Oh the dance bop Katy fans are in for a treat with this one huh? This sounds great. Eurodance/house has always been my favourite genre of Katy - I’d be totally here for an album full of Walking on Air/365/Teary Eyes.
I’ve not listened to smile outside of Never Really Over and Daises (Oliver Heldens Remix) but judging from the comments here… I’m not missing much?
The comments here meaning…. the one negative comment on the previous page? Just go listen and find out for yourself.
Smile is a very decent album that would have benefitted from being released a full year earlier than it actually was since she had some buzz from Never Really Over.
Trust me I’ve tried. Katy was one of the first popstars I stanned and I’ve seen her countless times. Unfortunately Tucked doesn’t do it for me. That said, I will always give whatever she does next a solid chance so I’m very hopeful this upcoming Alesso collab is a banger.
Smile was one of my top albums of last year. A bopfest that was much needed in the climate we were living in. Teary Eyes remains a #1 that should have been.
Smile is a good album...for Katy. I really liked Electric but sad that it did literally nothing, so ready for this new bop!!
The way everyone turned on Smile is... weird. I know her Republican antics toward the latter part of the campaign were unsavoury but I remember people liking the album when it was released. Everyone's grievances seemed to be about the terrible rollout which was deserved, but the actual music didn't seem to be an issue.
It's weird when I see people on socials be like "I miss the old Katy" posting songs from Prism/Teenage Dream/One of the Boys...Smile is just as much a typical Katy Perry album as those. Never Really Over Cry About it Later Teary Eyes Daisies Champagne Problems Tucked Harleys Only Love All make up for a very solid album.
Smile is a solid Katy album for me, it has plenty of bops and it's generally a much easier listen than Witness, and I like Witness a lot.
There's a lot of goodwill for Katy and her bops on the internet these days, so I'm hopeful that she will be better received next time around. It always kind of broke my heart how she became such a joke-meme for a while there, when she's so much more than that.
The last album flopping was down to the awful rollout (including choosing the atrocious Smile as the single to lead into release when Cry About It Later was sitting right there). The singles all did either incredibly well (Never Really Over has nearly 550M plays on Spotify) or respectably (Daisies is at 178M, Harley's is at 163M). With the right singles, videos, and a quick, smart rollout, there's no reason that she can't recover from how Smile performed. In truth, people have never gone to Katy for great albums; she's always been a singles artist, which is fine. They just need to get the singles right.
I maintain that Smile is a more enjoyable listen in its entirety than any of her previous records that aren't One of the Boys. Teenage Dream as an era was her absolute peak but the album tracks drag it down a lot, Prism is similarly about 50% useful at best and the less said about Witness the better. 'Resilient' is bad and neither 'Not the End of the World' and 'Never Worn White' quite hit for different reasons but the rest ranges from solid to some of her absolute best.
There’s still way too much done on Witness. It was the most bold move she took for her sound. Granted, not all of it works but it’s infinitely more interesting and has way more replay value to me than some of the typical Luke stuff she did before it. And then Smile took what Witness did well and honed it into some career best songs (NRO, Harleys). For the lack of… investment (?), I suppose, in her output, the material is still as good as ever for me. I’d love to see her really go full throttle into a record again. Her ambition was unrelenting at peak.
Of the original twelve tracks on Teenage Dream, six (!!!) were singles, "Circle the Drain" and "Not Like the Movies" were promo singles, and "Peacock" received live performances and is platinum in sales. "Hummingbird Heartbeat" is great and might as well have been a single. So, that leaves "Who Am I Living For?" and "Pearl" as the stinkers (they're also the only two without a Wikipedia page, lol). I think the addition of the bonus tracks on Complete Confection more than make up for them. All of this to say, I think Teenage Dream is a stone cold classic album and she can't be reduced to just a singles artist. Even if that's because the whole album is singles.
