Recently I've been spending a lot of car travel time listening to this new radio station here in LA - 97.1 AMP Radio. Carson Daly does the morning show, bless his little TRL heart. While the station does right by pop fans by playing a lot of good pop/hip hop music, the station has a playlist of what seems to be about... 15 songs.
Now this is all well and good, but this means I get to hear Katy Perry's "California Gurls" about 48 times a day. And I only spend maybe 30 minutes in my car a day, at best. Yeah, do the math on that one.
As I listen to this song, and my brain slowly dies because of the music, I started breaking down the song. "Why?" you may find yourself asking. The answer is quite simple. Katy wrote this song as a response to Jay-Z and Alicia Keys' "Empire State of Mind." Don't believe me? Read about it here.
Now I've heard some pretty dumb things living in this state, but this definitely makes the top 15. Lets break down why:
- Jay-Z's song is filled with references to New York - images that conjure feelings of nostalgia and affection. Terms and groups, and places that people can identify with: Bed-Stuy, Knicks games, Yankees, and in the process he embodies the NY spirit and attitude.
- Katy Perry talks about how hot California girls are. That's pretty much the song. No references to anything cool in California. No references to any cities, or histoic events, or famous people (aside from "Snoop Doggy Dog on the radio"). There is nothing that recreates a sense of nostalgia, no ideas that people can identify with, except that girls are hot.
- Jay-Z teams up with the super-sexy, super-talented Alicia Keys, who sings an amazing catchy hook about NY that everyone knows and can easily sing along with. If you wanna talk about visuals, The video is riddled with pictures of New York, and Alicia is dressed in this sexy sexy outfit and plays a piano.
- Katy's song is so repetitive, that its hard to tell what part is the hook, and its so difficult to sing, most people just sing along with "oh oh oh oh oh" part, of which there are far to many. Snoop sounds sooo bored in this song, I would imagine he phoned it in from New York, hungover, having partied with Jay-Z all night. Her Music video is themed like Candy-Land, which makes NO sense, and instead of picking out a sexy costume, she gets naked and sits on a cloud. Its like going all the way on the first date. A first date that seems to involve Acid, and a whole lot of candy.
This is supposed to be a retort - a response to an amazing video. And Katy Perry steps up to the plate? That should have been the first warning sign. I have no idea what she was thinking while she jerry-rigged this steaming pile of crap together. I can only assume she misspelled "Gurls" on purpose out of respect to the Beach Boys, but even that failed, because now when you hear the phrase "California Girls," everyone's mind jumps to Katy Perry. Google agrees with me. Sorry boys, but your classic song about the west coast has been buried under some pop icon wearing a purple wig, who can't stop saying "oh."
Its like having a debate with someone, and after they make a valid point, your response is "Yeah? That's not what your mom said last night. OHHHHHH!!!!"
If the West Coast wanted a good retort to Empire State of Mind, we should have just put Pac and Dre's "California Love" back on the radio.
Here are the videos, if you want to know what I'm talking about. For the record? Perry's video? Almost 16,800,000 views at the time of this posting. Jay-Z's? over 67,105,000. Numbers don't lie.
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