Every Single Album - ‘Teenage Dream’ | Every Single Album: Katy Perry

Episode Date: September 20, 2024

With ‘Teenage Dream,’ Katy Perry became the first artist since Michael Jackson to have an album with five no. 1 singles. Nora and Nathan talk about the massive highs on this album, including “Last Friday Night,” “California Gurls,” and “Firework” (1:00); the massive lows such as “Peacock” and “Hummingbird Heartbeat” (41:04); and where Katy Perry’s career went after the huge success of this record (59:48). Hosts: Nora Princiotti and Nathan Hubbard Producer: Kaya McMullen Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, y'all. Sirot Sohi from The Ringer here, and I wanted to let you guys know about a new show that I'm hosting. The Ringer WNBA show. We're going to be talking about all the biggest personalities, breaking down and analyzing the latest happenings that make the W so fascinating, featuring some of the best guests and experts from around the league. Tap in with us on the brand new Ringer WNBA show feed on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. And welcome to every single album. I'm Nora Princeiati. And as always, I am. I'm here with Nathan Hubbard. Nathan, what day is it? It's Katie Perry Tuesday. Yes, it's Katie Perry Tuesday.

At least as we're recording this, because we're recording this on a Tuesday, you probably won't hear it on a Tuesday. But it's Katie Perry Tuesday. Katie Perry, who has come up on this podcast several times this summer, is releasing her latest album this upcoming Friday. That's 143.

That's not what we're here to talk about today. No. Today we're going to take a little trip in the way back machine. And that's because we're going to talk about my favorite Katie Perry album. I think most people's favorite Katie Perry album. And one of like the great albums of this century so far in a lot of ways. And that's Teenage Dream by Katie Perry. We're breaking it down all today.

Nathan, are you excited? I'm very excited. We're going to have lots of fun arguments today. we're going to have lots of fun arguments, discussions, everything. And I do think, like, I think we're going to really talked about this, but my thinking is that we're going to give one, four, three, a listen. I'm sure we'll talk about it in some form. I think, you know, based on woman's world being a little bit of a flop that colors the thinking

about how to approach that album when it comes out. But I'm certainly interested to hear it. But I think no matter what it's like and no matter how we choose to handle it, you know, Teenage Dream, like most of what Katie Perry does and will do forever exists. I don't even mean to say in the shadow of Teenage Dream. I don't mean to say it in a negative way. That's not what I feel is accurate. But it exists within the context, as some might say, of the fact that she created this album in 2010 that went on to have fun.

five number one singles. It was the second album in history to do that after Michael Jackson in 1987. And the first time a woman had done it. And it's just this like real tent pole pop album of my lifetime, certainly. So it felt worth doing if we're going to be talking about Katie at all to go back and spend some time with it. And I'm super excited about this. How are you feeling? Well, you have really been leaning into wanting to do Katie Perry for a while. And this one, I'm excited to hear how you came upon Katie Perry, because this one really, it's a formative album for you. And you have been, you've put your whole palm on the scale, not just your finger on the scale, your thumb on the scale, to make this happen. So I want to know what, I mean, who wouldn't have strong feelings about this album?

because it is a... I don't know. It is a collection of some of the best pop songs, as you say, of the century. And some truly random ass besides... There's also some real shit on here. Some capital S, capital H, capital I, capital T on the back part of this album.

Which is why I don't know how I feel about the album, but I feel amazing about some songs on this... album. But like, what, did you discover Katie Perry through I Kissed a Girl? That's how I found Katie Perry. Yeah. That was just one of those songs. It was like, it was like complicated by Avril Levine. It was like, it just was that song where the first time you heard it, you were like, total hit, not even a debate. It just completely broke through the noise. And it was some societal stuff. There was her story. It was her being on the warp tour. It just,

it was the perfect song for the perfect moment. Well, so I kissed a girl was what, I think 2008-ish. And for me, and some of this applies to why teenage dream is like formative. The fall of 2008 was my freshman year of high school. And where I went to high school, the first dance of the year was the video dance. And it was in the like sort of wrestling class. climb room of our gymnasium and they would drop down. Weird shit happens in wrestling rooms.

And we'd all like pack in there and they'd drop down these big projection boards. And, you know, it was a normal school dance, but it was just in a different room. And instead of just playing the music, you would watch all the music videos. And I remember some of the Katie music videos and then early lady guys. music videos. Like the just dance music video to me is like I was 14 years old and someone had like taught me how to put on a tight tank top and like hike my boobs up so that I could talk to boys. And just like going into a sweaty auditorium and being like, oh my God, what do I do here?

Like what is this supposed to be? And it was just all of those songs. And the couple Katie Perry hit. from her first album. This is her second album that were... I guess it's technically her third album, but it's her second album that popped. That was like my freshman year.

By the time we get to Teenage Dream, that would have been going into my junior year of high school. But just so to me, like, these were the huge albums of my high school days,

which is why in part it's very important to me. Well, here we are. This one is an unstoppable force. It was that song that sort of broke through. Hot and Cold was obviously big.

There was some, I mean, her story, I feel like her story was important to why this album was received in the way it was. Like the story of Katie Perry, even sort of before she was pop princess and queen of camp, was this sort of deeply, least raised deeply Christian woman who was doing...

