Katy Perry - Prism

The first time I heard “Roar,” the lead-off single and opening track from Prism, Katy Perry’s fourth full-length record—as well as Perry’s eighth number one hit—I thought it was a solid pop song. It had a catchy melody, a huge, arena-rock-esque hook, generic lyrics, and just about everything else you would expect from the new Katy Perry single. It was neither a great song nor a terrible one, and after coming to loathe pretty much every radio hit from both 2008’s breakthrough, One of the Boys and 2010’s world-conquering juggernaut, Teenage Dream, “solid pop song” was just about a home run for Perry in my book.

Then I started paying a bit more attention.

In reality, “Roar” is the perfect encapsulation of what Prism is for its first half, not because the song an empty hook with possibly the blandest girl power message of all time—though it is—but because it’s a shameless piece of copycat songwriting that probably owes some of its number one royalties to half a dozen better songs. In his column about this album, Grantland’s Steven Hyden jokingly remarked that Perry should kick eighties pop band Survivor “a couple of shekels” for quoting the title lyric of their inspirational anthem, “Eye of the Tiger,” in the middle of the chorus. “Roar” is also the exact same song as Sara Bareilles’ “Brave,” which was in turn the most generic pop single from this year’s terrific The Blessed Unrest. And while it would be easy to write off the similarities between the two songs as little more than coincidence, a look at the song’s army of pop songwriters makes the similarities a bit more suspect.

“Roar” has five songwriters, all of whom bring a substantial amount of mainstream clout to the table, and two of whom are probably the most successful pop songwriters of the past decade. The first, Max Martin, has a penchant for writing the biggest hits—and worst songs—on big albums by the likes of Taylor Swift and Pink. The second, “Dr.” Lukasz Gottwald, has a history of “writing” songs plagued by accusations of blatant plagiarism. By all accounts, Dr. Luke is a bottom-feeding, opportunistic hack who gets away with stealing other peoples’ songs because he files defamation lawsuits the second anyone accuses him of wrongdoing. It’s hardly surprising that Bareilles shrugged off the comparisons between her song and “Roar” earlier this summer, even though the similarities between the two were enough to fuel a perfect mash-up of Nickelback proportions. No one wants to deal with a lawsuit from the richest songwriter in Hollywood, even if that songwriter is getting away with turning your modest, Top 40 hit into a global number one smash.

Dr. Luke, in my mind, is the summation of everything that’s wrong with pop music today, and he is the cancer that takes Prism from territory of “promising pop album” to “viciously painful slog” in a matter of minutes. The worst offender is “Dark Horse,” the album’s third single, and a pale attempt at emulating the dark club grooves of Justin Timberlake’s recent music—complete with Timbaland-esque spoken word bits and a rap section by Three 6 Mafia’s Juicy J that challenges Jay-Z for the title of “worst feature of the year.” “She’s a beast, I call her Karma/She eat your heart out like Jeffrey Dahmer,” J groans over synth blips made to sound like children’s voices. Enough said

“Legendary Lovers” is nearly as bad, with a faux-exotic back-up track that feels like it exists solely to allow Perry the chance to dress up as Cleopatra and dance in front of pyramids for a bad music video. It’s Luke and Martin’s attempt to turn Perry into Madonna. And the groovy eighties pop of “Birthday” is a mercilessly catchy cobble-job of Prince’s “Raspberry Beret” and Christina Aguilera’s “Come on Over,” but the sense that we’ve heard it all before hardly matters: the song will be a huge hit and a birthday playlist staple until the end of time.

Predictably, Prism is at its best when it kicks Dr. Luke to the curb, like on the weightless ‘90s Eurodance tribute that is “Walking on Air,” or the closing sappy ballad trio of “This Moment,” “Double Rainbow,” and “By the Grace of God.” “Walking on Air” is no more original than any of the Luke contributions—the prevalent “deny it” vocal sample is an openly nostalgic look back at C+C Music Factory’s iconic “Everybody Dance Now”—but here, the imitation feels like genuine inspiration rather than sneaky theft.

Meanwhile, “Double Rainbow” and “By the Grace of God” both appear as generic, introspective ballads on the surface, but handily trump the set’s other pair of introspective ballads—“Unconditionally” and “Ghost”—because they show a refreshing lack of pretense or unnecessary pop bombast. “Unconditionally” is fine, a solid melody tarnished somewhat by an awkward rhyme scheme and a bizarre pronunciation of the title word on the chorus. “Ghost” is less fine, a cringeworthy bundle of lyrical clichés minus Perry’s usual soaring hook. Still, both songs make more sense in context than the “California Gurls” rewrite that is “This Is How We Do” or the jet-setting diva pop of “International Smile,” mainly because Prism is justifiably a more downbeat affair than Teenage Dream. If Dream was the “falling in love” album, then Prism is the break-up record, thanks to Perry’s 2012 divorce from actor Russell Brand. And a Ke$ha-esque throwaway like “This Is How We Do,” whether or not it lives up to its extremely premature title of “song of the summer, 2014,” has absolutely no place on a break-up album.

