The music video for the ‘last song of the teenage dream era’ premiered last night and it’s kind of disappointing.
At her best, Katy Perry can achieve a powerful emotional resonance with her music. Haters gonna hate, but Teenage Dream is one of the best pop songs ever. (And I’m not just saying this because I basically just cosplayed the music video for a week driving down the California Coast) It may be a little cheesy, but hey, there’s a reason why it’s one of the greatest covers Glee’s ever done.
However, all the new songs from Teenage Dream: The Complete Confection have been following a less promising trend. From the post-Brand breakup banger Part Of Me to this new overly self-congratulatory music video for Wide Awake, Perry seems to be tipping the scales towards the specific and personal and away from the universal.
Wide Awake is an awesome song, with a sweeping chorus and lyrics delivered with a perfect mixture of power and abandon. But from the meta lyric video to this new Faerie Tale Theatre version of Kylie Minogue’s Timebomb, the song seems to be diminished somewhat by everything pointing back to Katy. We get it. Your fairy-tale like dream has come true. What was great about listening to Teenage Dream, was that it somehow made us feel like ours could, too.
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