The Singles Jukebox

Remember Katy? She’s back, in dancepop form.

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Wayne Weizhen Zhang: A B-Side to “Never Really Over,” both in perspective and in quality. 
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Katie Gill: “You know, I think it’s time to give everybody they want,” Katy Perry says at the start of this music video. Apparently she thinks everybody wants a generic-ass EDM song with her vocals processed to shit and back. It’s a song that desperately tries to be Dua Lipa at certain points when in reality, it’s nothing by Daya. Out of Katy Perry’s three or four big comeback attempts in the past five years, this is easily the most embarrassing.
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Oliver Maier: She has to realise that this sounds more like a bitter reproof to a public that doesn’t really care about her anymore than a kiss-off anthem to an ex? Surely? Both musically and lyrically this feels like an attempt at a “Don’t Start Now” that doesn’t really get it. Few of Katy and Dua’s talents, such as they are, can be said to be mutual.
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Katherine St Asaph: Everyone’s gonna say this is dated to Future Nostalgia, but the cut-up vocals and campfire-singalong chorus are dated to a few years before that — so 100 years ago, in 2020s Standard Time. That said, they do sound better now that they aren’t so ubiquitous. And I guess one way to handle Katy Perry’s unique vocal stylings is to cushion every melodic turn with an amount of autotune approaching the Cher Event Horizon.
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Will Adams: A dancepop kiss-off by Katy Perry? Call it “Part II of Me”. While utterly anonymous — you could tell me the billed producer was Tiësto, Joel Corry, 3LAU, R3HAB, anyone, and I’d be like, “mm-hm, sounds right” — it suits Perry, given how it picks and chooses from the various ’10s pop eras she’s lived through. The hook is a vestige of that odd EDM-country trend, the post-chorus leans into Teenage Dream-style syncopation, and Alesso’s beat evokes Calvin Harris’ sleek house period. Extra point for the video being anodyne future-choreo as opposed to ham-fisted empowerment-via-enlistment.
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Alfred Soto: To listen as Katy Goddamn Perry turns into anonymous Eurohouse belter impressed me: better anonymity than the superstar bellowing of aspirational/inspirational maxims. But anonymity has its own demands. Alesso’s rhythm track is colorless, not anonymous. 
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Alex Clifton: I didn’t know I wanted Katy Perry over Eurodance pianos before, and I’m surprised that it’s not happened prior to this. I just wish she had been given a little more material to work with. Dance music isn’t about lyrics, it’s about the sound, so it feels dumb to complain about it, but when you repeat the chorus this many times without much else added in, it comes off as boring. At least it gave Perry a chance to step out of her comfort zone; I’d love to see more of this in the future.
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Thomas Inskeep: Fitting for Perry, the least talented pop superstar of the past 20 years, to finally succumb to her fate as an anonymous dance-pop singer – and on a track as limp as this one. This is the definition of “just desserts.” Also the definition of terrible.
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Nortey Dowuona: The problem with a singer like Katy Perry is that she’s identifiable yet not memorable. You know when you hear her voice that it’s her, but you’re not particularly interested in what she has to say. Hence why her post Teenage Dream career has been made entirely of other producers and songwriters sliding her some solid B+ material but not anything that has to do with her own point of view or musical style or vocal timbre. This leaves “When I’m Gone” on shaky ground that’s been broken by the flat drums that consist of a dull kick and squashed snare that barely poke their heads above the watery grey goose synths which are removed when the chorus kicks in. Katy’s scratched, thinning voice sounds stronger than it does — until the drums touch down and the song flattens and shrinks away in terror.
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Andrew Karpan: With her last two albums written off as “flops,” Perry has become a walking signifier of yesterday’s pop — figuratively and sometimes literally: If “Dark Horse” didn’t actually knock off a decade-old christian pop dud, then “​​Never Really Over” managed to actually rework an incredibly minor Norwegian pop hit into a pleasing Icona Pop pastiche. “When I’m Gone” doesn’t buck this idea of her so much as try to spin it into gold, a fun workout on a riff from an EDM has-been who once worked in the very shadows of the big pop sound that Perry herself once represented. The lesson? Go harder or go home. Perry could very well have a future as a kind of grand dame of deep house cuts, but needs to dig a little deeper to work it out. Maybe give Major Lazer a call next time?
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