KATY PERRY
TEENAGE DREAM
CAPITOL RECORDS
Katy Perry is hot, super hot, incredibly eye scorching surface of the sun hot. Katy Perry is the kind of hot that can ruin lives, start or end wars and force mortal men to weep openly. Now that we’ve got that out of the way is she really talented? Is her new album Teenage Dream anything besides a boring and trivial pop album? Was Katy Perry to be the next Madonna or the next hot girl we loved and then forgot about? These were the questions that plagued me as I sat down to listen to Teenage Dream and review it.
Teenage Dream plays like a collection of songs about being a teenager, or at least a popular teenager who is also hot. Katy Perry doesn’t speak for the unwanted or the weird, her world is the one most of us witnessed from afar and wondered why it was all so easy for them. The opening title track is a love song about a girl giving up her virginity, the second about a huge awesome party “Last Friday Night”, which comes complete with a cheerleader cheer section.
The third track is the single “California Gurls” a song anybody not living in cave with their fingers in their ears and their eyes shut has heard whether they want to or not. This is another anthemic track about how much it rules to be hot. The most bizarre thing here is Snoop Dogg who seems shoe horned in to try and give Perry street cred, something she doesn’t really need since she’s singing about life in candy land.
While Perry lacks the outright weirdness of Lady GaGa she does have pipes that bellow out catchy choruses and make danceable beats even more fun to dance to. In Katy’s world there is no recession, no school shootings and the biggest problem you have is what outfit to wear and if Johnny Football Star will ask you to the prom. She creates a bubble of candy pop that isn’t meant to let the world in. On the tracks that really work you can’t help but bop your head but at the same time what she’s actually singing about goes in one ear and right out the other.
Teenage Dream gets into trouble when it tries to rise above what it is. Take the song “Circle The Drain”, which seems to dictate the story of a drug addict or alcoholic or somebody with some kind of addiction. Katy Perry sings with as much emotion as she can about not sticking around to watch her lover fall apart. That’s not the world Perry has created in the first half of the album plus the song is a danceable party tune about somebody who is losing control.
The track “Pearl” featuring Perry wailing about a bad relationship is literally a list of bad metaphors trying desperately to sound deep. This girl was once a pyramid now she’s a grain of sand, she was a hurricane now she’s a gust of wind, etc. The best thing you can do here is create a drinking game where every time Perry uses a silly metaphor you do a shot. Everybody will be drunk by the first chorus.
The rest of the album goes back to familiar territory about the secret life of teenagers. The song “E.T.” covers the guy who is so amazing he’s from a “different world” (catch that boulder sized metaphor?). "Not Like The Movies" and "The One That Got Away" deal with the turmoil of failed teenage relationships and then of course there are other songs to dance to.
When you buy Teenage Dream you’re buying into the fantasy. The idea that there’s a genetically perfect high school out there with a lunchroom fiending for theme music brought by an angelic super-beauty in a tight outfit. Artistic reflection of the world around us is not what Katy Perry is about and for the most part she’s very honest about that.
Everything here is a fantasy, something to be used to forget how ugly the real world is. Listening to Teenage Dream with that in mind it’s a damn fine pop album that will allow you to boogie away your troubles or at least lean back and pretend what it would be like to date Katy Perry. Who couldn’t get into that?
You've made it this far, and for that you should be rewarded. Enjoy a collection of sexy Katy Perry pics.
CRAVE ONLINE RATING: 7.5 Out Of 10.
