Pop’s Queen Weeble, Katy Perry has made wobbling but never falling down her MO, belting out her chin-up, grin-on anthems tirelessly. Yet even she can’t power through 2020; her fifth album is coloured by a depressive period during which this all-American trouper found her work was no longer working for her.
At first it seems she’s bounced back undaunted: galvanising opener Never Really Over thrums with fizzing electro synths; Daisies pushes back against detractors with brio. Yet there’s a creeping lethargy, a sense that, at 35 and about to become a mother, Perry’s kitschy shtick of old doesn’t quite fit any more, but that she hasn’t found a way forward she can connect with. The cool, sultry Cry About It Later and the housey Teary Eyes aim at the sort of sad-party-girl pathos owned for eternity by Sia’s Chandelier, but feel forgettable and anonymous, as does the by-numbers trap pop of Not the End of the World.
The title track’s punchy, sunny west coast R&B groove and Only Love’s gospel-gilded 80s lustre go some way to lift the energy, but Smile closes on its weakest song, What Makes a Woman, a cliched, countryish musing on the supposed mystery of femininity (“Is it the way we keep the whole world turning in a pair of heels?” It is not). Perry can do much better. Hopefully come album No 6, that unwavering smile will go all the way to her eyes again.
