Katy Perry ‘s Teenage Dream became the first album by a woman to have five No. 1 songs. One of those tracks is among the best pop songs ever recorded .
Another is painfully overrated. 5. ‘Firework’ Blasphemy, I know.
To many, “Firework” is one of the best self-empowerment anthems of all time, a perfect pick-me-up to combat sadness and anxiety. As someone who finds self-empowerment anthems almost inherently disingenuous, I never liked “Firework” much. However, I can recognize that it combines baroque strings and dance-pop synthesizers expertly.
After “Firework” topped the Billboard Hot 100 for four weeks, Perry wrote many other songs in this vein. Her other uplifting tracks — “Part of Me,” “Roar,” and “Woman’s World” — got worse and worse. Se should have written another “Teenage Dream” instead of several more “Firework” clones.
4. ‘E.T.
’ Of all the Teenage Dream chart-toppers, “E.T.” is the strangest by far.
It’s a techno song about human-alien romance that sounds like it was written in The Matrix. For some, this track is too strange for its own good. To me, this song is a great example of what pop music can be when you throw out the rule book.
Auto-Tune can be used to lazily cover an artist’s vocal deficiencies. However, Perry uses it on “E.T.
” to makes herself sound robotic and futuristic. Few pop songs use the technology as creatively as “E.T.
” 3. ‘California Gurls’ Perry’s first pop record, One of the Bo.
