This is truly horrendous...

It is by far the worst album I've ever heard and I listen to some absolute trash sometimes e.g. both Cher Lloyd albums are better than this

It is by far the worst album I've ever heard and I listen to some absolute trash sometimes e.g. both Cher Lloyd albums are better than this

 

Cher Lloyd's second album is actually genuinely good! :(

 

(Worst album I've ever heard by anybody remains Messy Little Raindrops)

It is by far the worst album I've ever heard and I listen to some absolute trash sometimes e.g. both Cher Lloyd albums are better than this

NOT TOO MUCH ON CHER LLOYD NOW... OMG! Both albums are good and the 2nd album is GREAT!

 

Edit: having a listen through now and… it’s really not great and it really does sound like someone put Katy Perry and a random song title into ChatGPT and got songs written for them. CRUSH melody in the chorus is reminsicent of Kelly’s ‘Catch My Breath’.

CRUSH melody in the chorus is reminsicent of Kelly’s ‘Catch My Breath’.

 

Was about to say, CRUSH has 10 writers and not one of them was a writer on Catch My Breath?

 

Katy's even has the lyric 'catching my breath' too, surely somebody somewhere noticed?

Anyway, the album is fine overall for me, it's not horrendous or anything, but definitely her clear weakest yet for me (I liked quite a lot of songs on Smile even). And nothing like the calibre I was expecting from her touted big comeback.

 

I saved NIRVANA and WONDER to my playlist, although the latter I'd be inclined to make my own edit to cut off the kiddy intro and outro. Other than that it's a nice dance pop song that I enjoy.

 

LIFETIMES is decent too and the only single that isn't a complete miss for me.

 

I think the musical regression (or stagnation?) is the biggest issue for me. I wasn't expecting an album of 10/10 pop songs, but I guess maybe I was expecting at least something that showed some progression from a decade ago. Because to me, even though they were not commercial successes, Witness and Smile both did show that in several ways. I would have so loved an album inspired by Never Really Over, which kept the Katy spark and sound but moved it along a bit and didn't sound like a product of a generation ago. That was just five years ago and my favourite single she ever released.

 

If somebody had told me that stuff like GIMME GIMME/TRUTH/CRUSH were Target or Japanese bonus tracks from the Prism era then I'd have had no reason not to believe that.

Erm yeh that was an experience, there’s 4 songs out of the 13 that are okay, the other 9 are either under average or dreadful. Honestly could have scrapped the majority of the album

 

I thought the album only had 11 tracks in total?

None of the tracks charting on UK Apple Music yet...

Crush is such a BOP

Very sad end to Katy’s career. Wish her all the best on future endeavours. It’s worse than a bad album it’s a bland album it’s one of them albums that just don’t need to exist. The songs are all ok but it’s doing nothing. Unless you’re a hardcore fan you will not be returning to a single song on this album and I’m not sure how many hardcore fans are left.

 

3/10 and she got 2 points out of sympathy. Up there with vultures 2 for flop of the year

 

100% this. It's almost as bad as Forever, or almost any second onwards solo Spice album. It's a literal music ender. She could release perfumes like Rihanna now?

Crush is such a BOP

 

Oh, Miss Gellar, why you lie??

Crush is such a BOP

 

This *_*

 

I don't think the album is that bad. It's full of passive/basic bops with a few good ones. A step down from Smile though. Maybe a song will go viral or something to revive the era. If not, I'm sure I'll enjoy the album for a bit.

If this site isn’t onboard with a female pop album from a major star you can sense something is amiss.

 

This is just so faceless and devoid of… anything. It almost sounds like AI but it’s just so beneath her. I can’t see how this was approved or signed off (part of me does feel she really expected major success though like there’s certain videos going round where it definitely looks like she was expecting / ready for that major moment). Wonder is the only song I feel I could really go back to but echo what others say in that it doesn’t fit the albums theme.

 

Dr Luke’s involvement wasn’t even needed and it’s obviously a red flag to chart followers and alienated a lot of who would’ve been fans potentially had she worked with someone else but no matter who produced this the material just isn’t good. Dated, lacklustre, bad lyrics. It’s a definite miss and up there with one of the worst campaigns / albums by a major female.

 

Smile and Witness weren’t necessarily great but they did at least have some tracks to takeaway from them and Witness as much as it’s critiqued even showed a sense of creative growth in some ways but this doesn’t really do anything.

 

Yeah. A tricky album to support. I’ve said it before on here that not everything needs to be deep and sometimes you can just make good upbeat music what’s fun (I mean you can argue Teenage Dream did this brilliantly) but this is just bad!

 

In a sense I do feel for her as this has likely been a big shock for her but just where does she actually go from here? I genuinely don’t know -_- I guess she can always sell a tour based from her 2008-2013 material but creatively she’s in a rut and the other females of her peak era just blow her out the water in every way (and the new females are also already a lot more exciting / daring).

 

It’s definitely a pretty fascinating album campaign to follow as a chart follower though. If someone like Kim Petras for example had released this it wouldn’t really feel as much of a fall from grace / talking point but like this is an album from someone who (in the US) has the most number ones from a studio album EVER like when you think of how high her power once was this is a real head f*** to get around.

Edited September 21, 2024Sep 21 by Jordanlee1402

After listening to the album, I have added just 3 tracks to my 2024 playlist:

 

- LIFETIMES

- NIRVANA

- WONDER

 

All are bops!

 

I need time with I’M HIS, HE’S MINE but the lazy sample puts me off. I do enjoy Doechii on it though!

WONDER being the best track once again proves that Scandinavian songwriters (Stargate) make American female pop music sounding better. :music:

 

Though it's close to being a carbon copy of Matisse & Sadko's remix of Axwell /\ Ingrosso - Dreamer. :lol:

Edited September 21, 2024Sep 21 by CowTzy

Overall, this project reminds of Sia's Reasonable Woman and J.Lo's This Is Me Now... albums that were sort of anticipated first but ended up extra bland and didn't have anything to return to. Katy also has the Dr. Puke factor which doesn't help, but even IF the scandal didn't exist, this music wouldn't be good enough for her standards on any level.

 

I cannot believe how the comeback everyone was looking forward to ended up like this tbh :(

I was expecting a lot worse after reading some of the comments in this thread, but I didn't find the album too bad. Definitely agree this is Katy's 'Britney Jean' in that most of the songs sound alright on their own, but very little actually feels like Katy was who the song was meant for, so it isn't very cohesive.

 

The second half of the album is much better than first part IMO, with Lifetimes to Artificial being pretty solid for me. Gimme Gimme was truly awful for me though and almost made me give up on the album. Cringeworthy lyrics. :puke2:

To be fair she's never really been an album artist imo, her albums are generally a selection of good tracks and a load of fillers/substandard material to pad the rest out so this isn't really much different for me (except the highs not being quite as high perhaps)

HMV edition has bonus track called have a heart.

Anyone heard no tears for new years? Bonus track on vinyl.