katy perry - prism

thanking you ward fowler, that was tremendous

it's ok

wow, another empowerment anthem for gays and 12 year old girls, i'm so shocked

so sick of pop music pandering to lions, too

did you hear this Ward? katy perry sending a special message to Boycott. pretty funny.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01dz5mh

needs actual roars

"Perry also called working with "California Gurls" and "Teenage Dream" collaborator Bonnie McKee 'like an emotional abuse session'..."

ah, sensitive as always

As a songwriter she has this obnoxious habit of using cliched metaphors and turns of phrases in lieu of more specific lyrical details and this song might be the worst offender in her catalog on this front: bite my tongue, rock the boat, brush off the dust, eye of the tiger, float like a butterfly, sting like a bee, zero to hero.

she seems the kind of person who would think the stock phrases on a motivational poster are actually really poignant.

homie its ok if u want to say she's dumb

keep in mind this is the person who wrote "do you ever feel like a plastic bag drifting through the wind wanting to start again" and expected it to be meaningful

what would a plastic bag be doing with its second chance anyway

http://www2.epa.gov/sites/production/files/recycle3.jpg

http://www.etsy.com/search?q=recycled+plastic+bags

recycled plastic bags man
could be anything, another bag, a bottle, a rly cheap dildo, breathing tubes, hulk hogans shirt, a slip n slide, a project runway dress. sky's the limit, thats why the song is so inspiring 2 me.

unsurprisingly i love ROAR to bits

(sounds good in the car btw)

roar is just kp singing successories slogans over sara bareilles verses and butch walker choruses and the 'two weeks' beat

w/e

http://www.wonderworkshop.co.uk/images/iggy/iggy01.jpg

Surm otm

did anyone put any effort into this song? even by perry's standards this doesn't exactly scream lead single

and the lyrics are some platonic ideal of placeholder triteness

urgh this is horrible

i like the slogans; classic rock blankness

the chorus brings out the 13 year old girl in me, with one of those stretch headbands

wait maybe i mean 7 year old girl

it is a little shocking to me how much better this is than Gaga's single, especially considering that this isn't anything particularly special

in what universe is this better than gaga's single (which isn't even all that great)

the universe where someone spent more than three seconds hacking together a poorly-EQed backing track on Katy's single and where someone allowed Gaga to sing the verses on hers like she was Tom Cruise's Lestat from Interview With A Vampire

entranced by this song after a few listens and i feel like i have to apologize

Just sonically-speaking, I'm going to have more time for a song that sounds like a generic pop song than a song that sounds like someone pastiching Madonna's "Girls Gone Wild" and "Give Me All Your Luvin'" (particularly after the whole "Express Yourself This Way" thing); I haven't even gotten to the point where I care about one being dumber than the other.

see, I almost always prefer "loud and wrong" to "boring and right". to me the problem with "Applause" is that it ISN'T weird enough. (how would that pastiche not sound like a generic pop song, anyway?)

By "generic" I meant "I can't identify a specific song that this reminds me of" (which, going by other comments on this thread, means that my campaign to actively avoid The Lumineers has been much more successful than my Owl City and Foster the People campaigns were), not that Gaga's song sounds in any way out there or shocking.

uh well funny you should mention that

http://music-mix.ew.com/2013/08/12/katy-perry-roar-sara-bareilles-brave/

okay well now I just think they're both terrible

i never thought i'd say this because it's really taken me a long time to come around on katy, but "roar" >>>> "applause"

The similarities to Sara Bareilles' Brave are really kind of unsettling. You can basically lay the instrumentals on top of each other. It's like a slightly sped up version of it.

I think everyone should have a clause drawn up in the case they find themselves copying Sara Bareilles and die of mortification

i don't think i've ever knowningly heard that Bareilles song

just by following a big album with an even bigger album perry's reached a pretty impressive tier for someone who's most distinctive quality is the degree to which she's campishly complicit in (if not downright enthusiastic about) her own objectification (and to be clear, i think her singles have been uniformly strong, I'm just saying this seems to be what makes Teenage Dream different from other multi-hit smashes, like say, Kelly Clarkson's Breakaway or Paula Abdul's Forever Your Girl). But making the self-empowerment ballad the first single rather than the third (esp when it's wan and derivative rather than striking) kinda suggests some vanity on her part ("Hey, now that I'm undeniably huge, let's focus on what I REALLY want to do"). The fact that she's also jacking the Listen Without Prejudice "burning artifacts of your old hits" motif suggests this might be the end of the road. At least until she accepts Cherhood with some dramatic novelty ballads.

