katy perry - prism

I blame the Miley Cyrus haircut. Joking...maybe

"pendulum" could have been great -- pino palladino on bass and a choir -- but the chorus is literally just... "like a pendulum / it all comes back around / like a pendulum, like a pendulum".......

hmm a pendulum doesn't really come back "around"

still baffled as to how katy "ur so gay" perry is likable

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/31/Katyursogayep.jpg

nice

like a pendulum / it all comes back around

deep. this must be that new social consciousness she is going on about.

david turner argued this in a piece today but isn't a part of the shift here not just creative but also abt the market shifting towards streaming and away from single sales & radio as major #influencers

we all know that three is the maximum number of michelin stars

you say "5-star michelin" and the youngsters growing up on chef's table know you're a fraud

to me it seems like the industry is putting a lot of effort into trying to retain radio's relevance when it comes to exposing consumers to new music. the huge disparity between what tends to be on the pop radio charts vs. what's doing well on the streaming services to me suggests that radio is making a pretty strong effort to hold on to some subset of 'mainstream pop' music that it can successfully introduce to its audience without just taking spotify et al's lead.

unfortunately for them they've been struggling massively to do this. to use katy perry as an example: "chained to the rhythm", as expected, performed poorly on the streaming services, but it also sold poorly and got terrible feedback in audience research (even "bad and boujee", which was obviously a huge streaming hit but which pop radio barely wanted to touch, did better on in mainstream top 40 audience research). the same pattern has held for many other songs top 40 radio's been trying to play in hopes of finding its own unique 'mainstream pop' hits. meanwhile, on the other side, labels tend to have to resort to costly measures to market these singles to radio because their sales and streaming stats are so paltry, namely discounting them on itunes for months on end and having them featured incessantly on the front page's "hot tracks" section, with both of these tactics costing a lot of money (not to mention lost revenue when discounted).

in the end, the only songs top 40 is breaking with ease are the edm-pop collabos like zedd x alessia cara and kygo x selena gomez, which, surprise surprise, actually pull pretty decent streaming numbers. once digital singles retail is killed off, which may come sooner than we all imagine with all this discounting nonsense happening (this is what killed the us's physical singles market too, btw), i think top 40 radio will have little choice but to follow streaming's lead.

i should add that while i'm talking mostly about top 40 radio above, other formats more in line with what's doing well on the streaming services (rhythmic, mainstream urban) still often manage to lag far behind what's popping on spotify, soundcloud and youtube. "xo tour llif3" and "tunnel vision" are only just now about to enter the top 10 on the r&b/hip hop airplay and rhythmic airplay charts, long long after having risen into the hot 100's top 10 based overwhelmingly on streaming.

really good breakdown dyl

labels tend to have to resort to costly measures to market these singles to radio because their sales and streaming stats are so paltry, namely discounting them on itunes for months on end and having them featured incessantly on the front page's "hot tracks" section, with both of these tactics costing a lot of money (not to mention lost revenue when discounted).

i'm not sure i get this. is plugging a song to radio more costly than it once was? why?

my impression was that pop radio in general is just getting lazy and playlisting whatever hits on streaming, but that the lag is only like a week. (i'm coming at this from a UK perspective keep in mind)

streaming vs radio here is pretty divided still, but radio just feels out of touch & like its lagging behind

radio lags way behind in the us still. here's an explanation of the itunes-plugging i'm referring to: http://www.billboard.com/articles/business/7503298/itunes-69-cent-song-discounts-chart-ascents-radio-plays

in short, the majority of songs promoted via discounting and forced front-page exposure on itunes actually lose money; the hope is that the sales boost will convince radio pd's to bump airplay up enough to offset the loss in revenue in the long run (unfortunately, tho, my impression is that this tactic produces few radio hits of actual longevity -- the kind radio are seeking out). while the situation is not as dire as, say, when mariah carey's label lost a ton of money deep-discounting her #2 'hit' single "loverboy" to give it a massive boost it up the charts in 2001 (it consequently became among the very last non-american idol physical single to sell over half a million stateside), it easily could become a similar crisis if the volume of download sales continues to nosedive at the rate it has been (we're basically at 2005 levels right now). keeping the itunes store up-and-running is not free!

