- Mike Force
1. ROAR
PAUL CONSTANT: Katy Perry has always been a singles artist. She really only hits home runs with her singles—you’d have to be a total dick to deny the appeal of “Firework” or “California Gurls.” So why does “Roar” feel so deflated? Worse yet, why is “Roar” the best thing on this album?
CIENNA MADRID: Perhaps because Perry finally hit puberty? Now, instead of squirting whipped cream, her mechanical-nipple bras will squirt expired milk and tax forms. I actually like this song. Perry’s voice is best when she’s scream-singing—it’s full-throated, it’s husky, and it makes you want to scream-sing along. We don’t get enough of that on this album.
PC: But it doesn’t even have the abandon of her other full-throated songs. You listen to Katy Perry’s singles for that wordless ejaculation at the end of the chorus: The “Make ’em go aaaaah aaaaaay aaaaaay” in “Firework” or that weird “aaieeau-eow-eow” in “California Gurls.” Here, it’s a more restrained “oooah-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-ohheoh.” It ends in a choke, not a bellow.
2. LEGENDARY LOVERS
CM: Really, her most egregious misstep is embracing ballads instead of the clubbier pop hits that made Teenage Dream so fantastic. Without a punchy beat behind her, it’s more obvious that her pedantic lyrics—basically just clichés running together in a semi-coherent stream—don’t even rhyme. Take the first two lines of “Legendary Lovers”: “Under a silver moon, tropical temperature/I feel my lotus bloom, come closer.” Later on in the song, she rhymes “legendary” with “legendary.” This is what giving up sounds like.
PC: This song just makes me feel gross. All the all-you-can-worship-spirituality-buffet talk about auras and magic and karma and cleansing rivers and saying names like scriptures makes me feel like I’m listening to a Scientology indoctrination tape.
CM: Also, the sitar. Nothing screams cultural appropriation like sitar and lotus blooms.