the "Roar"/"Brave" thing is confusing to me because i actually like Sara Bareilles generally so i have a capacity to be disappointed in her doing that song but Katy Perry doing it is like well that's as good as it gets with her i guess.

getting called out for the bareilles/beyonce rip-offs just underscores how little she has to offer beyond Martin/Luke jams and a Playboy-Bunny-doing-charity-work persona. That she hasn't made a go of hollywood yet when even Rihanna's been in a blockbuster doesn't bode well for career longevity.

oh wait, I forgot she's smurfette

I'm sure this is how it went down in 2007:

http://bluebuddies.com/help/jpg/SmurfetteCreation1.jpg

I think that's the narrative she's setting up with those teaser videos, but in no way is this kind of self-help anthem a commercial risk for an artist of her size in 2013. Basically she just took two annoying yet popular trends in pop music of the last 3 years--popstars as self-help gurus and Lumineers-esque shout and clap mid-tempos--and synthesized them into one song. Radio will devour this and beg for seconds and thirds.

i'd agree, esp if they've got some "Hooray For Butts" bubblegum follow-up all lined up, but I think the Sara Bareilles thing is really going to take the wind out of the sails for this one

I'm still shocked she had the restraint to not make Peacock a single. On that note, this apparently almost made it onto Teenage Dream.

http://youtu.be/B5Nvi99zq6E

nobody is going to give a shit about the Sara Bareilles thing commercially. Kelly Clarkson's "Already Gone" was an actual, documentable case of plagiarism (self-plagiarism, but still), and it was just as big a radio hit as "Halo."

Oh I know ppl will still buy this, I just think artistically you should be super mortified if you find yourself copying Sara Bareilles

it's so amazing: there isn't a single verse that coheres into any kind of sense. When she drops the "eye of the tiger" line she might as well have said "smell like I sound/I'm lost and I'm found" before those horrifying chorus war whoops.

yeah i was thinking of "Already Gone," but between this and the beyonce thing I'm not convinced the gravy train is just gonna barrel forward. I mean, it's rare enough someone who has smashes off their debut has even more on their sophomore album (Debbie, Cyndi, Paula, etc failed). You either need to have pipes (Mariah, Kelly) or be canny as fuck (Madonna, Rihanna) and I'm not totally sold on the latter being true.

also that "eye of the tiger" sounds almost like "this girl is on fire"

and obv when i say "end of the road" i don't necessarily mean she'll reach tiffany levels of obscurity, just that she'll probably be in a judge's chair sooner than she hoped

that's surprisingly nice, certainly the most i've ever liked one of her singles

this sound would have been a good fit for Taylor actually lol but alas

This is pretty good

it's funny taylor beat her to the pre-chorus marching band snares lol but this chorus does go to an unexpected place. not sure i would call it good exactly but it is something

the chorus is quite good imo

I really wasn't expecting that chorus. It's very I Want You by Savage Garden.

Really love this. Just the kind of single she needed to put out right now.

this song is fine but almost literally any other pop singer working today would deliver it better. (my first thought was carly rae jepsen, but I could easily imagine halsey, kelsea ballerini, even someone like sabrina carpenter)

Well Dagny already had a go at it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnQBqinwlwQ

I'm not particular about technical skills or talent in pop music but her voice is distractingly bad on this, sometimes she is a great pop star and sometimes she is just a pop star but it still amazes me that she's managed to have such longevity given how obvious her strain in her voice is

i think it's pretty good. certainly an improvement over the single that led off witness.

Her new single isn't bad either, and this might bode well for her upcoming album whenever it'll come out, but Katy Perry will still be the worst thing about Katy Perry songs

major label artists aren't permitted to release albums anymore unless they score a big hit single (a 'bullet') first, unless they have an adele/swift-like track record of pushing units in the past. maybe she'll get to put out an ep.

it's pretty boring to me but perhaps the charlie puth stans will like it given his involvement

Small Talk is nice enough, but it's too slight to give her the big hit she/they want to launch another album.

Never Really Over remains one of the best songs of the year. I'm shocked it wasn't massive.

i grew to love it

"never really over" i mean, not the new song which i haven't heard

lol so now i've heard it and when she sang "small talk" i was like

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTZdC7vvUCo