Relax, it was written a year ago, it’s not a cynical divorce cash-in… well, it might not be.
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[4.33]
Michaela Drapes: I have to stop for a moment and wonder if digging up an old track and gussying it up as a post-divorce kissoff just a few days after a judge sends your marriage into the first stage of California splitsville is really, well, the kindest thing to do. That ambivalence aside, this is a really great track, classic (if such a thing can really be said at this point) Perry, perfectly designed to be a radio hit that can transmogrify, via endless remixes, in to a club floor-filler on command.
[8]
Brad Shoup: Purportedly rewritten in the last couple months, but without a celeb news tipsheet, I’d never have known. For once, I’d be fine with a little less show and a little more tell. But it’s a good grift: her team seeds the info of inspiration to every outlet that cares, she gets to grab a slice of that this-is-happening transparency, while the song’s lyrical shelf life — and 130 BPM, pneumatic construction — get to outlive America’s dimming memory of Russell Brand.
[4]
Asher Steinberg: Frightfully impersonal chugger on the “part of me” that Katy’s ex can’t take away from her, namely her soul, a part I would’ve thought she’d been robbed of already judging by its absence from her work. As a lawyer, I’m rather curious as to which parts the ex can take away from her; as a fan of pop, I wish this were a bad remake of “Another Part of Me” instead of what it is.
[3]
Katherine St Asaph: “Part of Me” is an old demo, as you’ll learn by searching its name on YouTube or searching its sound for dubstep. But it doesn’t fucking matter when Katy wrote it or added the wedding ring line, because she’s releasing it now, and nothing in her career is an accident. This undoubtedly would’ve been her grab for a record-setting sixth No. 1 hit off Teenage Dream had Billboard not nixed that last-minute; it’s industrial-grade pop, engineered for maximum likes. Even Katy sounds fine; if you don’t like “Part of Me,” your problem is with 2010s pop, not her specifically. And this comes with two major perks: zero tolerance for offensive lyrics, and diary scene-setting at the start of each verse that’s at least as effective as any given voice-over. This is the best single Katy Perry has ever released, and for once that isn’t really faint praise.
[6]
Alfred Soto: Whatever the psychodrama written for her Katy Perry pummels it like Shelley Winters does the body of water into which she dives in The Poseidon Adventure. Here she’s comparatively restrained, but the undistinguished post-Kelly Clarkson backing track — a grey fuzz of guitar or sequencer — places her grotesque emotional hunger in unflattering relief. I don’t know what she’s doing, she doesn’t know what she’s doing. Let’s go home.
[3]
W.B. Swygart: Anger’s not really an emotion that’s been in evidence in the Katy Perry Hit Pantheon thus far, and this does it… OK. Ish. Her bat’s kept relatively straight, the signature vocal filter is deployed as usual, all fine and dandy. But. “You’re not gonna break my soul”? “You can keep everything – except for me”? Shouldn’t these lyrics be being sung by someone a bit more Belgian?
[5]
Anthony Easton: Hearing a song like this so close to a divorce announcement, a critic might be tempted to work through the lyrics to find a tidbit of autobiography; there are no such tidbits here. It also is tempting to get into the authenticity trap when talking about music, being angry about the lack of details, or the generic heft of the thing. But that seems to be like getting angry that a Big Mac cannot be found at yourr local dive bar — Big Macs are awesome, and dive bar burgers are awesome, but confusing the two will only provide heartbreak, the heartbreak that will be sung along with by a million tweens when they break up with Brad at their first sleep-away camp.
[3]
John Seroff: With each successive single, Perry’s lack of charm/skill/talent and her producers’ limited bag of tricks wears more painfully and creatively threadbare. “Part of Me” is not much worse or better than “The One That Got Away” which was not much worse or better than “Last Friday Night” and all of them are songs to suffer, not celebrate; music not quite terrible enough to actively hate but thick with unimaginative melodies, dopey lyrics and monotune banality. This, moreso even than All-American Rejects, is the real enemy for me: the lowest common denominator writ large, writ boring.
[2]
Sabina Tang: I have a slew of image- and message-based reasons not to like Katy Perry, but at the end of the day I just can’t stand her timbre and delivery. It’s regrettably easy to imagine hearing an alternate version of this particular song, released by Robyn (or anyone whose voice is not one single inflectionless bawl), and experiencing an actual emotional connection. But never mind convincing me she’s feeling the lyrics – Katy can’t convince me she’s not phonetically sounding out the teleprompter.
[3]
Edward Okulicz: I’ll give this a pass because the music makes me think of Britney’s “‘Til The World Ends,” even if Jessie J’s mind tricks now make me think of every song, even those by Katy Perry that were written or recorded before she existed, as sounding like Jessie J. Still, it reminds me that Katy can play defiant better than her attempts at softer emotions.
[6]
Andy Hutchins: I can’t promise I’ll think this is a 6 when I’m on listen No. 7,000 sometime in June, but Dr. Luke and Max Martin are still good at relentless guitar-and-drum pop, and I’m a sucker for bridges that roll out and back in. I already miss the Katy that was at least trying to stretch the range of her vocals, but I suppose sitting right in the pocket is also a part of Ms. Perry that we’re never gonna ever take away from her.
[6]
Jer Fairall: Her year of marriage to Russell Brand was admittedly a hoot, and maybe I’m just relieved that the inevitable post-breakup single is not another “Firework” or “E.T.”-grade atrocity, and the song itself is similarly elevated by severely diminished expectations. Which is to say that this is more easy-to-ignore bad rather than “ow, my freaking ears!” bad, cookie-cutter even by commercial pop standards, but just as easily digested and not nauseating if taken in tiny bites. But please don’t mistake this for progress. (Hey, if Katy Perry can hastily rewrite something old for a new occasion, I see no reason why I shouldn’t get to do the same. I am feeling less generous with the grading this time, though.)
[3]