Katy Perry: Saying My Peace

Katy Perry's new album came out today. To mark the occasion, I would like to say my peace.

"I Kissed A Girl" is a great song, and not just in a theoretical, queer-studies sort of way. It's not ironic or camp; on the contrary, it's a great song precisely because it feels genuinely naughty. Perry was raised in a conservative Christian family, and started out a gospel singer. "I Kissed A Girl" is a great song because of the way it captures the exhilaration of a wholesome Christian girl's tentative first shuffles into the profane world.

But I know a one-hit wonder when I see one. Before "California Gurls" dropped, I hadn't heard her name in months, and I figured she was over.

In May, after listening to "California Gurls" for the first time, I was certain she was over. That song, I thought, was the most lifeless, insipid, uninspired garbage I had ever heard in my entire life. It sounded like a copy, almost note-for-note, of Ke$ha's "TiK ToK," except with everything that made "TiK ToK" such irrepressible fun--the dirty synths, the spunky white-girl rapping, the eye for slice-of-life detail--taken out and replaced with Wonder Bread and styrofoam. The lyrics sound like they were written by someone who hasn't been within a thousand miles of either coast, and Perry sings them like she's doing a homework assignment.

It made sense. Her one great song was fueled by the energy released, as in nuclear fission, when the hard shell of her Christian upbringing broke open and her repressed desires rushed out. But an atom only splits once. One burst of lightly transgressive fun, and she was depleted. The song would come out, no one would care, and that would be the end of Katy Perry.

Imagine my surprise when "California Gurls" became the #1 party jam of the summer. People loved it. It was the most popular song on iTunes for weeks and weeks. I didn't get it. My best theory was that California girls, especially those born in California but living elsewhere, like it because it's about them. I imagined them screaming and throwing up their hands when Perry says "West Coast represent." It was a summer fad, I figured; it would pass. Californians have short attention spans.

But as time passed, and "California Gurls" started playing on the radio constantly even here on the East Coast, I began to see the awful truth: Katy Perry is here to stay. People don't just like her songs; people like her, as a star. She has earned a reputation as a reliable, respectable purveyor of shallow, lighthearted, catchy pop, as a less serious and more normal counteragent to Gaga's quasi-artsy excesses. People like her; people think she's good.

Well, let me say my peace. Katy Perry sucks. Her songs are passionless, unoriginal, and barely enjoyable; what little pleasure they yield is pure Pavlov. Her supposedly "raunchy" image is tepid and utterly craven. And worst of all, she has that desperate look in her eyes, the look of someone who knows she doesn't deserve to be famous and is terrified that someone will figure it out. She shouldn't worry: for now, she has everyone fooled except for me.

Gaga is a fearless artist and a superb songwriter with a heart of infinite generosity and a sharp satirical eye; she's the real deal, no matter what anyone is saying right now. Even Ke$ha, one-hit-wonder though she may have been, still has as much organic spontaneity and rock 'n' roll swagger as anyone in pop music today. Katy Perry is nothing next to either of them, and even so people love her. Right now I need to go to sleep; my theory on why people love her I will save for next time.