Parents are Pentecostal ministers. Yeah. Who was... Raised in a super religious environment. Made like a Christian, you know, quasi-rock album. That was her first album. Yeah. Yeah.

Was whether... Yeah, exactly. And then here she is singing, I kissed a girl and doing stage dives at the warp tour. And so there was that interesting... let me peel it apart, somewhat controversial, right? Because on the one hand, it was upsetting to the people who were sort of, there was the anti-homophobia component,

but then there was also the like queer baiting for sales stuff, but all of it created enough buzz that there was curiosity about who exactly is this young woman. Well, and she had, like her story, you're right to point out, is interesting because she had, really been at it for a long time and doing different musical projects from, you know, the more overtly religious music to that point in time when she was kind of like this warped tour, you know, part of her story, she had that documentary where the moment from it that we remember the most is when she's getting divorced and she has to go up on stage and it's very poignant.

But another thing that stands out in how she tells her own story is, the album Jagged Little Pill being this like, oh my God, I didn't know you could make music like that moment in her life. Because I think as she's told it, as she was growing up, there was a lot of music she was not allowed to listen to and was sort of sheltered from. Somehow she gets her hands on that. It's a real watershed moment for her. And that in part is why in the first sort of,

era of her career when she's like in and around L.A. and California and sort of trying to get some traction in the industry. One, she's much more open or spending more time doing the religious music. But she also, she was much more of like a pop rock, pop punk oriented musician. Like she wanted to kind of be in a post-Avrilavine space at first. And the first album, or again, sorry, it's the second album is one of the boys. I need to stop calling it. It was the first album to me, but it is her second album. Apologies to Catherine Hudson or the first one.

You see her make the transition. And then Teenage Dream is the one where she's super, pop super camp and kind of finds herself. But it's interesting that to some degree, I think that was a little bit of like, you know, where the tides were going in the industry and also just sort of like a happy accident

is that she managed to get in some rooms with Max Martin, Dr. Luke, who will talk about and stumbled into the sound that is now like the iconic Katie Perry sound. Yeah, that is the question for me. first of all, is there a Katie Perry sound? Because when we talk about what came next on Prism, Dark Horse is something completely different.

And not to fast forward all the way to next album Appetizer, but I don't know how you might have predicted what was to come next. I mean, we've talked all spring and summer about the rise of these pop girls. and how in some cases they seem to very clearly have their own lanes and their own voices. And then in some cases, you know, wondering whether there's just sort of a recipe of putting the best pop producers and writers in a room and just add water and you get a decent album. So I guess what I want to know from you is do you think Katie Perry is a really good songwriter? Songwriter. So it's funny, when you were saying that sentence, I thought I was, I was gearing up to give you like an unaccomable. equivocal yes until the last word.

I don't know if I think that Katie Perry is a, is a, I don't think of her first and foremost as a songwriter, right? Like, I think her superpower, you know, there are a lot of things that she's good at. She's a good singer. I think her contributions as a songwriter are good. Maybe they're not superlative. Yeah.

Katie Perry has personality. Like Katie Perry has the X-factor ability to be in the center of a song. and add something quasi-intangible to it. And she was very effective in this era, especially at channeling that, like through the campiness, through the, you know, through the whipped cream coming out of her nipples of it all.

In a way that really worked, it was fun. It was exciting. And I think that's, that is the part that she deserves the most credit for. Like I think, you know, do I think that Max Martin and Dr. Luke are probably the masterminds behind why this album had five number ones? Like, yes, I think that's probably more about them than it is about Katie Perry. But I think the whole package, the cotton candy, the, you know, the Candyland music video, the ability to be kind of sexy, silly. Like, that's her.

And so there's a way that we can talk about this album as sort of like a right. place, right time moment for someone who hasn't quite had the same fastball at different points in the career. But I still do, like, I think she deserves credit for that. Yeah, I have to say the original aesthetic was off-putting to me. Like, I couldn't get into it. Like, the crazy hats at the VMAs and just, like, super done up and just the weird, like, it didn't feel as artsy to me as like Gaga's thing did. Gaga felt like, wow. I was going to say it was the original Gaga off-putting.

No. I mean, there was some weird shit to me personally, but it was interesting. And I bought that it was part of the art. There was some part of Katie Perry that just was kind of like, what is this? Like, is she trying really, is this actual expression or is it trying to get attention? and as I sort of pondered all that, the music just took over. Like, you just cannot deny the five,

and to me, the six songs on this album that are just bad effing ass. Like, you just, there's no, it seemed like Lucifer himself could be singing these things, and I'd be like, damn, this is good shit. Like, it just, that's the part for me that overcame it. And then through time, I got into the silliness of it,

and I appreciated an artist especially at the threshold coming out of the late 2000s and kind of maybe taking the hand off from the Brittany, Christina stuff. I appreciated somebody who, I just didn't have to think too much, but there was an initial part

to the visual part of Katie Perry that I don't know, it wasn't for me. And I even will say that, and we've talked about this, on this pod before, I went to see the residency in Vegas and there was just some complete ridiculousness

that in some ways makes it hard to take her seriously and the thing that hooked me in was of course the documentary that follows this and that just iconic scene for me at the end where she's absolutely distraught, she's been

