Katy is the main song-writer and producer on PRISM and once again works with past collaborators Dr. Luke, Bonnie McKee, and Cirkut. The other main collaborators on the album included Max Martin, StarGate, Benny Blanco, Juicy J, Jonatha Brooke, Sia Furler, Bloodshy, and Klas Åhlund.
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Track-wise; the four most personal songs on PRISM [Unconditionally, Ghost, Love Me, and By The Grace Of God] are by far the best. These songs are all raw and emotional lyrically, the music on them doesn't sound as disjointed as it does on the other tracks, and Katy is vocally strong on them. However - as Unconditionally [#25] showed - I don't think any of Katy's better songs are the best choices for singles, as they don't have catchy lyrics or a pop-friendly hook for radio which is what her sales figures rely on.
I'd class lead single Roar, This Is How We Do, International Smile, and the pre-album turned official single Dark Horse as above average. I don't find them as strong as my previous picks, but the lyrical content is catchy and Katy's vocals are good, so the songs have grown on me. I think that the three unreleased songs would probably be top picks for future singles, as they are what I think of as very radio-friendly.
The other tracks? Out of the rest of the album the only song that has proven to be memorable to me is fourth single Birthday, and that is only because I find it kinda cringy. None of the remaining songs stand out to me in either a great or bad way, so whilst PRISM isn't an album that I'd call bad I think it has way too many forgettable tracks on it to be classed as anything better then average; the 'filler' songs just make all of the tracks lump together and become empty noise.
Out of the three bonus tracks that appear on the deluxe edition, two of them [It Takes Two and Choose Your Battles] are growers; they didn't stand out for me for ages, but now I've come to appreciate the honest lyrics.
The weak link here is Spiritual. There's nothing about it that stands out that would make me call it a bad or especially cringy song, but this also means that the song is unmemorable to me - five minutes after listening to it I still can't remember any single line from it.
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I personally think that the way the soft-rock inspired instrumentals have been infused with dancehall synths just seems clumsy to my ears, so doesn't work for me on a lot of the tracks. Same deal with the vocal effects - I don't mind singers using them with dancier pop as I think it fits in with the music, but as Katy leans strongly towards soft rock I don't think it gels with most of the tracks.
It's a shame, as Katy does have the material here. If she'd had fewer tracks on the regular edition and had used the deluxe edition tracks on it instead of having two versions of the album, then the stronger songs would have saved the otherwise unmemorable ones, making Prism a 4 star album. Quantity doesn't make up for quality in this case.
Read on for a complete album breakdown...