A Thread Explaining Why Smile Album Did Better than Witness Album

Let Me Explain

In this thread I will exclude factors like tour, promotions and treatment that each albums get. Because that would be unfair for Smile.

Lead Single

Let start off with their lead singles, although Daisies was announced as a “first single from Smile”, it’s arguably that Never Really Over was the song that kicked off the era. In terms of the productions, NRO is without a doubt the winner. It is regarded as one of -

the best pop songs released in 2019 and considered as the best pop song ever created by some media outlets. Even though it peaked at #15 only, NRO single handedly outstreamed CTTR on Spotify with 450M+ streams already while CTTR had 450M+ streams and did that within 3 years.

Meanwhile, Chained To The Rhythm peaked at #4 and did a good run on the charts, but if NRO was released at that time, it would have peaked higher than CTTR in terms of its performance. CTTR entered top 5 because streaming era wasn’t that big and it was heavily promoted by

Capitol. Allowing it to be performed on various award shows something that NRO lacks. CTTR was huge on radios while NRO’s radio support was short lived because Capitol pulled out the song while it was doing better on the radios. If NTO would’ve have been given a right treatment,

it would have been Katy’s 10th number and easily would have saved her career.

Songs

Let’s move forward to their songs. Smile’s songs are all single-worthy, literally every songs in the album are made to be played on the radio. Majority of the songs on Smile are not a waste expect for other filler songs. With Cry About It Later, Tucked, Only Love and

Not the End of the World — these songs are all fit to be singles and would have charted so easily only if Miss Perry played her cards right. Smile album is literally packed with potential hits. On the other hand, Witness has variants of sounds on every songs, experimental in

nature and explored electropop. In terms of its songs that could perform well — Roulette, Power, Miss You More and Tsunami, these are the stand outs and could be sent to radios for single treatment. There are many filler songs on this album to be honest and lacks cohesiveness.

If we compare their best performing non-single songs, CAIL is doing much better currently having 21M streams on Spotify just 4 more months of its released while Witness (s) has 25M streams in 3 years of released. While CAIL and Tucked are getting many views on YT.

Productions

Witness album explored and delved into different sounds unique to Katy Perry. Electropop, dance pop, dark pop and EDM. The critics didn’t like the way it was crafted slamming its experimental approach. However, with its aesthetics and overall package, Witness pulled

off and dedicated and consistent to its art. Smile on the other hand, is very pop and dance. All songs have upbeat tempo and pretty much the same melodic formula. It is cohesive and tailored nicely with its songs something that Witness lacks. With danceable and potential sizable

hits, Smile is very consistent on its genre. A record that is easily to be enjoyed by literally anyone if they put it on because of its upbeat in nature and relatable lyrics.

Lyricism and General Message
Witness talks about empowerment and feminism. She described the album as “purposeful pop” with songs like Power, Hey Hey Hey and Roulette discussing the topic of women empowerment. Even though that Katy said that this record is all about empowerment

there are songs that are very dark and sad. Songs like Save as Draft, Miss You More, Bigger Than Me, Into Me You See and Deja Vu discussed about her depression and wanting to escape and the eagerness to find the light and reconnect with God. She fell into a rabbit hole of sadness

and isolation, Katy talks about her bad relationships and failures in love. Witness has deep cut lyrics and very depressing elements of metaphors. Smile is the opposite, with Katy finding love, happiness and light, she finally reopened herself for Love and Acceptance.

One big factor that influenced the overall mood of the Smile album was primarily because her relationship with her fiancé Orlando Bloom and her beautiful baby Daisy Dove Bloom. In this album, Katy reconnected to life and gave herself a chance to love and get her smile back.

This album all about resiliency and getting herself all back up after all the negative feelings she went through. The lyrics are pretty much straight forward — getting over, moving on, acceptance and be happy again. That despite of all we can stand up again and be brave.

Album Sales
If we compare the sales of the 2 albums, it’s obvious that Witness sold more and debuted at no. 1 than Smile. However, both albums were in different metric systems as to how Billboard counts album sales. Although that Witness sold more it was because of tour bundles

that helped the album sell more copies. It is something that Smile don’t have after Billboard change the rules on album sales excluding the sales on merchandise and tour bundles as equivalent to album units. If Witness was released around the same time as Smile, it would have

debuted the same because of its relatively similar performance on album sales and first week streams. Considering that Smile only had 1 top 20 hit and lack of promotions, it actually did good especially on its 1st week streams which is higher than Witness.

Conclusion
Both albums did good on their respective run, but this thread should prove as to why Smile is better than Witness, well only if Smile was given right treatment and enough/decent promotions. Smile would have smashed bigger because of how it was created - full of bops.