"witness" would be a great lead single

as maura pointed out in the Paramore thread, there are three women in the American top twenty who aren't "muses for EDM dudes."

no no. two of them are muses for edm dudes and the other is julia michaels. (who has that whole "sounds about to sneeze" vocal affect going on.)

oh yeah, sorry

It's probably been discussed in another thread, but I'm curious why women are being shut out of the charts. Is it a programmer thing? I remember reading about country music programmers believing people didn't want to hear two songs by women in a row, but does that extend to Top 40 now? (Sorry if the answer to this is obvious, but we discuss this phenomenon a lot and I really have no idea what's behind it)

Trump Executive Order

given that Katy Perry, Rihanna, Adele and Taylor Swift have dominated the charts for most of the decade it's hard to see some kind of new conspiracy to shut women out of the charts.

oh god it's not a conspiracy. it's the way streaming reflects certain norms of taste, which reflect certain gender biases. pay attention.

a conspiracy, smh. sorry that women had equal time for once. gotta get the men back in control so things are neutral.

Yeah, because that's just what I said, men deserve dominance over the pop charts. Whatever.

not to mention, if you're going to argue that gender norms are leading to biased use of streaming by listeners, that's exactly the opposite of a conspiracy in the charts, unless the conspiracy was to include streaming in the chart formulas in the first place.

I would not be surprised if there was some stan-war element to it, people giving poor feedback to their pop stars not of choice

, if you're going to argue that gender norms are leading to biased use of streaming by listeners, that's exactly the opposite of a conspiracy in the chart

not to speak for maura but i think that's exactly what she's saying?

in other news tay zonday just followed me on twitter :o

here's a nice depressing image to remind us of how unkind/averse to women mass culture has been:

http://i.imgur.com/8qVw9ms.png

women rarely performed more than a quarter of hit singles on the pop charts and even in their "best" period (which was shortly before the dawn of the rock era) still weren't even cracking 40%. data in this graph only go to 1990 but i doubt it changed much in the years that followed. i have lots of recent years' chart data d/l'd to my computer so if i find the time maybe i will crunch numbers for the past few years to see just how badly representation of women has declined since that one summer when billboard was posting articles about how women were ruling.

(the figure comes from this 2005 research paper: https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/bitstream/1807/9925/1/Liddle-charting%20Gender.pdf )

my pet hypothesis is that the radio-format landscape is so divided along implicit gender and racial lines nowadays that you end up with one of two scenarios: when mainstream/top 40 pop is popping, (white) women can thrive and men temporarily take the backseat. when crossover hits are favored*, men dominate to an obscene extent. (women of color who aren't already established stars lose no matter what.)

(* from any direction; most non-pop radio formats are even more heavily male-dominated than pop is. adult contemporary is the only exception. however, mainstream ac is, with the exception of adele, virtually unable to break new singles nowadays, and for each rachel platten/p!nk single that hot ac manages to break, there'll be like 3 white-guys-with-guitars making the same moves.)

Really liking the music/production on this but the vocal lines/hooks are increidbly plodding.

i really hate the lyric you're 'bout as cute as an old coupon expired

Witness; officially a flop. But she has a cunning plan. Supposedly..

http://www.officialcharts.com/chart-news/katy-perrys-label-boss-says-shes-planning-a-comeback-after-a-disappointing-response-to-her-latest-album-witness__21456/

Not sure this will get Katy back on track commercially, but I really dig her new collaboration with Zedd. The video is great too and oddly moving. The whole thing kind of feels like a more successful attempt at what she was going for on Witness.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrbgUtCfnC0

I liked Ex Machina in music video form better when Bjork did it twenty years ago and the tone of the song and visuals matched

new single, co-written with dagny! it's...good?!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEb5gNsmGJ8

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