Katy Perry Conquers the Early ’90s on <em>Witness</em>
The singer’s fifth album drives the pop-music nostalgia machine forward a few years, with fun results.
The gossipy morsel dominating conversation over Katy Perry’s Witness on the day of its release is about not Perry but Taylor Swift—as so many gossipy morsels in the contemporary music world are. Swift chose this day, of all days, to finally put her mega-smash 2014 album 1989 on non-Apple streaming services like Spotify. Perry and Swift’s rivalry is legend, and Swift’s move may draw not only publicity but listeners from Perry, threatening Witness’s debut sales numbers.
But the more interesting story regarding the relationship between and is about music. As its name suggested, Swift’s last album saw the one-time country crooner adopting
