So I was in high school when witness came out and I absolutely loved it. Bon appetit and swish swish were really popular in my class. Also my personal favourite was chained to the rhythm.
But people hated that album for some reason and I never understood the hate? I genuinely loved it
A lot of people apparently hated her for her short hair but like it's just hair? That seriously can't be a reason to hate. Not to mention she looked good in short hair
So why exactly was witness considered a flop?
Mainly the super long hiatus
The beef with taylor swift
Katy's mental health
Bad press surrounding her after the haircut and bleaching
A very tone deaf intro to witness with cttr as the first single considering katy's brand.
Overall perception of the gp after the 2016 elections and the association with hilary.
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Wait, she bleached her hair back then? But isn’t she naturally blonde?
I mean her hair color is naturally blonde but not bleach blonde
https://preview.redd.it/0j6c97ajp28g1.jpeg?width=620&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2aa7dbce649f2a259799c5c80c56789b8c7c6c37
https://preview.redd.it/m7n51cgkp28g1.jpeg?width=736&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=12fba2f562c87f8f007715c1518bab7ed9717680
Okay, fair. Honestly, I think it suited her, though. People were just tripping.
I think long hair in female singers is usually used to portray a more feminine look where as short hair goes against that typical male gaze. This move to cut her hair was compared to miley's rebrand in 2013.
I think she pulls it off , but the blonde washes her out, dark hair looks better with her skin tone.
It did nothing for her, just like it did nothing for Miley either. It suits Pink well, but it’s not for everyone.
It’s the fact that it’s both short and blonde. I think she looked great with short, black hair
Maybe the issue was mainly that it was too short? Though I didn’t mind it.
Look at her haircut in the cttr music video (not the pink one, the bleach blonde one by the end of the video). I think that length with that color looked really good on her.
See it’s like she just wanted to tell everyone she was 40
I love her black look but I think she should go back to this for her next era.
High expectations mostly.
Looking back. 2017 wasnt a good year for pop girls in general. The trends had changed.
Also none of them had adapted to streaming yet, the only ones who really cracked the code at the time were Ariana Grande and Billie Eilish
The whole PR for the album was a WTF moment. I didn’t know if I was witnessing her having a mental breakdown or what. That turned off a lot of people including fans.
At the time, Katy had a very political image. She was one of the biggest endorsers for Hillary back in 2016. Because of that, she lost some support. You also had her dropping her former provocative, “sexy” look and image for her feminist look, which some people hated. Her feud with Taylor also made things worse.
Idk why she has to look "sexy" to be respected as a artist. I loved her short hair look and she rocked it.
Also i never understood the beef with Taylor Swift
Idk why… People I guess were just used to her being a sex icon. During Witness, Katy was fragile, as she went through a breakup and other stresses. She changed and dyed her hair blonde, because she didn’t want to be Katy Perry anymore, and wanted to slightly go back to her older blonde self due to the amount of pressure. Her pixie cut didn’t look bad (she only got one because her hair was damaged from the intense bleaching), but I do felt she put so much makeup on, which did made her look older and odder. Witness had such meaningful songs. I do think she could’ve chose better singles after Bon Appetit to have people take her more seriously.
I think you've hit on the major reasons here
She didn’t change her look at all besides a haircut, she was still very sexy.
It's less about what happened during Witness and more about what happened before it. The last few years of the PRISM era were littered with controversies that little by little would make her "unlikable" in the eyes of the GP. Pair that up with a political climate that was turning more misogynistic by the day and Katy's quirky personality, and you've got the perfect recipe for disaster.
She was attacked on all fronts. The MAGA crowd hated her for being politically outspoken and not looking hot anymore (oh, the horror!), liberals were on her ass for "not doing enough", and pop stans were very happy to see everything unfold due to past beefs she had with Taylor and Gaga.
Omg yeah i remember. You would think that democrats and lgbt people would be on her side but they abandoned her too which was such a shame
Witness had the same problem as Smile. Beyond the music, I'll focus on the marketing and branding. Famous for her bubblegum pop and indie, tongue-in-cheek lyrics, Katy was the epitome of polished, triumphant anthems. Witness promised Chained to the Rhythm-esque political savvy disguised beneath catchy pop melodies, and instead delivered strange, albeit still catchy pop music. The new image was confusing, the visuals almost never matched, and the sonic identity kind of hopped from one thing to another.
Smile, in my opinion, had better music - but worse branding. The carnival theme was poorly done, and it was never referenced in the music itself. A time when this theme was done well was with Melanie Martinez in CRYBABY, when all of the lyrics and themes matched with the album titles and visuals. Back to Smile - why are we doing a clown and big top theme with the very cool, dance-pop going on in the songs. Hate hate hate.
This was coupled with a personal dislikability that started brewing. Her interviews and appearances became more cringey and less cool, as a result of her trying to follow trends instead of create them. Sabrina Carpenter has successfully picked back up the same cute and "oopsie!" attitude Katy used to have, while stamping it with her own country-twanged Cali-girl indie sound.
I like Witness and love Smile. Witness had a few hits, so it could have been salvaged with Smile, but Smile rubbed salt in the wound and failed to revive her. It really should have stayed in the vein of Never Really Over - one of my favorite Katy songs and visuals. Where did that concept go?
In the end, Katy is still a legend and Bandaids rocked - it's just unfortunate for her that her creative team and writing team were all over the place - they probably never even met.
It’s bland, and not that good. Objectively.
Okay, let me back track. I am a huge fan and I personally love the album , but that is because I’m such a fan that I appreciate anything she does just because it’s her.
