This Week On Billboard: Katy Perry – Teenage Dream

This Week On Billboard is where I unabashedly critique the current no. 1 hit on Billboard.com, the major yardstick for what's "hot" in music today. In order to simplify the review for those who don't want to read the whole article, each song is given a "!" rating, in which the finest grabs five of them. It's been gone for a while, now it's back after a 22-month hiatus.

A review of this week's number one single right after you and Katy Perry get a motel and build a fort out of sheets







Katy Perry teases in everything she does, and the record companies have no problem marketing her as such. She knows how to act in videos, how to pose in photo shoots, and what to wear in red carpet affairs (or what not to wear, to be more accurate) to garner attention and stir up libidos. But you know she’ll never totally expose everything, and that ability to sexually frustrate is a very apparent aspect of her gimmick. She’s like the sorority girl that gets wasted in every party but would never actually go home with anyone. Take “I Kissed The Girl”, for instance. As I previously stated, the whole bi-curious theme would’ve been more effective ten years before its release, when the public hasn’t yet been desensitized to girl-on-girl canoodling; with that said, it’s unquestionably a strategic ploy to turn heads. However, while its video paraded a lot of seductive looks and playful flashes of cleavage, it didn’t show Perry reaching first base with any of her female co-stars. At least t.A.t.U. made good with their promises, and then some.

Katy Perry is not only a cock tease, but she also frustrates us musically. She has charted a couple of singles that has the potential to become classics, but unfortunately they fall short. To put it frankly, if you give something marginally spectacular like “Hot N Cold” to someone that can belt it out properly like Kelly Clarkson or Pink, it could’ve been a written-in-books smash hit. Yes, she’s been given the physical assets to become a pop star, but she doesn’t have the God-given talents to handle massive, anthemic songs like “Hot N Cold”, “California Girls”, or her newest single to reach the apex of the Billboard charts, “Teenage Dream”

“Teenage Dream” harks back to the times when a guy still has to tell his girl that she looks pretty when she’s haggard, or when she’s funny but he's actually laughing at her because of her inability to tell a joke, just so she lets her “walls come down”. It’s all about the beginning stages of an adolescent relationship, the quixotic feeling of wonder for a new love affair. When she says “let’s go all the way tonight”, it’s not because she wants to jump his bones, it’s because she wants to substantiate her love for him with sex. And the whole thing is written in elementary idioms. Sometimes pop stars are better off leaving the lyrics to the pros rather than authenticating their seriousness as an artist with songwriting credits.

Unmistakably though, “Teenage Dream” belongs in the first tier of Katy Perry songs. When stripped down to its bare notes and chords, it’s a dazzling arrangement that almost sounds like a track belonging to Kate Bush’s Hounds Of Love if played with the appropriate new wave instruments. That clip also shows how much more beautiful the song sounds instrumental, which can be a testament to how off-putting Perry’s singing voice is. The Max Martin/Dr. Luke familiar soft-loud production reveals that she doesn't have a seamless transition from her falsetto to her chest voice. In addition, she sounds like a singing wax statue in a very emotive song, like a fembot fabricating the passion and warmth affiliated with performing a song like this. As good as “Teenage Dream” is, it could’ve been enhanced sung by someone else. It’s a regrettable waste of a phenomenal track.

(t5!) score: !!!!