I'm one of her few remaining Stans on this site (and even so during this era I only listened to 143 once or twice only, very forgettable and a huge turn off for me).
Songs like Never Really Over , Cry About It Later and Harleys in Hawaii shows us that she's capable of serving mature bops instead of corny bubblegum pop & generic electropop with corny/cringey lyrics, if the rest of Smile were songs similar to these 3 (and maybe Tucked) and she ditched the whole clown aesthetic/name it would've been a solid album and would've probably helped her with the critics/reviews and earned her more respect generally, even if the album still underperformed.
Now, 143. She had ALL the right cards for a decent comeback. She might've not reached the same levels of TD & Prism success but she was gaining favor again with the GP and had some sort of viral traction on TikTok. I don't know what led her to throw all that down the drain by 1) Working with Dr Luke 2) Releasing the abomination that is Woman's World. But we know what happened with that. Without even mentioning the Dr Luke part, WW is one of the worst songs in existence. Sounds like an attempted recreation of her TD sound but in the worst way possible: wanting to be empowering but that just makes it cringe, no good hooks, repetitive underwhelming chorus, nothing of replay value on that song. And the video it's the same thing she keeps doing. Instead of serving something more serious maybe with some choreography she inserts "jokes" or memes into the video and bringing a bunch of c-list celebrity cameos trying to be "quirky". That doesn't work and it's not what we want from her, especially at her big age pushing 40. Then the album came and again nothing interesting. Bland. The only good to come out of it
was Nirvana, the only good song on there (and even that could've used some more work & tweaking in the studio to make it great) and the album covers & artwork: Some of her best artwork & visuals for an album since the early 2010s (specially coming after literal clown/circus artwork), and all of it wasted on 143 & not executed well.
But it is what it is and what's done is done. She messed up the very little chance she had for that comeback, and honestly there may be no other chance after 143. But there are some steps she can begin to take to at least salvage part of her reputation & career. 1) She needs to get rid of Luke, and at this point that whole Luke mess was such big news & a big stain that she probably needs to actually address how wrong it was of her to work with him & issue a formal genuine apology 2) Completely ditch WW-esque "empowering" vanilla pop. 3) Stop trying to be "hip" with memes & gags on performances & MVs. 4) Next album needs to be something more mature sound wise, as many have said here her best bet would probably be to opt for something similar to her early pop/rock OOTB sounds, but in a way that sounds mature and reinventive for her, not just OOTB 2.0. No cringy lyrics either. If she sticks to pop, she needs Cirkut or try Charlie Puth or Zedd again (Zedd & Puth are hit or miss but if they can produce some more magic in the vein of NRO & HIH then perfect).