divorced over text, they're not sure that she's going to take the stage in Rio and she gives on that lift and right as she's going up, bang, she hits the face. And there's a part of that that made me just absolutely love her and think what an incredibly strong human being and appreciate her. But that also made me feel, yeah, what I see from a facade from Katie is just that. And it's okay. I don't have to buy into the cinematic universe, the way that we buy into Taylor Swift and every single word matters and all of the, you know, we're not living, breathing, and dying with

every relationship with Katie, even, you know, circle the drain from this album, notwithstanding. And that's okay. Like, that's a lane that Katie filled for a while, which is you don't have to think too hard. You can just enjoy these complete bangers. You know, it's amazing about this album is that, like, again, teenage dream is so instantly recognizable. And I'm sure like half the people listening to this

just heard you say Circle the Drain and we're like, what the fuck are you talking about? Circle the Drain. I've never heard of that in my entire life. It's like the seven song or something. Yeah. It's just such a funny I mean there are 12 songs on this album. There's some extended stuff that we're

going to have a debate about whether it counts or not that's really good. So it's just this, this for lack of a better word, this era was just a massive one for Katie Perry. Okay. Well, I want to do categories, but I do, I gave you a little bit about what I was up to in 2010, which is when this comes out. Can you lay the land? Can you tell us like the life and

times of Nathan Hubbard? I mean, who cares? Yeah, I was... I care. Like, where would you have been listening to Teenage Dream? I was CEO, Ticketmaster, and I had two young girls, three young children at that point. And so like this was dance party music for us. This was like little kid, pick them up, turn them upside down, hold them up and have them dance on the ceiling kind of stuff. And there was something about it that was easy and light and not too heavy. And yeah, that's how I found it. Totally. All right. Love it. So we start with biggest hit usually. And I wonder if you may have looked this up as well. Let me just start by saying, I was genuinely shocked to learn that Teenage Dream is the fifth most streamed song on this album.

What the heck is going on? Yeah. I, I, there's a couple of things that could be going on, but they don't explain it other than there are some, some things that, that you wouldn't have expected about people's preferences for this stuff. I mean, what, part of of what was going on is streaming was just starting and as they've re-released this stuff and packaged it up it's boosted some songs over others

but I still think that the overall streaming stuff I mean what did you find is the biggest song on this album so the song that has been streamed the most off of this album is last Friday night yeah and then it goes firework, the one that got away, and then California girls and teenage dream. Yes. And from a sort of daily on the reg streaming, it's still TGIF. I mean, there's nothing like a

complete hot mess to make people listen and pay attention. That one is not the most shocking to me. To me, really the one that, like, I can't wrap my brain around is the fact that the one that got away has been streamed more often than California girls in Teenage Dream. Like, this to me is like, sorry, can we, can we get in the data and really confirm this? Because that one shocks me. I do think last Friday night has, it makes sense to me that that has carried on. Because I think a lot of these songs fall into this category, but there's that, you know, I was think of that John Mullaney joke about how like all the songs are about how we only have tonight. I want to write songs for people in their 30s called

Tonight's No Good. How about Wednesday? Oh, you're in Dallas on Wednesday? Oh, okay. And I always know that like that must be a reference to, it's essentially like 2009 through 2011. It is the black eyed peas. It is Kesha and it is Katie Perry.

And so on some level, I guess. I, it tracks for me that TJF has like a certain type of staying power. I just, it's, it's, I mean, it's teenage dream. Like, it's like an iconic song that just, it shocked me to my core. Yeah. There's not a huge difference between the streaming numbers of all of these, although I think, yeah, to your point, Firework and last Friday night are significantly ahead. Some of this is playlisting, but it, it is interesting.

sometimes to peel back the onion and sort of see what people's enduring preferences are. And TGIF last Friday night is a hell of a song. I would have expected it to be firework. I'm not as surprised by the one that got away because I have to tell you... You would have expected it to be firework the most? I think so because it just shows up everywhere. It's the song that can be played every single fourth of, July. It's the easiest song to sink in commercials. It's like got the moment that, I mean,

what the thing about California girls in Teenage Dream and even last Friday night, the sort of sneaky parts of these songs, there's only a few chords. Like Teenage Dream has kind of three chords, but it's really just two. And they just, she's singing some melodies over that. TTIF, four chords. That's it. California girls, like, there's a pre-chorus, but the rest of it is pretty just, these are not complicated musical songs. The Max Martin Dr. Luke's stuff on this record was not about finding breaking new musical ground. It was sonically interesting, but it was writing sort of multiple contrasting melodies over a very few number of chords and in some cases one hook.

Yeah, I mean, this album is, you know, if you ever need to describe to someone all the melodic math principles and the things that are important to those guys and how they make hooks so hooky, it is the like, you make me just like slamming those notes in line with the lyrics and having it be really simple, but really sticky. But by the way, same formula. This is the factory. Boom, boom, boom, boom from fireworks. Even brighter than the moon.

I'll tell you why it's last Friday night. It's got to be the sax solo. It's got to be the sax solo. You don't think it's the chant. You don't think it's the T-G-I-F, T-G-I-F, and then the sack solo comes in. The casual reference to the monajat-wa. I mean, it's all here, but this is effectively the hottest of hot messes. And lyrically, it's just fantastic. I mean, she is all there and out with it. Here's the thing about it is, is that it isn't, it isn't, right? Because yes, it is the hottest of hot messes. Think we kissed, but I forgot. Like, she doesn't know what's going on, whatever. But it, this is still like the woman with heavily Christian upbringing's idea of that.

like she's not, you know, she's doing tequila shots. She's not doing drugs. Like it remains. And I think that's a... That might have made it accessible to people. Right, exactly. That's what I'm talking about. It's not...