Luckily, “Double Rainbow,” despite its title, is far from a “Firework” sequel. Co-written by singer/songwriter Sia, the song is a downtrodden look back at the beginning of a relationship after everything has gone to hell. And while the lyrics aren’t particularly stunning on the surface, Perry’s low-key delivery of “I understand you, we see eye to eye” on the chorus hits harder than anything from one of her many chart-topping hits. “By the Grace of God” is similarly devastating, chronicling the self-confessed suicidal musings that plagued Perry in the wake of her divorce. “I wasn’t gonna let love take me out that way,” Perry sings. It’s the most resilient, revealing line of her career, and it’s a sign that, maybe, without all the studio gloss or big-name songwriters, she could be a hell of a lot more than what this album shows us.

The same feeling is prevalent on “This Moment,” a prom-ready power ballad and the album’s best song. Come next spring, with graduations going off around the country and endings in the air, the song could be a huge, ubiquitous hit. But for now at least, it’s just a damn good example of what a good, generic, inspirational pop song can be. Perry’s vocal is powerful and emotive; the song’s build climactic and forceful. It’s hardly more unique than the annual American Idol coronation song, but along with the two confessional ballads that follow it, “This Moment” is an indication of the music that I think Perry actually wants to make. As the album moves forward, the highly-paid songwriters fall away and the production gets stripped back, leaving us with a much clearer portrait of who Katy Perry would be without the major label system throwing millions of dollars at her albums.

The trend leaves a frustrating dichotomy—between big pop smashes and confessional ballads—that renders Prism messy, inconsistent, and difficult to get a hold on. Had the label let Perry make a downbeat break-up album, it might have been great. As is, Dr. Luke and Max Martin turn Prism into their own personal pop songwriting dick measuring contest, pushing Perry’s actual personality into the background and stringing her up with grating hooks, horrifically awful lyrics, and enough clichés of the festering pop music scene to show anyone why the industry is rotting itself from the inside out. When the moments of clarity kick in toward the end, they force a double take, but they aren’t enough to save what is, for the majority of its runtime, an album with too many cooks in the kitchen and not enough good songs to recommend.

Taylor Swift - Red

 Taylor Swift - Red
Big Machine Records, 2012
Four stars

Of the biggest players in today’s pop music world, you can probably count the ones bigger than Taylor Swift on one hand. Amidst an ailing music industry and the ever-threatening death of the album format, Swift still moved over a million copies of her third record, 2010’s Speak Now, in a single week. Only one album has replicated that feat since (Lady Gaga’s Born This Way), and even then, the achievement was rendered suspect due to the $0.99 Amazon promotional deal that accounted for 430,000 of its sales. Indeed, in the six years since her first album, Swift has transformed herself into one of the most recognizable and polarizing presences on the radio waves, fueling her diarist confessionals with pristine melodies and full-bodied arrangements. For many (myself included), Swift has become the go-to example of pop music at its best, her honest songwriting and her penchant for towering choruses qualities that almost every other artist would kill to have. For others, her constant use of the “love-gone-wrong” trope is an immediate turn-off, the sign of a spoiled, “woe-is-me” rich girl who exploits her tabloid relationships, turns them into songwriting fodder and makes a truckload of cash in the process.

Obviously, listeners will hear what they want, but for me, Taylor’s manner of heart-on-the-sleeve conviction is one of her greatest strengths. In an age of overly-computerized poppers like Katy Perry and Ke$ha, Taylor’s honesty and candor imbues her music with a girl-next-door sensibility that is nothing short of refreshing. Furthermore, her country music roots allow her to implement traditional textures more often than most of her contemporaries, and even as she has moved away from those roots, Taylor’s reliance on organic instrumentation and classic country, pop and rock ‘n’ roll influences clearly leave her at the top of the pack…or at very least, next to her similarly-minded British counterpart, Adele.

Swift’s fourth record, simply titled Red, continues all of this while effortlessly adding more nuance into the equation, taking the same kind of genre-hopping mentality that defined Speak Now, but refining and grounding it in her most mature and dynamic set of songs to date. At 16 tracks and 75 minutes in length, this album is behemoth that could have done with some liberal trimming, but even as is, there are no obvious miss-steps or throwaways here. Right from the U2-bound arena rock of “State of Grace,” which opens the album in bombastic and triumphant fashion, Red is very obviously the work of a more grown-up Taylor Swift. She still has her moments of childishness here and there, whether she’s throwing a cell phone at her boyfriend’s head on the infectious, should-have-been b-side “Stay Stay Stay,” or joyfully bidding farewell to yet another former flame on the number-one smash “We Are Never Ever Ever Getting Back Together” (complete with a Max Martin-approved hook and a charismatic spoken-word interlude). But most of the time, Taylor forsakes shameless name-dropping and self-victimization in favor of gleeful pop bliss or heartfelt introspection; in both cases, she’s thoroughly in her element.

