The Problem of the Katy Perrys

Out of nowhere a singer named Katy Perry has grabbed much attention in the music community. Most of it, thankfully, is negative, as her debut album One of the Boys has proved to be another generic teen pop entry that will soon be forgotten. The feedback has been, for the most part, pretty terrible, as most critics are in agreement to say that she has trapped herself in the corporate studio, surrounded by highbrow producers who are focused on what sounds good now, and not what is important later. However, the Katy Perrys of today aren't annoying merely because they're terrible; rather, it's because they're absolutely useless. Soulja Boy Tell Em is in the music industry to make money. That is his only goal; to sell ringtones of his ridiculously terrible "Crank That," to be featured on VH1 so people buy his album, to perform that one song for people to buy it off iTunes. Capitol Records hopes the same as well with Katy Perry, to make a great fortune off her back while she spits out awful tunes. The reason that Katy Perry is worse, though, is because of the audience that she attracts.

While Soulja Boy can easily target a mass of college and high school students to learn his stupid dance, Katy Perry is not as blessed. Sure, there will be people of that age who are so oblivious to what they listen to that they might download "I Kissed A Girl," but chances are the audience is younger - much younger - than that. Her music is so blatantly terrible that even the high school crowd - of which the subject matter is obviously disguised as - would reject it as completely idiotic. Instead, the middle school girl can relate to the lyrics. This is unfortunate, because she's not a role model like Miley Cyrus, whose lyrics consist of mindless yet harmless scenarios; "If We Were a Movie," for example, or the duet with her father, "I Learned From You." Instead, Katy Perry sings about bicurious behavior, underage drinking, mindless sex with undesireable partners, about it being necessary to fit into some kind of clique, to discourage individuality or to have relationshipswith those different than you. It is an album for the easily suckered, simple-minded members of the One Tree Hill generation.

Even when she talks about these things, it's not even done cleverly, as her lyrics are beyond awful. "One of the Boys" is about a tomboy wanting to be looked at as a girl... should we then assume from Miss Perry that the narrator wanted to change or actually has? It's simplistic high school mentality and overly stereotypical. The lines "It felt so wrong/It felt so right" appear in the chorus of "I Kissed a Girl," and it gets worse; "I kissed a girl just to try it/I hope my boyfriend don't mind it." These are unbelievably easy lines, and it is an easy single because of the annoying and catchy chorus. Keep in mind that "catchy" can mean horrific.

The lyrics even become too obvious as on "Thinking of You;" "When I'm with him, I'm thinking of you" is so literal that it's maddening. There is absolutely no imagination, no original thoughts whatsoever as to how to go about addressing a very overdone situation. And the beat goes on; "You're like an Indian summer in the middle of winter..." what the fuck does that even mean? The whole song is so ridiculously idealistic that it can only appeal to those incapable of thinking in the realms of reality, those who are so stupid that they could use this song as a sort of escapism.

It continues; the lines "You're just a toy/Could you ever be a real boy?" appears on "Mannequin," a song about a guy who - as you may have already guessed - has a cold heart, completey rejecting the love of the singer. God forbid he doesn't want to be with her, but can we really blame him? "If You Can Afford Me" offers little in the way of improvement with lines such as "Don't make the bet if you can't write the check," and "Hot N Cold" offers a long-winded chorus of magnificently overused cliches; "You're hot then you're cold/You're yes then you're no/You're in then you're out/You're up then you're down" and so on and so on and so on.

The worst moment, though, is on the first single which was released in 2007, a taste of the terrors that would arise in mid-2008, a song entitled "Ur So Gay." This song is bad because of the way that it fails to be funny, and not simply just because it isn't funny at all. It fails on so many levels because it's not nearly as radical as it wants to be, it's not nearly as shocking as it presents itself. It turns out to be a very strange and embarrassing number, with lyrics like "You're so sad you should buy a happy meal." The problem is, it's so bad that it's not even funny, it's just bad. And the reasons she thinks the male is gay are beyond idiotic, as I don't know how listening to indie rock or reading Hemingway qualifies one as "gay."

Complete with the random "tonight!" and "oh-ohs," she's always looking for something "real," yet it's clear that she determines what is real: real is without problems, where the male is completely submissive, ultra-romantic, yet not a pussy. One of the Boys is a collection of everything that seventh-grade girls dreams of, all wrapped into one fantastically terrible album now available at Wal-Mart. What's saddening is that Perry sounds as if she's sincere about what she's singing. Her voice is certainly in it, but she's twenty-three years old, and she wrote most of these songs. She is the type that fits into the plague of talentless artists who stumble into the music industry, as record labels turn to teen pop when album sales are down. It happened in the late 90's with Spears and Aguilera, with N*Sync and the Backstreet Boys, and now as Katy Perry comes up on the scene, it is a sign that perhaps again, with album sales plummeting as online sharing increases, that another wave of no-talent hacks will be signed for multi-million dollar contracts, sold-out tour dates, and albums that don't deserve to be spit on were they on fire filling up the shelves at Best Buy. She and the rest of ultra-horrible teen pop are the ideal matches for chicks who still watch their OC DVD's religiously, for those who appear on My Super Sweet Sixteen, or who generally like unnecessarily bad music.

Katy Perry - coming to a One Tree Hill episode soon.