Teenage Dream
If you follow my Twitter, read my Facebook status updates, have been in my new car, or heard me drive by you bumping my music loudly you may have noticed that I've been head over heels obsessed with Katy Perry's new album, Teenage Dream.
I love it. 5 stars. Aces 10.
New York Magazine's Vulture posted a blog this week entitled "The Ten Most Awful/Awesome Lyrics on Katy Perry’s Teenage Dream" where they list the shallowness of Katy's lyrics and coin the new term, awfulsome, where awful and awesome come together and make an illegitimate baby. Come on people. This is pop music. It's not supposed to be that deep.
Did anyone go and dissect Britney's "...Baby One More Time"? Did scholars try and find the symbolism in Beyoncé's "Single Ladies"? Will historians one day look back and debate how Christina's addition of that extra 'r' in "Dirrty" sparked a worldwide movement where all females rode motorcycles to underground boxing matches and wore assless chaps? Probably not. Why? Because it's POP music. (Although I personally believe that when historians look back at Justin Bieber's videos they'll note how all the purple he wore was a clear sign of his obvious homosexuality. Jus' sayin'.)
The video for the title single "Teenage Dream" is pretty much what the video for "California Gurls" should have been. Sexy young adults frolicking on a beach, fun summertime beach bonfires and the requisite convertible driving down the California highways with the top down.
In a few months people will undoubtedly be singing the lyrics to "Peacock" just as they sang "My Humps" a few summers back. Take a peek...
"I wanna see your peacock, cock, cock
Your peacock, cock. Your Peacock, cock.
Come on baby, let me see, what you're hiding underneath ...
Are you brave enough to let me see your peacock?
Don't be a chicken boy, stop acting like a bee-yotch
I'mma peace out if you don't give me the pay off.
Come on baby let me see
What you're hiding underneath.
Are you brave enough to let me see your peacock?
What you're waiting for, it's time for you to show it off
Don't be a shy kinda guy I'll bet it's beautiful ...
Oh my god no exaggeration
Boy, all this time was worth the waiting
I just shed a tear
I am so unprepared
You've got the finest architecture
And oh the rainbow looking treasure
Such a sight to see
And it's all for me.
Are you brave enough to let me see your peacock?"
Now I dare you to read those lyrics and tell me it's worth looking into deeply and scientifically. No! Like I described the album to a friend, the beauty of Teenage Dream is that it's a light, summery pop album meant for cruising with the top down, kareoke-style singing and LOLZ. Let's take it as such and enjoy.
California Gurls
It's that time of year again. Longer days, hotter nights, trips to the beach and late night bonfires have arrived. Summer is officially here and with that the summer anthem that will be bumped from the speakers of cruising cars everywhere. This summer, in California anyway, the anthem is Katy Perry's "California Gurls". The song is everything a summer anthem should be: upbeat, easily danceable and with a chorus that even the drunkest of summer party goers can easily sing along to.
Katy Perry wrote the song as the West Coast answer to Jay-Z's "Empire State of Mind". Something current to show that California knows how to party. The problem with Katy's Ode to California though, was that she only focused on a specific type - the Southern California Girls, the beach bunnies in their daisy dukes and bikini tops. Where "Empire State of Mind" called out different types of New Yorkers, from the Dominicanos on Broadway, to the good girls gone bad, to those on the corner selling rock, "California Gurls" sticks to the stereotypical idea of a California girl. Now I'm not saying that they don't exist here in multitudes, but there are plenty of other types of California girls here that Katy could have sent a shout out to. How about calling out to the take-no-shit divas down on Crenshaw Blvd or up in Oakland, the field worker mamasita picking strawberries to flavor the popsicles you melt, or the chola with the hoop earrings riding around in her 1998 Honda Accord SE in East LA (or East Salinas for that matter). Move those electric blue bangs out of your eyes and take a look around, Katy, we have plenty of California Gurls for you to choose from.
Now I'm not totally knocking it. I still love the song and bump it from my car every time it's on and sing along. I just think being a native Californian herself, she could have done a better job of being an equal opportunity employer in her music. Where I have a serious problem is the video.
For all we know that video could have been shot in a warehouse with a green screen somewhere in Japan. Now I get that due to filming budgets and the high cost of blue wigs, record labels find cheaper places to film their videos, not always at the location they claim to be in. But could you have at least featured California in your video in some sort of fashion? Even the palm trees were made out of candy. Come on, Katy. REPRESENT! You know damn well the sort of budget mess we're in in this state. You could have gotten more tourism to our state by showing off the beauty we have to offer. Now all we're going to get is an influx of diabetics coming in to find the gummy bears that roam the streets.
A Candyland theme, Katy? Really? I'm all for pushing the envelope with your videos. Doing things outside the norm to keep raising that bar and giving us new and exciting videos but when your song talks about how beautiful the Golden Coast is, you could have at least featured it in there somehow. There is no California in that video anywhere and the idea is not even original. Fergie already did that theme, with a lot less CGI, in her "Fergalicious" video. Do your research, baby girl. I did. She even will.i.am to wear an oddly colored suit and everything.
Would you please do me and every Californian out here a favor re-shoot the video? You don't even need much money. Take a look at this homemade spoof called "California Gays" which even features a cameo by my future BFF, Guy Branum. It probably cost them all of $47 to make and they were able to make a great video and show off the true spirit of the state. Now these gays right here, they are true California Gurls who are fine, fresh, fierce and got it on lock.