It doesn't feel edgy. It just feels fun. Yeah. I mean, it's a nice counter to or sort of companion to waking up in Vegas, right? Yeah, but even waking up in Vegas is not like these are not, you know, don't they don't invoke the same ideas as 365 Barack Obama's favorite song, right?

It's a different, it's not as grimy. It's not as... But I think that's what made it more accessible. No, I agree. I mean, she claimed two days, one calendar day and one day of the week with this album. Firework, she claimed Fourth of July. And TGIF is like, that is,

roll it every Friday. I mean, shit, we roll it on Katie Perry Tuesday and run it back on Friday. Okay, in terms of the placement of the songs, can I ask you a question about California girls? Yeah. Which I've read like three times today

as I've been looking back at stuff, that that song was framed as an answer to Alicia Keys and Jayze's Empire State of Mind. Yeah. I don't remember that whatsoever. Like that being a narrative at the time? that being a thing.

No, they did the song about New York. So Katie Perry did a song about California. I don't remember that whatsoever. No, me neither. And I don't really remember people being like, by the way, there was a song called California Girls written by the Beach Boys that was sort of about California a bunch of years ago.

But to me, like, what a perfect part, Snoop wraps on this. Tone, tan, fitting ready. Turn it up because it's getting heavy. Wild, wild, west coast. These are the girls. It's perfect. I'm convinced the reason that he did the Olympics in Paris was because at the end of the day of this song,

that's to take nothing away from the rest of his career. But this was an incredible crossover. Well, this was like, I mean, when did Snoop start hanging out with Martha Stewart? Because there's a, like, Snoop used to be kind of hardcore, right? And then there was a moment where Snoop became like target friendly. Yeah. It was probably California girls.

Like, campy rap. Totally. That's exactly right. This was his on-ramp to a broader sort of cultural impact and maybe his off-ramp from, like, the gangster, the real gangst. Like, he became sort of a caricature of himself. And he does on this, too. I mean, on this song, he's kind of a caricature of himself. All of his little interjections are just so great through this thing.

I have no idea why there's no call-in response when she. she name checks him? Like, why does he not follow with some sort of response? But his part is so good. Cannot be stopped. Because you represent California. It's so good. It's so good. I love Snoop.

I'm so happy for Snoop. I'm so happy we still have him. And I would love to see, like, Katie Perry and Snoop Dog could do something tomorrow and I would be interested in it. I wonder if she had to pay the Beach Boys. Probably not, right? because it's not, I mean, she's not borrowing anything musically.

Yeah. It's just sort of aping a concept. Yeah, it's the perfect refresh of that song. But yeah, I would have thought just sort of objectively that this was the one. But I think fireworks is more transcendent. And I guess people just, anything that resonates with people being like, oh, my God, I'm so glad my work week is over. I just, I do.

I'm interested. that this didn't strike you is so strange. For like, teenage dream has lasted to me in a way

that feels separate from the rest of these songs. But that might just be my own, that, that might be me

specific. I mean, do you think that do you have a hierarchy for these just sort of in terms of how large

they loom in the greater Katie discography? Ooh, do you mean, relative to everything that she's done

or a rank order of, the first four songs on the album, which sequentially, Teenage Dream. I'm just asking, like, I'm just asking, you sound less surprised

that the data supports that these five songs have all kind of persisted relatively equally. And to me, like, I would never call this the Firework Era. I would call it the Teenage Dream era.

I might call it the last Friday night era or the California girls era, but some of those feel wrong to me as being represented. Dude, I love that song, but... Well, one of the things that the streaming data tells us is that people maybe don't from that perspective as much. Here's what I think. I think Teenage Dream is about a four-second sound bite, and I think people love it, but it's not something that you're just. just going to play on repeat over and over and over again. It doesn't have that, pull all the instruments out, build with the strings to that high, baby you're a firework moment. It doesn't have the Snoop rap. It doesn't have the sort of chaos of TGIF. So of the four, it's the one that once you've heard it a few times, you've heard it. So I'm not sure from an ongoing

streaming day in, day out, that it's going to get quite as much love. But it sounds like if you were doing like whatever sort of party that you would do with the friends who you discovered this song, that that's the one you would roll. Yeah, I mean, I still think it's, I think it's the best song. It sounds like you probably disagree with me, but I think it's the best song in the album. I just think there's such a, like, there's such a synthesis of the idea that she was communicating a aesthetically. And now that might have worked a little bit better for me as a 15-year-old than it did for you. But there was something about like the cheesiness of it almost that, like, that's the song that makes me feel nostalgic. Yeah. It's close. I mean, I think it's firework for me, which, by the way,

is why... Do you ever feel like a plastic bag? Look, the same people who made firework make what is the most god-awful song that makes me want to throw up and break things that follows called Peacock, which we'll get to. How did the same people make... You cannot say, you cannot say that there is zero lineage

between Sabrina Carpenter doing what she is doing now on Short and Sweet and Peacock by Katie Perry. You are right. You are right. And it sort of immortalizes does Peacock

so much of the vernacular of the time that it has a purpose. But the fact that that song was made by the same people who made firework just blows my mind. I love,

I have to say, I don't know what it is about the one that got away, but that is probably that's probably the one that I am happiest when it comes on.

