Perry! Perry! Katy Perry!
- Thread starter sus
- Start date
sus
Moderator
Crazy intro to that vid, but yeah, I'll take the Pink Floyd version anyday
@linebaugh the people need to know your favorite Katy Perry songs
@linebaugh the people need to know your favorite Katy Perry songs
sus
Moderator
Christian background, converts to liberalism, starts singing about kissing girls and getting hammered—personal choice! empowerment! the purpose of life is having fun!—inevitably still has remnants of her conservative upbringing; when revealed, her new tribe regularly makes a lesson out of her
sus
Moderator
Yes the 2010s are the decade of thicc for sure, black culture becoming even more prominent/influential. "Anaconda" (a dick pun just barely better than peacock) and its music video are a big turning point here, yeah?
sus
Moderator
I feel like all the musical components are here, great beat, solid mood, but the chorus is so cringey it gets automatically disqualified from contention
sus
Moderator
Who is Juicy J? Are they related to Jessie J?
She had to have gotten cancelled for this music video.
line b
Well-known member
gotta be. we also have this right at the beginning of the decade
sus
Moderator
Is that true tho? I don't think that's true
(Miley twerking on Robin Thicke—heh—at VMAs is another important step in this)
line b
Well-known member
miley could just pack on the pounds though if she wanted. the thickness went along with the body positivity
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Katy Perry is one of the most unlikeable popstars to me: her voice is so shrill and unpleasant, hoarse and bellowing where it should be sweet and warm; her trend-hopping from bubblegum pop-rock to trap and house revivalism is so transparently desperate; and her pivot to #woke makes no sense in the context of her early single that went you're so gay and you don't even like boys.
The magic of Teenage Dream as an album is how it works despite Perry. It's as good an argument for the role of the superstar producer: Max Martin, Dr Luke, Stargate. There's parts of the album that sound like mathemetical solutions being completed: everything slotting into perfect place, where harmony, melody, structure and performance come together in synchronicty, pop as its most idealised form. Whether you think there's any merit to that depends on whether you think pop is something to fear or to embrace: personally, I think there's a lot to admire in the craft of something so committed to its results.
"California Gurls" is extremely off-putting when you hear it with its video. It's a pre-teen boy's version of sexuality: comedy breasts that shoot whipped cream, Perry mugging for the camera, Snoop Dogg in Disney mode. It's also completely non-threatening, the kind of smut that makes nobody want to ever actually have sex, and probably explains why it did so well.
"Teenage Dream" is the midpoint between EDM disco and stadium pop-rock: it's as much "Summer Of 69" or "Boys Of Summer" as it is Black Eyed Peas or David Guetta, managing to be generic enough to be all different types of "pop" it's possible to configure as pop music. The video is pure fantasy: hazy filters, endless motorways, six-packs, expensive fashions at parties. It's totally perfect for a song that's selling you a configuration of bliss and joy as a memory that doesn't exist. It's the world of Dawson's Creek and The OC: an archetype of a life that doesn't exist.
Do you ever feel like a plastic bag? is a great line, it's a shame that the rest of "Firework" is utterly wretched. Empty, meaningless and ultimately useless platitudes, with a subtext of "I want the gays to like me the way they like the other divas." The only thing more obvious than the drop is the pandering, and I think that's why she's never really acheived the status of other big pop stars of this millenium like Lady Gaga or Ariana Grande. Even worse is "E.T" - it sounds plasticky and unfinished, the drums particularly cheap, and West's rap sounds grafted on from a different song altogether.
"Last Friday Night" takes the "Teenage Dream" nostalgia fantasy but doesn't go far enough with it: it leans in on slang that was dated even then, such an epic fail. Where the latter is idealised, romantic cosplay, "Last Friday Night" wants to sell you a reality that nobody wants to exist: the chant of TGIF feels particularly insincere and unreal. The video is a nightmare of forced attempts to meme herself, and even worse she seems to actually be enjoying it, further cementing her own unlikeability. Which is a shame because it's not a completely awful song - the filtered disco guitar lick and casual-shrug approach to the future of good times are both charming elements.
"The One That Got Away" is better, for addressing the nature of the fantasy head-on. It's not real, it's never was, but maybe it felt like it once, and that's the sad part. It manages to be both understated, which is right for the situation of lost love, but dramatic and all consuming the way that all teenage emotions are.
I really like this album when it leans into the bubblegum rock sound, and I think the way it plays with the idea of teenage life as being so important and pivotal is really clever: because, who doesn't remember their teenage years as a battleground of conflict and sensitivity, trying to figure out who you are and where you come from, while having a good time doing it?
