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- Critic score
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Sep 26, 2024For an album that seems engineered to be radio-ready, 143 sounds oddly out of place. It’s as if the tracks were pulled together from a shelved project from a few years back.
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Sep 20, 2024A brash dose of colour for a drab post-Millennial pop scene, she was the bulldozer through the critics doors. On ‘143’ however, there’s a feeling that the world has moved on – with Chappell Roan’s tour sparking Beatlemania-esque scenes of adoration and Sabrina Carpenter maintaining a stranglehold on the charts, you struggle to see where this playful yet unsatisfying record fits into pop’s firmament.
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Sep 23, 2024Aside from some fleeting hellacious decisions, like the jump scare of a warbling child’s voice that opens the cloying final track “Wonder,” 143 is mostly just…there.
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Sep 23, 2024All that glitter gets dull after a while, and 143 is so lacking in fresh ideas and human touches that it accidentally slips into the AI Uncanny Valley; even if no AI was involved, it gives you the same queasy feeling in your stomach.
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Sep 27, 2024A 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.
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Sep 23, 2024This is flat, formulaic and forgettable.
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Sep 20, 2024The album is flat, coasting on cascades of lyrical cliches and musical ideas that rarely crest.
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Sep 20, 2024There are a few bright spots on 143, though none of them reach Perry’s peak output. .... But despite those moments, and the album’s generally upbeat vibe, 143 feels surprisingly joyless. Coming from one of pop’s premier hitmakers, who once roared with apparent confidence and invincibility, it shouldn’t be so hard to dig up more gems.
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Sep 20, 2024A record that sometimes hits the target but rarely leaves a lasting impression.
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Sep 20, 2024The sense of fun that propelled Perry to international stardom has been replaced by a weariness (or perhaps wariness) of the industry she once dominated.
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Sep 19, 2024And that’s 143’s big problem. It feels slightly out of time, a common-or-garden mediocre pop album with the misfortune to be scheduled in the wake of Charli xcx’s Brat, Chappell Roan’s The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess and Sabrina Carpenter’s Short N’ Sweet.
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Sep 23, 2024Even if Dr. Luke wasn’t involved and even if Katy Perry was still a Top 40 heavyweight, 143 still contributes nothing original to modern pop’s dialog. The record lacks new ideas, concepts and sounds.
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Sep 23, 2024If it was offensively bad, at least it'd be camp. Instead, each track is an ADHD simulation — so understimulating you forget what it sounds like seconds after it ends.
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Sep 21, 2024143 rings the death knell for Perry for no other reason than it commits pop music’s ultimate sin: it’s boring.
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Sep 20, 2024The problem for Perry is that these songs are bad, and not even in a fun way. “143” is an oddly cold dance-pop album with boring melodies, utilitarian grooves and vocal performances that feel vaguely AI-derived.
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Sep 20, 2024“Can somebody promise me our innocence doesn’t get lost in a cynical world?” Perry asks at one point — a great question to ask in 2024. But coming after the previous 10 tracks’ flop-sweat-flecked effort to crowbar Perry back into the zeitgeist, it ["Wonder"] sounds utterly hollow — and including her daughter Daisy on the track, which also happens to be the lone offering without any Luke involvement (it was instead produced by the Norwegian pop architects Stargate).
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Sep 23, 2024The big balloons that Perry’s music once waved aloft deflate slowly into a slew of dull, rubbery beats and empty boasts.
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Sep 20, 2024Nothing sparks on 143. It’s all about easy endings and uncomplicated emotions, thus targeted for basically anyone, but what she doesn’t know is that the majority aren’t as tasteless now. The comeback singles are met with brutal reception in every direction. “Wonder” is the only one with replay value, which features her child’s voice and perhaps hints at their undetermined gender identity, leaving it up for them to decide whenever ready (“Beautiful girl”, “Beautiful boy”). The truth is – and she must know even if it hurts her – everything else signals a career nosedive from which her reputation might not survive. On the bright side, though, 143 adds more shade to a colourful year of pop music.