Katy Perry – Teenage Dream (2010) – debuts at number one on Billboard
Billboard announced this week that Katy Perry‘s latest album, Teenage Dream is debuting at the top of the album charts with sales of 192,000 in its first week of release. who are all these tone-deaf people buying up this crap??? 192,000 copies??? There are tons of talented singer/songwriters that would kill to sell even a quarter of that.
Well, congrats, Katy for duping the mainstream record-buying public into buying your album!
OK, OK, Katy’s not really the one to blame. She just simply wants to be this generation’s Madonna. The problem stems from the whole pop-industry machine that cranks out mind-numbing ear-candy that can easily be marketed to young, impressionable kids. Yeah, I know, it’s been the same ol’ story for decades. But come on, now that the industry has the convenience of Pro-Tools and Auto-Tune, they can basically take any pretty face and mold them into the next pop sensation.
Just look at the assembly line production team that’s behind Perry’s Teenage Dream. The long list includes Max Martin, Dr. Luke, Stargate and Tricky Stewart. And all the uninspired songwriting was done by committee. There’s nothing unique or original about these songs at all. The tunes were all prefabricated, interchangeable and all modeled after proven formulas. The songs seem sterile and feel like they were concocted in a lab – carefully extracting bits from Ke$ha, Rihanna, Lady Gaga, Black Eye Peas, Pink and even good ol’ Evanescence.
and don’t get me started on “Peacock”. I’m no prude but still, I wouldn’t want my kids listening/singing-along to that filth. geez. doesn’t she know that a good portion of her audience are 13 and 14 year old girls?
and who came up with the sequencing of the tracks? I think the producers simply relied on their iPod to shuffle the tracks randomly with no thought put into it because the flip-flopping between light/humorous tracks with the more sincere/serious material is just plain awkward and distracting.
retroGrade: D
meh. I’d rather look at her photos and watch her videos than listen to the album. 
has got to be this summer’s biggest guilty pleasure. Just forget about artistic integrity for a moment, shut off your brain and let your ears enjoy some sonic candy for a while. The music off of “One of the Boys” is the audio equivalent of fast food – quick and easy to enjoy. and just like fast food, it’s not something I’d want to consume over and over again on a regular basis. But for now, it’s a fun listen. As you’ve probably heard, Katy Perry started out in the contemporary Christian genre under the name Katy Hudson. Her 2001 album didn’t go anywhere and after her record label closed up shop, Katy had to re-group and figure out what to do next. And if Dana Carvey’s “Church Lady” was still around, she’d say at this point that Katy went off and sold herself to the devil. And that’s because the “Katy Perry” image is an absolute “180″ from her days as a Christian artist. One can only wonder now if “Katy Perry” is simply a made up corporate marketing scheme to sell records or a truthful maturation of lil’ “Katy Hudson”. If I had to guess, I’d lean toward the “marketing” aspect but like I said earlier, forget all about integrity here and just enjoy the music. Her team of producers, including Glen Ballard, Butch Walker and Greg Wells, must have some sort of specialized Pro Tools plug-in to help create radio-ready songs because this album is bursting with ready-made hits. Imagine them dialing in the “Alanis Morissette” setting for songs like “Thinking of You” and switching to the overused “Avril Lavigne” setting for the songs like “One of the Boys” and so on. It’s not the most original or creative by any means but producing “cookie-cutter” pop-rock can definitely help you land a spot on corporate radio rotation. And that seems to be the basic goal here: getting on the radio and selling millions of units. Hey, you can blame the girl for wanting to be successful. The hard part will be sustaining a music career beyond the initial 15-minutes.
