"I always keep a stimulant handy in case I see a snake - which I also keep handy" - W. C. ...
"I always keep a stimulant handy in case I see a snake - which I also keep handy" - W. C. Fields
Member since:30.08.2002
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Isn't it funny how times change? Way back in the mid-1970s, Elton John announced he was bisexual and the world reacted by buying his records in smaller quantities than before. Thirty years later, Katy Perry releases "I Kissed a Girl", hinting at bisexual tendencies and it storms to the top of the charts and results in her being overhyped to a much greater extent than her talent deserves. These days, it's more of a disappointment when she admitted that she has never actually kissed a girl.
Ultimately, artists that get the kind of hype Katy Perry does rarely turn out to deserve it. She's certainly come a long way from an absolute unknown to emulating Christina Aguilera by presenting the MTV Europe Music Awards recently and managing to secure more wardrobe changes than her predecessor. Whilst Aguilera has earned the right to do so by topping the charts consistently over the last few years, Perry doesn't have the back catalogue to support her fame and it turns out that her wardrobe is of better quality and will probably endure longer than her music.
Any album opening with an annoying "do do do" lyric certainly isn't encouraging, but fortunately the title track, "One of the Boys" does improve. It's an up tempo, quite bouncy heavy pop track. There's nothing particularly new or inspiring here, but it's a fairly decent start to the album. It does remind me a little of Amy Studt's debut album, in her more upbeat moments.
The second track is the first single from the album and one which started all the hype. The hints of same sex snogging, as practised by Madonna and Britney Spears a couple of years back drive the lyrics of "I Kissed a Girl". Even without
the hype, though, it's a pretty decent track. It's a decent heavy pop tune with a techno background and a bouncy bassline that drives the song and would make it equally good to hear in a club or for walking along the road with it on your mp3 player.
"Waking Up In Vegas" harks back to the sound of the opening track, as it's pretty much the same song repeated, just with different lyrics. It's another Ashlee Simpson sounding number, with a fairly driving beat and a heavy pop influence. Once again, it's not all bad, but it's nothing really special.
For anyone who misses Alanis Morrisette, it appears that Katy Perry does as well. "Thinking Of You" sounds so much like one of her tracks that I keep expecting the lyric to switch to "Isn't it ironic, don't cha think?" at any moment. It's a pretty dull pop track, which tries to get going a little during the chorus, but gets dragged back into mediocrity by the verses.
The opening part of "Mannequin" is so reminiscent of Amy Studt that I occasionally have to check exactly which album I'm listening to. It livens up in ways she didn't, but the song serves only as a reminder as to why Amy Studt never really made it, as it's a bland heavy pop track with largely unintelligible lyrics.
The next track, "Ur So Gay" is the second single from the album and the second one to cause much consternation amongst people upset that she's using "gay" as an insult. Unlike "I Kissed a Girl", it's probably just as well that there is all this hype, as the song really isn't up to much. The lyrics are vaguely amusing the first time around, but underneath it all is a pretty bland song, which has both musical and lyrical ideas that borrow from Avril Lavigne's "Complicated", which wasn't that great a song to start with.
Fortunately, "Hot 'n' Cold" is a slightly better track. It borrows a lovely 80s pop drum beat and a similar dance background to "I Kissed a Girl", although during the synthesiser break it does sound worrying like the Vengaboys at points. Given that the song it borrows from was the best on the album so far, it follows that this should be the second best. Not that this one is terribly special, but it does at least get the feet tapping and it's a fun little song, even if it's not exactly brilliant or original.
"If You Can Afford Me" is a similar experience to the opening track, although it maintains a pure pop influence, without the indie touches. So, as before, you're listening to an up-tempo heavy pop track that would have worked quite well on the soundtrack to something like "10 Things I Hate About You", but doesn't do terribly well here, especially coming straight after one of the album's stronger tracks.
Every album has to have an attempt at a ballad and "Lost" is Perry's. Unfortunately, it's all too easy to wish she hadn't bothered, as this is exactly the kind of thing that ruined Amy Studt's "False Smiles" album for me. It's all very bland and wistful and plods along at a single pace throughout the whole song. This is the art of the pop ballad at its most pointless and tedious.
Thankfully, there's another heavy pop tune to perk up the album as well as the listener. "Self Inflicted" has a much heavier influence than most of the songs on there, almost becoming a pop punk tune, perhaps appropriately given the title of the song. But it's nothing new, as this is exactly the kind of sound that Avril Lavigne's been doing for the last five or so years and Perry doesn't bring anything vastly different to the sound to make it her own, or to improve upon it.
In 1938, George Orwell gave us "Homage to Catalonia. Seventy years later, Katy Perry seems to be giving us an homage to Catatonia with "I'm Still Breathing". I mean the band rather than the mental state, although it's a fairly close run thing, as this song sounds like the more depressing side of Catatonia, not too dissimilar to "Dead From the Waist Down". It's a down tempo down beat pop track with a slight indie influence and if Katy Perry had a Welsh accent, you'd be hard pushed to tell the difference between the two.
After the album opened on such a high, it would be nice to think it might end the same way, but "Fingerprints" soon dismisses that hope. It's not a bad track, especially in comparison to the one before, not that it had a tough act to follow, but it's little more than a standard heavy pop track, which sounds like "Autobiography" era Ashlee Simpson and doesn't even have the extra hook of a cheeky lyric to keep you interested like the opening tracks. When it suddenly ends, with both the track and the album coming to a rather abrupt conclusion, it actually comes as something of a relief.
It's not that this is a bad album as such, it's just really nothing new. Given the relative attention and sales figures of some of the artists that Perry sounds like, it suggests that the album has triumphed because of the hype rather than the quality of the music. Admittedly, Perry or whoever advises her have been smart enough to take full advantage of the hype generated by the mildly shocking lyrics from her first couple of singles and I can't condemn her for that.
But this does not excuse the fact that this is 12 tracks and 44 minutes of the same kind of music that has been done to death ever since Avril Lavigne first showed that a woman with a guitar and heavy pop sound could sell records in large quantities six years ago. If you like this sort of thing, you're just as well off finding a copy of Ashlee Simpson's "Autobiography" album, which can be found much cheaper than the Amazon Marketplace price of £5.99 for this album, which is overpriced in my opinion. Copies can be found on eBay starting from as little as 99 pence, but they tend to go for more than this and I haven't the heart to tell the person who recently paid £5.51 for my copy that it's much more than the album is worth. If you must have this album, my advice would be to listen to Radio 1 for the singles and then wait a couple of months for the album, when it will most likely be available for a lot less than it is now.
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Katy Perry is the all-new singing and sort-of-dancing-but-probably-too-cool-for-all-that, ... more
rebellious, girl-kissing, Avril Lavigne v2.0 bad-girl of high-production American pop. She's not exactly out tobe ignored. In fact she's out to become both an ido...
Postage & Packaging: £1.21 Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days...
Katy Perry is the all-new singing and sort-of-dancing-but-probably-too-cool-for-all-that, ... more
rebellious, girl-kissing, Avril Lavigne v2.0 bad-girl of high-production American pop. She's not exactly out to be ignored. In fact she's out to become both an id...
Postage & Packaging: Free! Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours...
Katy Perry is the all-new singing and sort-of-dancing-but-probably-too-cool-for-all-that, ... more
rebellious, girl-kissing, Avril Lavigne v2.0 bad-girl of high-production American pop. She's not exactly out to be ignored. In fact she's out to become both an id...
Postage & Packaging: £1.21 Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 businessdays...
Jan 4th, 2009
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