It also is really discomforting how good Dr Luke was at making pop music before he was (rightfully) #cancelled.
The magic of Teenage Dream as an album is how it works despite Perry. It's as good an argument for the role of the superstar producer: Max Martin, Dr Luke, Stargate. There's parts of the album that sound like mathemetical solutions being completed: everything slotting into perfect place, where harmony, melody, structure and performance come together in synchronicty, pop as its most idealised form. Whether you think there's any merit to that depends on whether you think pop is something to fear or to embrace: personally, I think there's a lot to admire in the craft of something so committed to its results.
"California Gurls" is extremely off-putting when you hear it with its video. It's a pre-teen boy's version of sexuality: comedy breasts that shoot whipped cream, Perry mugging for the camera, Snoop Dogg in Disney mode. It's also completely non-threatening, the kind of smut that makes nobody want to ever actually have sex, and probably explains why it did so well.
"Teenage Dream" is the midpoint between EDM disco and stadium pop-rock: it's as much "Summer Of 69" or "Boys Of Summer" as it is Black Eyed Peas or David Guetta, managing to be generic enough to be all different types of "pop" it's possible to configure as pop music. The video is pure fantasy: hazy filters, endless motorways, six-packs, expensive fashions at parties. It's totally perfect for a song that's selling you a configuration of bliss and joy as a memory that doesn't exist. It's the world of Dawson's Creek and The OC: an archetype of a life that doesn't exist.
Do you ever feel like a plastic bag? is a great line, it's a shame that the rest of "Firework" is utterly wretched. Empty, meaningless and ultimately useless platitudes, with a subtext of "I want the gays to like me the way they like the other divas." The only thing more obvious than the drop is the pandering, and I think that's why she's never really acheived the status of other big pop stars of this millenium like Lady Gaga or Ariana Grande. Even worse is "E.T" - it sounds plasticky and unfinished, the drums particularly cheap, and West's rap sounds grafted on from a different song altogether.
"Last Friday Night" takes the "Teenage Dream" nostalgia fantasy but doesn't go far enough with it: it leans in on slang that was dated even then, such an epic fail. Where the latter is idealised, romantic cosplay, "Last Friday Night" wants to sell you a reality that nobody wants to exist: the chant of TGIF feels particularly insincere and unreal. The video is a nightmare of forced attempts to meme herself, and even worse she seems to actually be enjoying it, further cementing her own unlikeability. Which is a shame because it's not a completely awful song - the filtered disco guitar lick and casual-shrug approach to the future of good times are both charming elements.
"The One That Got Away" is better, for addressing the nature of the fantasy head-on. It's not real, it's never was, but maybe it felt like it once, and that's the sad part. It manages to be both understated, which is right for the situation of lost love, but dramatic and all consuming the way that all teenage emotions are.
I really like this album when it leans into the bubblegum rock sound, and I think the way it plays with the idea of teenage life as being so important and pivotal is really clever: because, who doesn't remember their teenage years as a battleground of conflict and sensitivity, trying to figure out who you are and where you come from, while having a good time doing it?
It also is really discomforting how good Dr Luke was at making pop music before he was (rightfully) #cancelled.
other Katy Perry thoughts:
"Hot N Cold" and "Part Of Me" are truly excellent songs, and I wish there was a world where they'd been sung by Kelly Clarkson instead.
In the video for "Roar" she's basically the singer from Aqua in the "Doctor Jones" video.
"I Kissed A Girl" is a truly awful song: lesbianism as male-gaze posturing, but also just really thin-sounding, the drums have no weight and the guitars sound like presets.
"Hot N Cold" and "Part Of Me" are truly excellent songs, and I wish there was a world where they'd been sung by Kelly Clarkson instead.
In the video for "Roar" she's basically the singer from Aqua in the "Doctor Jones" video.
"I Kissed A Girl" is a truly awful song: lesbianism as male-gaze posturing, but also just really thin-sounding, the drums have no weight and the guitars sound like presets.
Corpsey
bandz ahoy
Great post boxedjoy, albeit I'm having to take your word on a lot of it as I'm not really familiar with Katy Perry's stuff.
I do wonder about that Max Martin style conveyor belt pop music. I admire it from a sort of... formalist POV? But it's also kind of sinister and soulless. Really enjoyed reading the book about Martin, Dr Luke et al 'The Song Machine', might have to dig it out again at some point.
I do wonder about that Max Martin style conveyor belt pop music. I admire it from a sort of... formalist POV? But it's also kind of sinister and soulless. Really enjoyed reading the book about Martin, Dr Luke et al 'The Song Machine', might have to dig it out again at some point.