And I think it's because there is so much bullshit across this album lyrically and so little that you can invest in emotionally. And even though

I think this song, the one that got away, might be about Josh Grobin, which is ridiculous. It's so wild man. What a which kind of ruins it for me.

Not because I don't love Josh Grobin. I mean, whatever. It's okay. You honestly, you don't have to love Josh Grobin. That doesn't mean anything to me. Yeah, I just, I didn't mean to say I do love Josh Groban. I just didn't want to throw a stray at Josh Grobin. Like, it's fine.

Josh Grobin, whatever. It's not my thing, but, you know, it's great. Thanks for letting us know. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's all good. I just think, like, I, in another life, I would be your girl, we'd keep all our promises, be us against the world. There's something about that that, like, even though there's not a lot of depth lyrically to that or something that's new, coming after the run of Peacock and all the other stuff that precedes it, which is fun and crazy and colorful, there just is this very brief moment of vulnerability that I love on the album. So it may be the sequence of the album that gets me excited about the one that got away.

But I think the one that got away is a top five Katie Perry song for me. And in terms of like best written song, there's something about that melody that I just, and the way their voice breaks a little bit in the chorus that I believe it. More than the bridge to the time machine part is really is juicy. One thing we should lay out about this album, there's some real Swedish bullshit going on. Right. Like there's something, it makes me think of like one of the reasons I think certainly that 1989 becomes sort of the masterpiece it does is that you get all of the Max Martin tricks. And then you get them from someone who when he's like, no, no, it's fine. You can just say any words is like,

I'm Taylor Swift. I'm going to write some words. And that proves to be a pretty helpful synthesis. Now, I think this album is a testament to the fact that you don't really need to do it. it, it's fine. But there is something about the one that got away where, like, the words all kind of make sense together in a way that not all of these really care about, which can be sort of fun. But it's legible in a way that isn't always happening. Although, I suppose Peacock, you know what, you know, you know where she stands.

I mean, fuck this shit forever, Peacock. I'm a piece out. How did they make firework? Whatever. Magical, colorful, Mr. Mystery. Yeah. I'm intrigued for a peak. Heard it's fascinating.

Magical colorful, Mr. Mystery. I'm intrigued. So do we consider wide awake as part of this album? It was on that extended collection. It's a really good question. Along with part of me. I mean, I love wide awake. Yeah, me too. I also, I mean, I love part of me, which is also a part of that extended.

I don't. But I think it's because, sorry, not to be a little self-indulgent. Like, it was, it was such a formative time in my life. And it's one of the, the eras where I can really tell you what happened in exactly what year. Whereas, like, now I'm like, yeah, 2021, 23. Like, who knows. But. because I was in high school it's very easy for me to be like oh that was 2009 that was 2011 and so because they came later

to me they end up feeling very separate but I think I don't know that that's because they don't fit sort of sonically or aesthetically with the rest of what she was doing

so if you wanted to say that they count here I think that's totally fine they're really really good songs they're great something about this album. It's a little 1989-esque to me in that, like, it's just one after

the next. It's not 1989-esque in that there's some stuff on here that just sucks. But they're like in terms of, there's just sort of a mind-scramble. I don't need to pick between last Friday night. I don't need to pick

between that and California girls and Firework and Teenage Dream and Wide Away because it's all just there. It's just a vibe. And you just put it on and go, assuming that you've ordered the playlist in the right way. They all feel like sort of part of the same thing, which is an energy and a vibe, and I don't have to worry about it. It's not like any one of these songs is so meticulously crafted that it stands so uniquely apart. And I think that's kind of what the streaming data says. But

these are all just massive hits. They're just massive hits. There have been fewer than five albums ever released that have hits like this. That's the legacy and the historical placement of this album. I think we should do our cuts now, just because I think, like, because of what you just said, there's something about that with then the combination of the songs on this album that don't fit into the category

of those sort of legacy defining hits that is just really wild to me. I mean, how could they possibly put some of this shit on here? If you're a song on Teenage Dream that is not like an all-time number one smash that people are going to remember and listen to forever, odds are it's like out of control bad. Yeah. It is such a weird album in that way. I mean, let's just start. Hummingbird heartbeat.

You get me. Which is like what. Katie Perry would have been if she'd try to be Paramore, I guess. Fuck you, Russell Brand. This is about you. But like, that song sucks. Pearl? What is this?

A Broadway musical? No one can take my Pearl. The I am strong lecture. It's awful. Hate hummingbird heartbeat. I do wish the first line wasn't. You make me feel like I'm losing my virginity. Exactly, but it is.

Like that's other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how is the play? That's a fair point. That's a very fair point. But what is? God, it's Russell Brand. I mean, I just threw up in my own mouth. I don't like that part either. I don't like that part. I don't like the lyric.

