![once upon a time rumplestiltskin katy perry hot and cold once upon a time rumplestiltskin katy perry hot and cold](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/32/02/fc/3202fc03c799ac24e9d92cd7e4577703.jpg)
As pop fizz goes, “California Gurls” is pretty fab - even the boys have to cop to sort of liking it, if only because it makes the girls at the party dance on the coffee table. “California Gurls” was, of course, the radio jam of the summer, the gargantuan singalong fantasy that delivered on the promise built by the disco thump of hits like “I Kissed a Girl” and “Hot N Cold”. Once upon a time, Katy Perry might have run screaming from her Puritanical upbringing and turned into Joan Jett, saving a fortune in cosmetics alone, but at the end of the aughts, Perry instead became a shrewd enough observer of shallow shock contrivances to deliver a mecurial pile of low-attention-span synth hooks, even if, in a more authentic yesteryear, Perry might have fostered her reasonably tough vocal punch and her melodic instincts to become a more convincing rock figure. She aborted a career in musical Jesus-sniffing after 2001, at which point she changed her name, reinvented herself as a careless party gurl, went through record labels like she was changing her Facebook status, and, apparently, met the devil at the crossroads and sold her soul to him in exchange for the devotion of electro-pop’s most platinum-lined producers.Īll Perry needed to do at that point was pretend to be sexy, bitchy, and wild enough to sell the shamelessly frothy excess of 2008’s It’s one of pop’s curious cases of delayed exposition. Perry’s pop-conquest strategy has, sure enough, billowed her right to the top of the charts. Teenage Dream, doubled down on the formula that got her here. Now, instead of making an attempt at an artistic leap forward, Perry has, with her candy-coated follow-up, Or at least whose singles you want me to buy, and on that count, your moon has, in fact, risen pretty high over the cowshed.īut at what price has Katy Perry risen to pop stardom? One that will have her singing bubblegum-raunch about spring-break lesbianism to live audiences for the rest of her career, and Perry is already old enough to know better. K-K-K-Katy, not-quite-beautiful Katy / You’re the g-g-g-girl that you desperately want me to adore.