Katy Perry – ‘OK’

Let’s start with the good news. Katy Perry recently surpassed 62 million Spotify listeners for the first time. To put things into perspective, Beyoncé currently “only” has 55 million Spotify listeners. This shows the enduring legacy of her past pop hits, specifically the mega hits from her 2010 opus “Teenage Dream”.

Now here’s the bad news. Nearly 15 years later, Katy is about to release “1432”, which is the the deluxe version of her “143” album that was released this past summer to disappointing reviews and was a commercial failure. Her new single “OK” is a catchy folk-pop song that was co-produced by the infamous Dr. Luke. The song is about not giving up on a relationship. The lyrical content is very basic and while Katy sounds fine on the track, it is ultimately a nothingburger when it comes to a pop event.

If anything, the song sounds like a total ripoff of the classic 2012 song “Ho Hey” from The Lumineers. The chanty chorus, the folk-pop instrumental, and positive lyricism of the superior 2012 song is seen throughout the Katy Perry track. Overall, this comes off as a lazy retread of a style of music that was popular when Perry was at her peak in the early 2010s.

I really wonder why Katy Perry is releasing a deluxe version of an album that flopped on the charts. If I were her, I would immediately move on from this era and go back to the studio and quickly bang out a new album with new producers and writers. She should go back to the slower pop-rock stylings of 2008’s “Thinking of You” and she needs to feature more mature lyricism in her future work. At 40, it’s really time to grow up from the cartoon pop of her heyday. A new era awaits.