There's something about hummingbird heartbeat. Look, I don't want to die on this hill. I don't want to die on the hummingbird heartbeat hill. That's not what I came here to do. I'm wondering, are you trying to fight for this? thing. I mean, that's the thing. There is stuff that you have to cut from this album. Like, you have to cut Pearl. Who am I living for? Yes. You have to cut. Who am I living for? You know, circle the drain. She was trying to do something that meant something to her. It's a song

about, you know, living with someone who's an addiction. It is not good. It sounds a lot like journey's separate ways. Well, I would like to go separate ways with that song. So, I'm okay. with it just because there's a lot of F-bombs, fall asleep during foreplay, your lover, not your fucking mother. Like, there's some attitude here. I feel like I'm getting to know her a little bit while listening to separate ways in the background.

I as think it's kind of a, it's like, it manages to be not good and also kind of a drag. And now look, obviously, it's dealing with pretty intense subject matters. So I can't totally fault it for not being, like last Friday night. But once you've set the stage

with what most of this album is about, I just find Circle the Drain to be a tough transition. Whereas I will just say, I will just say it's not important to me. I'm not fighting for it. There's something to the hummingbird heartbeat having a little bit of the carry-through

of like warped tour era Katie Perry. My God, listen to you. It's fine. It's upbeat. It's okay. It's not a big deal. You know, I can't for the life of me remember where I heard not like the movies. Was it in the documentary?

I do think it was in the documentary. Yeah, because, like, that's the one of the complete poo-poo platter that is not the massive all-time, like, in music history biggest hits that's on this album. That's the one where I was like, oh, I seem to remember hearing this. And so my initial reaction was like, oh, okay, we can't cut this because she kind of likes it.

But like, what the hell is this song? This song is terrible too. It's not good. And it's also, it's totally a rip-off of every time by Britney Spears. Like, sort of thematically, too. Keep this guy, Tricky Stewart, away from Katie Perry, because all the stuff they worked on was no bueno. where do you stand on the E.T. with Kanye on it?

Okay, the Kanye version is weird, and it's just sort of like a weird moment in time. Normal E.T. I do like. Yeah. It's cool industrial pop. It's not my favorite. And again, I think it's not people's favorite. The streaming numbers say there's something a little bit, I don't know, darker about it. And you have all of these other choices, right? It's like walking into the candy store. And this is the one okay. flavored jelly bean, but it's not the must-have flavored jelly bean. So it kind of sits. It's not, it's not, um, licorish. It's maybe licorish. It's maybe,

licorice is bad. I don't want to, I'm, I'm happier with E.T. than I, it's just not for everybody. E.T. is like the popcorn flavored one where like, once in a while it's kind of cool. That's some nasty shit. No, it's okay sometimes. Only if you mix it. You'd rather licorish than the popcorn one? No, it's a good point. I mean, both of them make me really, I feel better about E.T. than I do about either of those jelly bean flavors. Okay. Well, I feel good about E.T. So that's fine with me. I mean, if they had an ass flavor, if they have ass flavor, that's Pearl Hummingbird Heartbeat, not like the movies. Fucking, oh, boy, there's a lot of ass flavored jelly beans on this album.

Do you think they had that on the Candy Land set for the music video? Well, listen, there's like a talking toilet in the show. when we come back to the biggest song, by the way, I do just want to point, make one point. Firework is the last song of her residency. It's the encore that she closes with. I think that that matters and tells you something about the big moment, what it actually is,

but I don't know. Well, it also, it ties into my peak, Katie, which is all the stuff she made come out. out of her boobs. There's fire in the music video. It's like fireworks. But like the fireworks that sort of like shoot out perpetually. Yeah, I don't want to be commenting too much on this.

But my peak, Katie, was that she got kicked off Sesame Street for sporting too much cleavage. So she does really lean in to the boob situation. Well, yeah. And in particular, like ejecting. substances, be they pyro-technics or whipped cream was part of the teenage dream thing. She was just, she found Elaine and she stuck to it. And I admire that. It's Austin Powers-esque.

Yeah, it was campy. And I think in a weird way, I think, like, and this is one of the vexing things about Katie right now, I feel like, is that you don't quite know how much she's in on the joke. Like, we do know that on some level, this is a person who's, like, a lot of whose formative years were pretty sheltered. And then there's some time in the middle where she's, you know, she's working, she's living a fairly normal life. She's trying to make it. But then she becomes a celebrity, which is another form of, like, a weird existence where you're not always the most in touch with things.

And, like, it would not shock me if Katie Perry did an interview somewhere where she was like, no, I thought that. was like really truly sexy. Like I was trying to be as hot and steamy as I could come up with, and what I came up with was whipped cream shooting out of my boobs. And I think that's kind of why it works. How much do you think the Taylor Swift feud, and it's clearly settled, the VMA showed us that? How much do you think that hurt her career was?

I don't think a lot. I think what... Not as much as witness or smile. Yeah, no. Not anywhere near as much as witness or smile. Yeah, I think the problem was a couplefold. Which is actually, the funny thing is like, when you go back, I actually think they're good...

Like, I love that birthday song. I think it's fun. I want, like, they play it in my spin class when it's someone's birthday. Chain to the rhythm rules. Chain to the rhythm is one of my favorite Katie Perry songs. Bad ass. I think a couple of things happened.