It is nothing like her previous releases. There were no euphoric anthems present, nothing that resembled her previous material. It didn’t have that “oomf” factor that her other albums and specially singles had.
Change of producers, different music trends. She struck the iron while it was hot with her previous albums.
When audiences get acquainted with a specific sound and vibe from an artist, that is what they will continue to want and stay in the lane of. And that lane was just not present anywhere on the album.
Lack of quality content, mixed with loss of mainstream sex appeal and bizzare marketing (the 24/7 recording was whacky), it was a recipe for disaster. Im just surprised, in hindsight, how immediate her falloff happened. It wasn’t even gradual. It’s like she just slowly got to the top of the mountain (Super Bowl) and then just slid down it at 100mph.
I thought maybe with her next era she could come back, but as good as NRO was, Smile was another album full of bland songs. Again, objectively.
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MARKETING. MARKETING. MARKETING. What was meant to be a 180 change played it too safe with the actual music, plus her PR was a mess during this time, what was suppose to be authentic just came out like a cry for attention. Plus the landscape had changed and Katy and her team waited too long and weren't ready at the same time which was a deadly combo. Katy wanted legitimacy as an artist but went a direction that was through shallow messaging and not the quality or tone of the music. Witness was on par with the rest of her stuff, but when you claim it's SO different it better be different in quality or tonality and it just wasn't, just the message was slightly different (and not super accurate to what the record actually was) and that caused negative press and confusion among her solid base.
Can I be bold and just say “the hits were not there”?
Like, “Chained to the Rhythm” is a good song, but it’s not the same kind of effortlessly catchy single that she’d popped out for years. “Bon Appetit” was closer to a normal Katy single, but the chorus hook is drier than her previous hits. Katy hits are exciting, with her belting hard and commanding your attention - “Bon Appetit” is not that. “Swish Swish” had a beat and a feature that could translate more, but the public was not on Katy’s side on the Taylor feud, and that awful music video was the final nail in the coffin
There were better potential singles in the album, but those 3 songs were the only things from the album the general public ever heard. And while “Roulette” and “Pendulum” were hidden gems, that was not the quality of the rest of the tracks. I found most of the album cuts very boring, with a few outright bad ones and a smattering of mockable lyrics to go viral on social media. Katy’s always been a singles artist, so this would’ve been fine if the singles were hits… but they weren’t, so “you’re words are like Chinese water torture” became the focus instead
It’s her best fucking album, it’s the album that really made me a Katy fan
Because it sucked
Unpopular opinion: Witness is her magnum opus, and even better than Teenage Dream.
Exactly
I love teenage dream and it's very catchy but it has no depth or substance. It's just the perfect happy pop if that makes sense
Witness was bold innovative and you could tell it was personal to her. I love it so much
Idk to me Witness has the BEST lyrics and production. Like idk to be that album is no skips. Like it came out 8 years ago and I STILL think about the title track !
Teenage Dream is her worst album - it has her best singles, but her least cohesive vision and her most shameless commercial gambit
No wonder she doesn’t like it that much
Exactly. It's the perfect commercial album but you can tell it was made with the intention of being viral
Same with future nostalgia by dua lipa. Her self titled is still her best album but everybody loves future nostalgia
It’s FAR better than Teenage Dream… her best albums are Witness, Smile, and One of the Boys
justice for Smile too
Idk if it’s giving magnum opus bc teenage dream is the album that people literally dream to have and front to back top to bottom wall to wall it’s a like directional, statement, important album in the history of pop but witness is just .. cooler like it goes down so smoothly, if she nipped a couple of songs it’d be a perfect album
I think if I had to pick one as a magnum opus for Katy it would definitely be Teenage Dream. I think artists can definitely have more than one magnum opus (great work) though in different categories. Commercially Teenage Dream is unmatched. Witness, IMO, is her artistic magnum opus - I love all the experimentation and interesting things going on in it.
People didn’t want her to change, nor grow. But I never agreed with the hate, I think it’s her best album by far, and probably one of the best pop albums of the 2010’s. It’s also my personal top favorite album ever.
They made a mistake with TD going so hard with singles and them obv going #1, like she was never gonna top it, ever, nobody could, they should’ve pushed at most 3-4 songs, used leftovers for a new album/era, also no shade but her Ellen degeneres haircut didn’t help like that’s not who she was to the general public
Honestly yeah. Usually when a artist has a very successful album it ends up damaging their career cause then no matter what they release fans will keep comparing it to the successful album and saying how it doesn't live up to it.
So many artists have been a victim to this. Dua lipa for example fell off after future nostalgia because people kept comparing everything song to future nostalgia
It's pretty simple. The singles/album weren't as strong as what we'd come to expect from Katy at that time. Her image was off putting and felt jarring compared to the sex kitten/bombshell look the GP loved her for. The promo seemed desperate and cringe, not fun like it had before. And generally, times had changed. Trump was president for the first time, and people were just bummed. They weren't in the mood for fun, sexy, playful pop. Plus, her pop days were ending anyway. Most pop stars only get a handful of years. Katy hit every peak, but her time as the public's darling was just over.
"Purposeful Pop" it was over as soon as she said that.
It's her worst album. A lot of KatyCats might have appreciated the album and what she was going for, but casual fans and the general public were never going to be into it.
In this era, she was intentionally going against what was "expected" of her. A dramatic change in sound and aesthetic is a risk anyway, but the album's songwriting/content is not on par with her previous albums. On top of that, the marketing was weird. So unfortunately a lot of her intended messaging got lost and, in some cases, felt gimmicky. The public drama/controversies didn't help either. While people disliked her hair, it was really a combination of all of this that led to it being deemed a "flop".