The thing about Katy Perry

12.1.10: My parents watched the American Music Awards recently. For some reason. I think they are losing it, but anyway they had some thoughts on Katy Perry. Their general consensus was that, sure fine, Katy Perry has the 'right' to exist and be a popular singer person, but they could not for the life of them understand what she was singing. I tried to tell them that lyrics are overrated but I actually didn't try to tell them that (I just thought that and nodded my head, thinking, "Why are you guys watching the AMAs to begin with?").

So the thing about Katy Perry is really summed up quite nicely in this blog post from an MTV blog called the MTV Buzzworthy Blog (and you don't even have to read any of the words!) (Sidebar: MTV has gotten their 'money's worth' out of the phrase "buzz" and its derivative phrases. Like when Hipster Runoff uses the term "buzzband" it is obviously a tad tongue-n-cheek but it's used so much to describe an actual 'thing' [roughly: new music] that it's really hard to see it as sarcastic, or part of the satire, so what I'm saying is that a word MTV adopted to describe the creepy Folk Implosion video with the windup toys and the bugs oh so many years ago, is still a word that we use today all the time to describe basically the same thing. And this is something that does not happen very often with other, er, 'buzz' words.)

I think I finally figured out the 'appeal' of Katy Perry. You see, the first picture of her on that blog post she is sprawled out in a latex cat suit, and she has, nearly in her mouth, the end of a giant ball of yarn.

The next picture of her she's just on a red carpet, smiling in a fairly plain purple dress. So the first picture you're like "OK!" and the next one you're like "WHA?" If you're into what Taylor Swift brings to the table for example (and I'm not), you're like "OK!" all the time. There's not a lot of ambiguity there. Sure she might straighten her hair and that might make you go "OK!!" (2 exclamation points) but it's no big deal. Lady GaGa, on the other hand, is almost always going to inspire a "WHA? OK!" because she's Lady GaGa and what the fuck who cares, being 'outrageous' is what she does. But the thing about Katy Perry is that she has perfected a blend of girl next door (quaint outfits) and outrageous (firework tits, latex) so she has that like pop star superhero thing going that keeps you on your toes.


And I have nothing to say about her music. I'm just guessing it's average disposable pop. Is it any good, like for real? I have no idea. My parents couldn't understand the words for some reason. Would they have liked it if they had? I have no idea. And I'm not sure I want to know the answer to that. (Via BuzzFeed)

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