One is that, so she goes through the teenage dream era, which is very much about this, like, campy maximalism, pin up girl aesthetic and these huge hit songs. And I think basically no notes with how she navigated that. You get into the witness and the prism era, she started talking a lot about, she would call it purposeful pop. And how she really wanted to be, you know, singing with a message. And I think in some ways That's an admirable goal But

It just was such a hard pivot From TGIF And here's the whipped cream Shooting out of my breasts But I think people didn't know what to do with it And then just some of those songs weren't that great Right And so it was hard to figure out like

it was hard to feel good about the direction that she was necessarily going in. And I think that's what happened. I don't really think that it was related to the Taylor feud. Well, it's enormously hard, as you can imagine. And Alanis Morissette had this problem. It's just enormously hard to follow up an album with this many hits. It's almost like there was too much. And you almost wish they'd saved part of me and wide awake for something later on, as opposed to sort of making them orphans in between albums. Because it's just such a massive success that it's the bar gets set unachievably high, I think, in this case. But yeah, look, there's a lot to cut on this album. Anything that didn't end up being a top five was not a top five. And by the way,

there's only one song that was a top five that was not a number one. And it's the the one that got away. But if you were not in that cluster of songs, like, it is, there is no space for you on this album. It doesn't expand my understanding of her personally. It doesn't expand my understanding of her artistry. It is old school filler to bolster up an album and sort of frustratingly, the fact that some good stuff came later as part of these expanded editions, wide awake, et cetera, it makes those sessions. done with some other producers look even worse. I don't know if I would call,

I don't know if I would call Peacock old school filler, but. Yeah, it has a place, I suppose. I'm not cutting, just for the record, I'm not cutting peacock. I got it. Because I need to live in a world where this is part of the historical record.

Well, you win because here it is. Like, Katie Perry, on an album that tied a record that had only been said by Michael Jackson had a song where one of the major refrains

starts, are you brave enough to let me see your peacock don't be a chicken boy stop acting like a beauch and that is my worst lyric of the album how did this happen?

Orlando Bloom got on a surfboard, a paddleboard and was like, I am definitely brave enough. Not a chicken at all. Yeah, life imitates art, as they say. Do you have a best lyric? It's all of TGIF. Wow, you're really, you're really into the dancing on the tabletops. I just think it was just in that moment in time, there were not a lot of hot mess songs, and she went for all of it.

and she made it just accessible enough to not make it like, whoa, this is insane. That's, I don't, I don't agree with the, I feel like hot mess songs were a genre unto their own, but she did kind of, she was a pioneer.

I think hot mess artists were a thing. I'm not sure, I can't think of a song that, as articulately as this one sort of told the story. TikTok on the clock, but the party don't stop. Yeah, fair enough. the gaga like where are my keys I lost my phone

we were doing we were like I will not I will not allow on this podcast the assertion that the years around the end of the 2000s and the start of the 2010s were not a golden era for the Hot Mess Express song yeah I mean the thing about that Kesha TikTok song is that she actually name drops P Diddy too yeah it's unfortunate in the morning feeling like P Diddy not it's unfortunate it has hasn't aged well. It's unfortunate, but that's not, I don't put that on her, but it is unfortunate

because it makes, I mean, that used to be like such a quotable thing and now it has a whole ick factor to it. But, I mean, this is like when, when people said yolo. Yeah. Well, she, she put every phrase that she possibly could into Peacock and a few of the other songs. I mean, she did really pull all of the things the kids were saying into song. It is a, parchment paper important historical record if the internet ever blows up for how people spoke. So one thing we haven't talked about is the collaborators. I mean, we've talked about Max Martin and Dr. Luke to some degree. But did you have anything there that we haven't already gone over? No. The contrast, I mean, this album to me is maybe even Exhibit A for the genius of Max Martin because the contrast between his work.

And other people's work is just, wow, is it different? And he's creating hits out of extremely minimalist music. There just is not much going on, but there are rich melodies. These things hold up and you can listen to them again and again and again as people are. And they're just different than a lot of the pop music that we've talked about this spring and summer. It just is, it is, it's more like brat, except that the constraints on Brat really are sonic. The constraints here are sort of harmonic and,

and musical and melodic. I agree with you that this is, I mean, if you made the, if you made kind of the Mount Rushmore list, I think you have to put, you kind of have to put baby one more time, I'm up there because it just it was so formative and so influential.

But like this album goes on the, if you want to just sort of talk about the ability to spin really, really simple melodies and harmonies and structures into things that just like work their way into your brain and become total earworms and these like indelible hooks. I don't know if there's a better example than this album. I just think that as we'll get towards the back part of this discreet, discussion, it may not be a great album so much as it is a great collection of songs, because there is a lot of bad stuff on here. This is not, this has a lot of skips for an all-timer.

I'm not sure you can find an all-timer that has as many skips as this album does. Well, is it as many skips, or is it like skips where you are running? to the stereo to be like, I can't listen to this. I can't think of like a all-timer that has five, six skips. It's hard. I mean, of the other ones that were Janet Jackson, Michael Jackson's bad, the George Michael Faith, like very few. Thriller from a pop album standpoint, it's hard to find an album that has as

steep of a cliff drop off from the stuff that's great and that you heard to what ends up on the rest of the album. That's just for my ear. So it goes... I blame Russell Brand. I really do. He's my conspiracy corner. Tell me how. Because he's a conspiracy theorist. Keep him in the corner. Fuck you, Russell. That works. That works for me. this has been coming up lately a lot of my life is that like I think there's a specific a very specific niche truth about a lot of men who are exactly my age

