young woman, you just on this podcast said you're reconsidering whether she's like a career artist or whether that album Teenage Dream was Lightning in a Bottle. This was an album to just remind everybody that wasn't the kid. I like what you've been saying that we should try to have a little bit of positivity here. So let's not end just by both of us saying that this is a total and complete failure, even though I sort of think it is.

Let's recap here. What lessons have we learned? Number one, you need some people around you who are going to say when something's not working. I think it's pretty clear to me that that is the number one thing that went wrong here. Yeah. Number two, interesting point by you to bring up the fact that a possible contributor to that to that is downsizing at the label, some career executives, maybe no longer being in the room.

Maybe there's some people who might have had the track record and the willingness to say something. Perhaps, maybe yes, maybe no. But it's an interesting point. What else? What am I missing? Katie Perry still commands an audience. The VMA performance we all paid attention to.

It was really good. And it was good. Yeah. Her live show is, great. She has songs that matter to people. So we got a foundation still. And as she said, she does not need you to buy her a Ferrari. She needs you to do the dishes or close the pantry door. Ari! I can buy a red Ferrari! You see the fucking dishes! Or she needs something that is more grounded in reality and she needs truth. And that to me is the takeaway from this album. There is

a song called Truth. And there's a lyric on it that says, I want to know the truth even if it hurts me. The truth is this album is terrible and nobody told her. And if she is in fact speaking her truth in that song, I hope that the people around her will tell her the truth about this. It's not true that nobody told her. The Spanish government was like, you can't be doing what you're doing,

Katie Perry, get off our beach. You can't be doing what you're doing. But this is why I don't put it on Katie. I want to know the truth even if it hurts me. Well, somebody in the gentlest but most direct way possible, communicate fearlessly to build trust and tell her the truth. Because I still believe, because I've seen it at the VMAs, because I've seen her at the show in Vegas,

because I still, every Tuesday, throw on Katie Perry and make tacos with my children. I still believe Katie Perry is an artist and I want the best for her and I want to see the people around her help her tap into that because she is potentially

in a bubble and out of culture she is also 39 years old she's five years older than Taylor Swift she is in no way shape or form over the hill or unable to contribute from a career standpoint anymore there is more to do with this artist and it's time for a

full strip down Navy SEAL team debrief post-mortem where we say exactly the truth and only the truth in service of each other's lives, certainly not the actual health of this woman, but certainly the artistic life. And there can be brighter and candier and sweeter and more fun, magical happy days ahead for Katie Perry. Okay, I told you what my least favorite line is. I'm just a prisoner in your prison. Do you have a best or worst lyric to lead us out with? That was it. I want to know the truth even if it hurts me.

That to me was the best lyric on the album, and nobody paid attention. Wow. So you got something from this. 143 gave you something. Katie Perry's Angel Number album delivered for you at least that kernel of something. I'm happy to hear that. I'm happy to hear that, Nathan.

All right. I don't think, I think we're going to keep this a short one. There's not a whole lot to digest here. But it's instructive. And we spend a lot of time talking about albums that we really love. This was an interesting entry into what's been a really, really, really crowded field of pop albums over the last going on a year or so. And it didn't work out very well. You know what I'm going to do to sort of refresh and cleanse over the next week?

I'm going to go to the All Things Go Festival. And I'm going to see Chapel Rhone and I'm going to see Renee Rapp. And I'm going to see Holly Humberstone. And I'm going to see Janelle Monet. And I'm going to see some other surprises that I want to tell you about, but I can't. And then I'm going to go see Sabrina Carpenter on the Short and Sweet tour. And maybe next week we'll talk a little bit about that. Wow. Okay. Can't wait. Great stuff. This has been every single album. I'm Norman Prunciatti. As always, he's Nathan Hubbard. Thank you to Kaya McMullen for producing this episode. And we'll talk to you next week.