“Smile, though your heart is aching,” goes the Charlie Chaplin song that shares a title with Katy Perry’s fifth album.
She’s the archetypal sad clown on the cover, too, ready to sing about her true feelings after years dressed in the armour of a relentless hit machine: Fifties pin-up make-up, dispensing Technicolor Disney pleasure-pop with a joke ever-ready, preferably an innuendo. We are now some distance from 2010, when she matched Michael Jackson by landing five US number one singles from the same album, and she has stumbled.
Her 2017 album, Witness, was an attempt to go political that flopped commercially. Six of Smile’s songs have already been released, with only one, Never Really Over, reaching the top 20 in the UK and US, which was over a year ago. In interviews she has sounded like her expectations for this collection have never been lower, content to leave the public to it and disappear with a more exciting new release — her newborn baby Daisy Dove — given that the customary eye-popping arena tour is impossible.
What we get instead are songs about resilience, pushing on despite everything. “I’ll cry about it later/Tonight I’m having fun,” she sings over the melancholy synthpop of Cry About It Later. “Just keep on dancing with those teary eyes,” goes Teary Eyes. She’s looking back to happier times, with a disco swish to the strings on Champagne Problems and the confident strut of Tucked.
It fits the current mood, and musically at least, there’s still plenty to smile about.