The album’s most immediate standout track is also its longest. “All Too Well” is a gorgeous and wistful ballad, drenched in the kind of rootsy tradition that defined the best cuts on both Fearless and Speak Now, but taking it to another level with the best songwriting Swift has ever put on record. Rather than focusing solely on break-up fireworks like much of her earlier material, “All Too Well” charts the entire course of a relationship, from the euphoric early days of spending Thanksgiving with her new boyfriend’s family, to the nostalgic glances back after the whole thing has gone up in flames. The idea isn’t new, but the way Taylor approaches it here is undoubtedly effective, imbuing the lovely autumnal backdrop with relatable specificity that hits straight home. “Here we are again in the middle of the night/We’re dancing ‘round the kitchen in the refrigerator light/Up the stairs, I was there, I remember it all too well,” Taylor sings, transporting herself (and her audience) back to a relationship whose memories still feel fresh. That sense of thinly-veiled recollection, of fondly remembered love affairs that, for whatever reason, had to end, informs the majority of the songs on Red. Make no mistake, this could easily be labeled as a break-up album, a classification that essentially fits each album Swift has made thus far. The difference this time around is that Swift doesn’t solely bask in the swells of her own romantic disasters: this is a record of ups and downs, ebb and tide, triumph and tragedy, and for probably the first time, we’re not always sure if Swift is singing about herself.

The sobering “The Last Time” is another break-up ballad, this time playing out between intertwining male (Snow Patrol’s Gary Lightbody) and female voices. Throughout the song, it often feels like Swift is the supporting act, with everything from the melody to the wall of guitars to the vocal distribution tilting towards Lightbody’s wheelhouse. That disconnect hints at the ambiguous perspective of the piece, at the question of whether Taylor is actually the narrator or if she has adopted the situation of another. Likely, the song is the album’s most obvious rumination on the demise of the marriage between Swift’s mother and father, who separated this past spring. “Put my name at the top of your list,” Lightbody and Swift demand in turn, questioning just how much of themselves Swift’s parents poured into their daughter’s career and whether that skewed distribution of efforts and affection may have caused their relationship to implode. The feeling is similar on “I Almost Do” and “Sad Beautiful Tragic,” a pair of sparse acoustic ballads that assist the album’s central themes (those of regret and longing, heartbreak and hope) in moving to the forefront.

But while Red spends a fair amount of its runtime situated in the lower end of the tempo spectrum, it often thrives best within moments of pure pop sensibility. The title track morphs heartbreak into a simile-loaded slice of pop perfection, while the dubstep-injected “I Knew You Were Trouble” is one of many prospective chart-toppers at play here. The beat-driven stomp of “Holy Ground” is a modern-pop take on Bruce Springsteen’s “Badlands,” a tear-down-the-walls anthem that ranks as one of the most powerful and resilient songs ever written (and not a bad standard to be compared to); Taylor’s version should be Red’s  penultimate cut. That position goes instead to the neon-drenched “Starlight,” whose luminescent opening is almost tailor-made (pun intended) for some fantastical beauty product commercial. Remarkably, that indulgence works, not only because Taylor resides in a genre where commercial connections don’t ring utterly false, but also because she’s still pretty damn good at playing the princess.

And pop princess she is, especially on “22,” which is destined to be her biggest hit to date. Fans of Swift’s country roots will likely shake their head at the redneck-Ke$ha opening, but once the song opens up into a wall of synthesizers and settles into its indelible hook, it’s almost impossible not to shout along. The song’s youthful energy and “throw-away-the-obligations” mentality will make it an essential cut for many a college party in the coming months and that association is absolutely justified. Almost equally addictive is the Butch Walker-produced “Everything Has Changed,” a simple folk-pop song taken to the next level by a hip-hop-ready beat and titanic production values. Swift and British singer-songwriter Ed Sheeren serenade each other, their voices blending in a sweet valentine of a song that welcomingly indicates light at the end of the tunnel for what is, on the whole, a pervasively sad record.

Pictures with Bruce AND Butch? Good deal.

Fittingly, the full daybreak comes on the album’s final track: “Begin Again” sounds like classic singer-songwriter fare, something that Carole King or Joni Mitchell (whose influence extends to every corner of Red) might have put on a record in the 1970s. A classy James Taylor reference only enhances the vintage feel, but at the end of the day, it’s Swift’s growth as an artist that allows her to sell the song (and in connection, the album) so effectively. When “Begin Again” hits its bridge and Taylor delivers the climactic lines (“And we walked down the block to my car and I almost brought him up/But you start to talk about the movies that your family watches/Every single Christmas, and I won’t talk about that/For the first time, what’s past is past”), it’s the mark of a songwriter who has finally grown up and learned to let the bad things go, and it’s because of this maturation that Red is ultimately an uplifting record. Despite the trials and tribulations she runs into along the way, Swift realizes that there’s always a lesson to be learned, that the pain is all a part of growing up and becoming the people we were meant to be, and that maturation is an exciting one. People don’t pour this much of themselves into strict pop records anymore, something that would make Red notable even if it were a relatively one-note affair. That the album covers half a dozen genres without ever sacrificing flow, thematic integrity or pure pop ecstasy makes it not only the best album of Swift’s budding career, but the best mainstream pop record we are likely to hear in 2012; here’s hoping that Swift just keeps getting better.