Album Review: Katy Perry, Witness

Katy Perry has clearly been going through a bonkers phase. She reignited her feud with Taylor Swift by mentioning it in every single interview and promoted her fourth official LP with a bizarre 24 hours live-stream event.
Some of the wackiness has made it through to Witness, which swerves from bug-eyed exuberance to kitchen sink wistfulness like a rollercoaster with a malfunctioning gear-box.
Perry bangs on – again – about her Swift fall-out on ‘Swish Swish’ (you know you’re in a weird place when a cameoing Nicki Minaj serves as stabilising influence) and hooks up with Atlanta hip-hop trio Migos on ‘Bon Appetite’ (in the video they eat her as if she was a pop star fashioned from sushi).
The experimentation occasionally pays off, such as on the Sigrid-esque ‘Hey Hey Hey’. But too often she merely sounds generic – with ‘Chained to the Rhythm’ coming off as lesser Jessie J. Nine years on from ‘I Kissed A Girl’, Perry’s idiosyncratic new persona is clearly an overdue reboot. The pity is that the upgrade didn’t extend more successfully to her music.