Katy Perry Sings Best

I am looking through several videos on the current nowadays. Of course, I would be at You Tube for that. Thanks mostly to the newly installed DSL broadband service that we have just gotten. It’s just a paradigm shift that I wonder where I’ve been before broadband came to us—-perhaps in the dark ages.

Now, I hear Katy Perry lamenting how a “Mannequin” is not a man, but “just a mannequin”, and I could almost hear her voice quiver and get exasperated about this fact. And her voice is just superb, just like in her archetypal and brilliant first single “I Kissed A Girl” that took her to worldwide fame in virtually seconds time. Now that’s success in the most instantaneous way.

Katy Perry has such great musicality that in her debut album “One of the Boys”, she belts out a great collection of ear-candy ditties, ones that are also so heavy in emotion and sentiment, and passion of course. I never heard a girl sang with this kind of passion since Ann Wilson of Heart did her thing in the late 80’s, singing “Alone” and “These Dreams”. Ms. Perry sang so well like that. She could similarly be as awesomely haunting as Tori Amos, Alanis Morissette and Sinead O’ Connor, and also like Fiona Apple in the way she writes and sang her songs. Wonder why I mentioned all these great female artists in reference to Katy Perry? Perhaps it’s because I have enjoyed her music so much that it’s one of the most original works that I have digged in lately. “One of the Boys” could be just the best release for this year except if something better comes up from now till December. And do not be surprised if she would garner all the music awards that’s gonna be out there come awards season early next year.

In “Mannequin”, I could almost feel the desperation of her longings, seeking an artificial person, wanting it to be a person, when we are so full of real persons all around. Or is it? Isn’t it somehow beguiling how Katy Perry could be so true in how “real persons” could be so unreal and plastic, that she’d rather have a mannequin on her side. Mannequins don’t complain. Don’t cheat. Don’t lie. Don’t steal. But like Ms. Perry said, “…he’s just a mannequin…and not a man”. Consider this line:

“How do I get

Closer to you

When you keep

It all on mute

How will I know

The right way

To love you”

Isn’t that tragic and romantic, both at the same time?

Katy Perry is just not excellent in “Mannequin” alone. “One of the Boys” is magically lively. “Ur So Gay” soothing yet controversial and in “Lost”, real emotions take the high-note like never before asking “have you ever been so lost…is there a light at the end of the road?” And in “I’m Still Breathing”, the song is just so exceptionally haunting and carries a very catchy slow melody that it should be the best song I’ve ever heard this year, toe to toe with “Mannequin”.

Now you might ask: “I am in consonance with her messages?” Some say she is very radical and controversial for “kissing a girl” or saying something like “ur so gay”, they say she’s homophobic (fear and cautiousness or homosexuals) and some say she’s misandric (irrational hate of boys). But I guess, Ms. Katy Perry is just being brave to tackle the issues that confront the new form of society today, the confusion of gender that hugs the headline news ever so often, the religious and moral issues that heatedly goes with it.

I may not agree with all her dispositions and that’s for sure. But she opens up these questions for us so that we may tackle it ourselves; and observes how these new things are occurring within and without us.

Above all, Katy Perry has really awesome music.

RATINGS: 7.5 out of 10.