Katy Perry Announces Sixth Album "143": Here's When It Arrives

Katy Perry has announced her sixth studio album “143,” set for release on September 20.

The pop singer made the announcement on her socials shortly after fans sleuthed the album title, covers, and release date on her official merch store. 

“143” is a code for “I love you,” often used in the early 1990s in messages sent on pagers.

“I set out to create a bold, exuberant, celebratory dance-pop album with the symbolic 143 numerical expression of love as a throughline message,” said Perry in a statement.

The pop singer described it as a dance album, something she’s “always wanted to make.” “I’ve been talking about [doing] two albums the past eight years and that’s a dance album and an acoustic album,” she said on Instagram Live. “I haven’t yet made the acoustic album. Well, we never stop writing. But I finally made the dance album, the album I always wanted to make."

“This record is super high energy, it’s super summer, it’s very high BPM,” Perry continued. “We just had a family dance party to one of the songs, and it’s just full of so much joy, so much love, so much light.”

While signing vinyl inserts for “143,” Perry previewed three songs from the album on both IG Live and TikTok Live. 

The first clip she played was for a song called “I’m His He’s Mine” featuring Doechii, constructed around a sample of Crystal Waters’ 1991 hit “Gypsy Woman (She’s Homeless).” She followed with an upbeat number entitled “Nirvana,” as well as “Gimme Gimme” featuring 21 Savage.

"‘143’ is honestly a dance party,” she added on TikTok. “All fandoms, invited. And it’s high energy, lots of love, mostly lots of love and BPM, summer, sexy. And it’s for y’all.”

Perry initially teased this upcoming era last month with the news that its first single, “Woman’s World,” will arrive Thursday at 7 p.m. ET along with a music video. Though no tour has been announced, Perry mentioned on TikTok that she cleared her schedule so she’d be able to tour in the near future.

She’s been teasing bits of the song since she announced it in June on TikTok and has sparked conversations on social media regarding her reunion with Dr. Luke, who handles production on the song. Details regarding the album are otherwise scarce. 

Perry last released her fifth album “Smile” in August 2020. The record produced a handful of singles including “Daisies” and the title track, and became her lowest-performing album in years.

Since then, the singer descended on Las Vegas for her Play residency, which ran from 2021 to 2023. The final performance came last November with a hint that her next era would be coming soon.

Perry has kept busy outside of music with a stint as a judge on “American Idol” for seven seasons. In February, she announced that the 22nd season would be her last, and she finished her stint on the show in May. 

In September, she sold her catalog for $255 million to Litmus Music, the Carlyle-backed company that launched in 2022 and also purchased Keith Urban’s rights to his master recordings.