Just because it’s hula, doesn’t mean it’s really hula…
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Josh Buck: What if the only female artist to have five #1s on the same album dropped four solid bops in a year and no one noticed? Can’t-buy-a-hit Katy Perry sounds like indie pop given a giant budget. She’s the weird, bad and wonderful pop elder statesman we need right now.
[6]
Katherine St Asaph: Katy Perry was, for years, the leading primary-colors-and-pasties representative of peppy all-American pop, which perhaps explains why she’s had a particularly hard time adjusting to doomer 2019. There’s a wistful late-summer pop waft in “Harleys in Hawaii,” maybe, but selling it requires nonchalant chill, a quality Katy Perry has never possessed as a vocalist or a performer. Also, the thing has words. I originally misheard the chorus as “you and Daddy riding Harleys in Hawaii,” which still wouldn’t even be the fifth-worst line.
[4]
Will Rivitz: Latter-career Katy Perry is, if not particularly good, per se, usually at least interesting; her songs tend to either trainwreck in bizarrely compelling ways or quietly go toe-to-toe with the best in her discography. This is neither; it’s budget Ariana Grande on just enough Xanax to make everything torpid but not enough to make it worthwhile.
[3]
Natasha Genet Avery: In another life, the lush and sexy “Harleys in Hawaii” could have been my favorite thank u, next album track. Instead, Katy Perry’s clumsy lyrics (“go ahead, explore the island ~vibes~!”) make it feel more like a travel ad than a bedroom jam.
[6]
Hazel Southwell: A geographically confused Cafe Del Mar compilation track that forgot to put the hook in, with the lyrical copy from a tourist information SEO exercise.
[3]
Alfred Soto: The title should come with its own illustrative video: “Jenny on the Block,” say, with jump cuts of Katy Perry and her boyfriend sipping fizzy cocktails out of coconuts on a black sand beach. To honor this vibe, she adopts an approach to the beat that Mariah Carey might’ve recognized. It’s one of her better performances. But she offers nothing but Instagram shots.
[4]
Stephen Eisermann: I mean, I finally get it. Charlie Puth’s songs aren’t well-written, he just sells the hell out of them. In his hands, this song might’ve been sexier and more playful, but in Katy’s? It reeks of desperation, like a cougar fighting the mid-life crisis off by any means necessary. Or, I guess, like a singer trying with all her might, to remain relevant. In both cases, the inevitable wins.
[3]
Alex Clifton: Well, it’s definitely a Katy Perry song because it sounds good if you hear it in the background but its lyrics are a bit lacking. “When I hula-hula, hula, so good you’ll take me to the jeweler-jeweler, jeweler” in particular mystifies me. You dance so well specifically in Hawaii that this dude’s going to marry you? Are you angling for a diamond-encrusted hula-hoop? Is “hula” a sex euphemism that I’m just not getting? If you ignore the nonsense coming out of Perry’s mouth, it comes across as a decent slow jam. But Perry’s not made much music for toned-down vocals; any time she’s singing, her voice is centre-stage and distracting. At this point I would love to see her turn into a behind-the-scenes songwriter, as I think she can make real pop magic happen. Sadly some of that sparkle fades when she’s fully at the helm.
[4]
Isabel Cole: I’ve personally found it like really psychologically destabilizing to watch Katy Perry inexplicably decide more than a decade into her recording year to finally use her passable voice to make normal human singing noises, so I guess it’s kind of nice that these lyrics testify so strongly to her unchallenged ten-year reign as the absolute dumbest person in pop.
[3]