Henry’s Music Blog

There are some artists that just create hatred within me. These artists are for the most part obvious, with your typical list of Nickelback, BrokeNCYDE, and Justin Bieber. But there are some artists that, rather than hate, make me very angry. Some are artists that have talent, but don’t use it to their full potential, like Drake or Ke$ha. Then they’re the artists that I absolutely hate, but keep making songs I like. My usual example for this is Coldplay, but really, Coldplay isn’t all that bad. Instead, the best example in recent years is Katy Perry.

In case you don’t know, Katy Perry is one of the biggest Pop Stars on the planet, and part of what I consider the trio of Early 20s pop stars that came up around the same time, consisting of Perry, Lady Gaga, and Ke$ha. Out of these three, I consider Gaga to be the most talented, with Ke$ha and Perry battling for who can be stupider. And while we know Ke$ha is probably a massive parody of stupid club music, Katy Perry seems to be completely sincere. However, I think this works to her advantage, seeing how this makes Ke$ha an ironic hipster.

Katy Perry has two official albums, though she actually has three. In 2001, at 17 years old, she released a christian album under her real name, Katy Hudson. I am not making this up. However, no one ever heard it, so I won’t talk about it any further. Instead, we have her two huge Pop albums, One of the Boys and Teenage Dream. Both of these albums were big hits, though Teenage Dream beats out One of the Boys by quite a large financial margin. It was even nominated for best album at the Grammys, even if it was beaten by The Suburbs.

The first time I heard Katy Perry was on her first hit “I Kissed a Girl”. And to this day, it’s one of the worst songs I’ve ever heard. Everything about this song is godawful. And the followup “UR So Gay” is not that much better. After these songs, I wanted to tear my ears off. But then she made “Hot and Cold”. And I fell in love with it. And since the, she has made a constant string of great songs, with the single exception of “Firework”, which I already wrote about. That right there is the true power of the Music Hit machine. You can take anyone and have them spewing gold.

Hell, with the video for “Last Friday Night”, she rescued nearly every other flash in the pan. There was Corey Feldman, Debbie Gibson, and Hanson. But two must be noted. First, somehow she managed to make Kenny G not suck, and in fact lay down a sax solo almost as good as Clarence Clemons’ on “Edge of Glory”. But then we have Rebecca Black, who we all know as the make of “Friday”. Casting her in the video truly showed that Katy Perry had the intent of picking up everyone she could who had come and gone. Is this an analogy on how someday, Katy Perry will be forgotten? Probably not, I don’t think she’s smart enough. But hey, as long as the music’s good, I don’t care.