katy perry - prism

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

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