Started out, hey cutie where're you from?

Jukebox tracks coming too fast and furious. Katy Perry's "Waking Up In Vegas" is already done and reviewed, while I've only listened twice and haven't even gotten to the point of finding out if it's my hoped-for elaboration on Betty Hutton in The Miracle Of Morgan's Creek and Carrie Underwood in "Last Name." But the Jukebox blurbs reminded me that I've long since abandoned my original revulsion towards Katy. Haven't necessarily changed my opinion of her music: which I knew right off on first listen - or third, anyway - was good, was catchy but would be more powerful if less blaring and I still don't know if the harshness of her voice is going to end up as a plus or minus. "I kissed a girl and I liked it... I hope my boyfriend don't mind it" was a great, complicated premise for a song (though I needed the poptimists discussion by girlboymusic et al. to help me recognize this). In the Jukebox, Doug Robertson calls Katy's backstory "flimsy," damned if I know why, since the backstory explains why for her and a hunk of her audience there's actually something at risk: Her singing was just as raw and her impulses just as rebellious back when she was an evangelical Christian girl calling on God's help amidst her sin, temptation, and terror. This ramps up the meaning of "I kissed a girl and I liked it." Hope my God don't mind it! And she wouldn't have been singing "I know my faith won't fail" - as she did back in her CCM days - unless there was the possibility that faith could fail.

( Self-congratulation and fear )