In another life, I'm a copy editor. (Which guarantees that there will be some sort of error in this post, naturally. I throw up my hands and defer to Muphry.) Now, this doesn't give me any sort of godlike ability, writing or otherwise. It mainly gives me late hours.
One thing it does give me, though, is the nagging compulsion to pick apart the lyrics to songs I listen to. And to my dismay, a lot of them are quite pickapartable. They don't make sense. They refute themselves. They grocery-bag. Luckily, most people only blatantly succumb to this once or twice per song. Most people. There are, sadly, people like...
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Katy Perry! If We Ever Meet Again and California Gurls: OK, Katy. I really want to like you. You are the sort of singer I should like: kind of irreverent, suffused with post-girlpower that's fake as hell but still real enough. And when I don't hear any of your songs, just read your tweets or see you in a fashion slideshow, it almost works.
But then you start writing songs, and everything falls apart. That PMS line in the otherwise great "Hot N Cold" (well, OK, the inability to write the letters A and D too.) Katy, Katy, Katy. This ain't how you reclaim a word, not that you care. Then there's the entire conceit of "I Kissed A Girl." The entire existence of "UR So Gay." The crashing mediocrity of "Waking Up In Vegas." You disappeared after this, of course, and your aesthetic was partially taken up -- and more! -- by Gaga and Ke$ha. And once again, I'd forgotten that your songs pretty much suck.
Take "If We Ever Meet Again." It is probably unfair for me to criticize you for this, because you didn't write it. It's still associated with you, though, and it's the smaller of your two big welcome-backs, so I'll mention it anyway. Your chorus. It does not work. Now, students, let us analyze:
"I'll never be the same if we ever meet again..."
Two components: "I'll never be the same" and "if we ever meet again." The first part refers to the past. Now that X has happened, I'll never be the same. But the second part refers to a hypothetical event in the future. If X, I will Y. It seems like it should work! If we ever meet again, I'll react to something that's happened in the past and oh wait. If this was a tossed-off line I'd just sigh and move on, but this is part of your chorus. The first part of your chorus. That ain't a sigh, it's a facepalm. And since I only listen to this under duress while driving and when nothing else is on, it's a facesteeringwheel.
But all this pales in comparison to "California Gurls" (sigh). I was willing to overlook the fact that you bottle-of-Jacked "TiK ToK," because Ke$ha did the same to you with "Your Love Is My Drug." And either way, the music is kind of catchy. But then I hear what Katy is saying, and I want to jab a red pen into my ears. Let's go through this:
- "Daisy Dukes, bikinis on top." Katy, Dukes of Hazzard took place in Georgia. So as you're playing referent roulette, you're actually repping Southern girls.
- It's patently obvious that "melt your Popsicle" is supposed to be some kind of double entendre. Now, this isn't like "If U Seek Amy" where the "double" is missing; there's both a literal and figurative meaning. The problem here is that the figurative meaning is fucking horrific! Unless, y'know, you like your junk to shrivel away like the Wicked Witch of the West.
- "Snoop Doggy Dogg." Does your radio station play Puff Daddy before that? Right after the Artist?
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Most people aren't so, er, prolific. Like I said, most people stick to one or two per song. But sometimes they're just really... memorable. For instance, there's a certain line in "Nothin' on You" by B.o.B.: "Women call me Mr. Fantastic. Now stop... think about it." I know what he's getting at. But when you give listeners' minds this kind of free rein, you get thought processes like "Mr. Fantastic. You mean like the Fantastic Four? ..." Ahhh. Nothing like sudden immaturity. All the better to facesteeringwheel. See you by the side of the road!
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