KATY PERRY

ARTISTIC DEGREES

Tween queen Katy Perry tries to split the difference between serious and sassy on Prism

by Matt Ashare |  
Published October 23, 2013

We tend, for the most part, to expect artists to evolve, to mature, like a proverbial fine wine, or whatever. It’s just something that’s built into the concept of artistry as a kind of craft or calling — as an innate and ennobling talent that grows finer and more complex over time. But, when it comes to pop stardom, well, not so much. Immediacy is the currency of pop, a bubbly confection that’s meant to be consumed freely, right off of the shelf, without much in the way of reflection or consideration. Evolution and maturation just aren’t part of the program: ideally, the pop star is supposed to exist in a state of suspended animation, forever young and glamorous, immune to the passage of time.

         It’s a paradox that two of the biggest pop icons of the past forty years confronted with very different strategies and equally divergent outcomes. Madonna, the precocious material girl luxuriating in the many splendors of a material world, was quick to understand the power inherent in owning and controlling her own brand. Less than a decade after emerging as a scantily clad, disco-pop boy toy in 1983, she’d transformed herself into something resembling a cross between a transcendent diva and a business mogul, having made the marketing of Madonna into a kind of art. Meanwhile, Michael Jackson, the teen prodigy turned King of Pop by ’81, reacted by retreating to his aptly named Neverland Ranch, where he gradually descended into a grotesque parody of the ageless pop star, vainly clinging to the seductive myth of eternal youth throughout the ’90s, until mortality finally caught up with him in 2009.

         For fairly obvious reasons, no the least being outcome, Katy Perry — the former Christian music hopeful who deftly, if not quite subtly, reinvented herself as a playfully impish California Gurl with the mildly transgressive singles “Ur So Gay” and “I Kissed a Girl” in 2007-2008 — has opted for the Madonna model. After presenting herself to the world as a charming young troublemaker on 2008’s sassy “One of the Boys” (she was Katy Hudson in her previous life, and on her 2001 debut), she solidified her status as a tween queen in 2010 with “Teenage Dream,” a coltishly brash dance-pop monolith that spawned five number one singles, a feat previously accomplished only once before, by a dude named Michael Jackson. And her extremely sporting approach to wardrobe choices, more so than Lady Gaga’s distinctively avant costumery, sorta set the bar for provocative couture that, for better or worse, performers like Miley Cyrus are now trying to match.

         But, Perry seems to be toning down her risqué displays in the marketing campaign for her new “Prism,” an album that seems to be targeted at framing the star as an artist, with all the implied depth and potential maturity that might come with such a designation. Okay, so she doesn’t appear to be wearing any clothes on the cover of “Prism,” but she’s only pictured from the shoulders up. “Teenage Dream” offered a full body shot of Perry naked, save for the wispy clouds protecting her modesty. And, in the video for “Roar,” the defiant first single from “Prism,” Perry starts out clothed, almost demurely, in stylish safari attire, before she acclimates to the jungle surroundings, finds her inner tiger, and morphs into a bikini-clad Jane who don’t need no Tarzan to swoop in and save the day. “Now I’m floating like a butterfly, stinging like a bee,” she proclaims, copping a couple of Mohammed Ali’s famous boasts, “I earned my stripes/I went from zero, to my own hero.”

         The track, with sweeping, empowered-pop chorus, and vaguely hip-hoppity groove, also borrows freely from the “Rocky” saga, with its anthemic declaration of “I got the eye of the tiger. . . Dancing through the fire/Cuz I am a champion, and you’re gonna hear me roar.” In that sense, it’s essentially a pastiche of prosaic homilies dressed to casual perfection in designer jeans and 18-carrot cubic zirconia hooks, courtesy of master song technicians Lukasz Gottwald (a/k/a Dr. Luke), Max Martin, Bonnie McKee, and Henry Walter, which begs the usual question: just how many people does it actually take to write a number one for a performer of Perry’s considerable talents?

         It’s never quite clear what trauma set Perry off on her voyage of self-discovery, or exactly who she’s going up against in “Roar.” “I used to bite my tongue and hold my breath,” she reflects in the strident opening verse, “Scared to rock the boat and make a mess/So I sat quietly, agreed politely/I guess that I forgot I had a choice.” Sure, but it kinda seems like it’s been a while since Perry’s had to repress much of anything. Then again, celebrity presents its own unique challenges, and Perry’s been through at least a few rather publicly rocky relationships. But the real point of “Roar” is to reframe Perry as someone who’s struggled, and continues to struggle, because struggling is part and parcel of what it’s supposed to mean to be an artist.

         In that sense, “Prism” isn’t so much a fragmented portrait of the artist as a young woman, as it is a bifurcated collection of radio-friendly, remix-ready snapshots of the pop star straining for a more profound sense of credibility. Actually, it’s a bit like a mullet: business up front; party in the back. After “Roar,” we get the earnest yearning of the epic “Legendary Lovers,” with its demand to “say my name like a scripture/keep my heart beating like a drum”; the breezy r&b groove of “Birthday,” where Perry does her alluring best to play the part of an adult seductress, teasing “If you want to dance/If you want it all/You know that I’m the girl that you can call”; and, after the generic house stylings of “Walking on Air,” the humorlessly impassioned power-love ballad “Unconditionally.” Oh, and there’s also the ominous thud of “Dark Horse,” a goth-lite, hip-pop tour-de-farce featuring some clownish emcee-ing by rapper Juicy J that paints Perry as, what Cars singer Ric Ocasek might call, the dangerous type. “So you wanna play with magic,” she intones sinisterly, “Boy you should know what you’re falling for. . . Cuz I’m coming at you like a dark horse.”

         No worries: she’s back to her old playful tweenage dreaming and party-hearty antics in “This Is How We Do,” a bubbly ode to the YOLO lifestyle that has Perry lazily half-rapping, “Sippin’ on rosé, Silver Lake sun commin’ up all lazy/Slow cookin’ pancakes for my boy, still up, still fresh as a daisy,” and boasting, “Channel this, Channel that, hell yeah. . . it’s no big deal.” And, “International Smile” is the kind of proud ode of jet-setting young models that only a cover girl could write, and that’s probably the disc’s most compelling pop confection ode to the material world.

         Perry eventually finds her way back to more serious concerns, most notably in “By the Grace of God,” a piano-based confessional about a subject that once inspired a young Katy Hudson — faith. Ditto for the airy “Spiritual,” a club track that makes the right connection between the rites of the church and the dancefloor. Neither is quite up to the level of Madonna’s “Like a Prayer,” or even “Like a Virgin.” But it’s still early for Perry, and if she’s got the will to struggle, then she too may discover that being an artist and a pop star aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive.