Katy Perry

By Josh Bell

Thursday, July 3, 2008 | midnight

Katy Perry’s pseudo-debut album (she put out a Christian-pop release in 2001 under the name Katy Hudson) is a distillation of everything vapid and annoying about teen culture, filtered through the musical sensibilities of a gaggle of top pop producers and songwriters (Max Martin, Dr. Luke, Butch Walker, Glen Ballard, Cathy Dennis, etc.). If you don’t listen closely, Perry might sound like an empowered young woman (she’s a good 5-10 years older than her target audience), but the surface girl-power chants give way to deep, hypocritical insecurity and sadly retrograde attitudes about gender and sexuality.

Both of Perry’s hit singles—“Ur So Gay” and “I Kissed a Girl”—turn on cheeky political incorrectness that masks casual homophobia, and makes her come off as a total bitch, to boot. The metrosexual ex who gets a dressing-down in “Gay” sounds like a way more interesting person than Perry herself, and her exhibitionistic bisexual experimentation in “Girl” is just so much crass showing off for brain-dead boys.

The music is as competent as you’d expect from the team of professionals, but it’s also completely anonymous. Perry’s voice is whiny and thin even on the upbeat rockers, and nearly intolerable on ballads like “Thinking of You” and “Lost.” Pretty much any female pop star she’s trying to emulate—Avril Lavigne, Kelly Clarkson, Pink, Alanis Morissette, even Ashlee Simpson—has done this poppy “rock” thing with more style and conviction. The teens of America deserve far better.

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