which is that the movie forgetting Sarah Marshall is just like so strangely important to them it is to a lot of people yeah but does that make them forgive the Tom fuckery that's followed no I don't think so I just think like that's that's other than than said Tom Fuckery, I don't really think about Russell Brand. Like, he's just sort of not a part of my life, except when it becomes clear to me that, like,

there's a certain segment of the population and one of these people I might happen to be marrying. Just, like, really live in a world where forgetting Sarah Marshall is just like an essential text. Hmm. Yeah, but they like the puppet show. Love the puppet show. You know, it's a whole... I can't tell you how much forgetting Sarah Marshall has been coming up in my life over the last

three weeks. Like that's why you're getting this. This doesn't really have anything to do with Katie Perry. Okay. Well, the one thing that sort of bothered me as I was doing a little bit of reading and anticipation of this podcast is I had to be reminded that she started dating John Mayer after Russell Brand. Yes. True. What a run by John Mayer. Yeah. I mean, what a run by Katie Perry. I don't necessarily mean that as a compliment. Like Josh Grobin to Russell Brand to John Mayer to Orlando Bloom. What's wrong with Orlando Bloom? No, no, no, no, no, nothing, nothing.

It's just, it's sort of, it's interesting. I'm interested in that person's proclivities. I feel like if we ran a regression analysis and we charted those guys over time, that it would go up into the right, though. The line would go up into the right in a good way. That's, this is, again, this is tough for Josh Groven. Well, he could have been a slight out there. You lift me up.

Yeah, the Katie Perry John Mayer, like that, I remember that really being a thing. They seemed like such a weird couple. Well, they were a weird couple. Because she's, like, he seems kind of self-serious and she seems really not. Well, it seems like in relationships, maybe she is. I don't know. We don't need to speculate this. It just was another reminder that, uh,

Anyway, next album Appetizer for me certainly was the big pop stuff, but I don't, I said it before, I just don't know that, I mean, if anything,

it's E.T. because both E.T. and Dark Horse were weird as hell. But Dark Horse, Dark Horse is one of the most surprisingly successful singles to me. Baby, of Katie Perry's discography,

because I just didn't totally get it. I still don't totally get it. it definitely resonated. It found its spot. I mean, I think it's hokey enough that if people listened to it, right, it still has those qualities that latch their fingernails into you. And she had such a, you know, she was just on such a run that it felt almost automatic. So I wonder if it got a little bit of a boost. But I think, like the song works.

I like the song. And once you give the song a chance, you end up liking the song. I don't know if just because that's, song is pretty weird. I don't know if Dark Horse ends up being a hit like that if she's not coming off such a place of like, oh, Katie Perry, Katie Perry is going to put some smashes out. Let's check out whatever she's doing. I think there's been some documentation that they didn't even think this thing was going to catch on the way that it did. I do want to ask you this before we get to the grade. I mean, we've got a Gaga record that's going to show up at some point.

We're going to start hearing some parts of it. You know, I think back on, on Gaga at this time, and she obviously had poker face, and she had so many of these big hits. But her career, to me, at least musically, I mean, she was doing the Tony Bennett stuff. She's had more sort of variety, and she hasn't just sort of done the Gaga thing over and over again. She's in the Joker movie now. I think about, you know, I'm not sure that this new album is musically going to surprise me. I guess I'm a little more curious. about it because she has surprised us over the course of her career. She's zigged and zagged in some ways, some of which haven't worked, but all of which have been somewhat interesting. Well, I mean,

some of which haven't worked ever, some of which haven't worked in the moment, but have wound up being, you know, like I think art pop was controversial in its time and it has become something that's relatively beloved, especially by the core fans. So she's had all sorts of twists and turns. Like, you know, the Bradley Cooper Stairdown is pretty epic in the lore. But Katie, Katie, you know, she's been a business person. She's had her product line. She was on American Idol for six years. You know, she's had an incredible career.

Musically, are you approaching this upcoming album with interest in curiosity because of how much this one meant to you that you, that you can give her a few mulligans, or in the wake of the singles, are you, like, do you have your yikes kind of cringe face on? Please don't suck kind of ears on. Or do you expect that she's going to give you something you can listen back to? I have my cringe face on a little bit

because of how the singles went down. I don't, you know, Katie has always been capable of a real swing and a miss as this album in part. partially attests to. I think I am interested in it for a couple of reasons. One is just like I do think that she, I think that when Katie Perry is in a room with really good producers and songwriters,

decent things tend to come out of that and sometimes even great things. The other reason that I've been interested in it is because it does feel like we're in a little bit of a cultural moment that mirrors some of the context around this album. People were interested in music that is similar to what Katie Perry is really good at. And so I've been, and I was in particular before Woman's World was such a miss, interested to see if she could work her way into a moment that's mostly defined by newer and younger artists, but that doesn't have zero relationship to how she really broke. And I thought that would be an interesting and sort of savvy moment

to try to make some sort of comeback. The early returns, I have to say, don't exactly make me excited about it. But I am interested in, at least, least was very interested. And I'm still interested to see sort of like what they came up with. But that's why I was very interested in it. The downside of having music that you can just unplug from and turn up in the car on Katie Perry Tuesday when you're coming home from picking up food or when you're having whatever, a party, the stuff that you don't have to be overly

emotionally invested in is that it is easy to put aside and that it is. You're not, you're not invested in it. Replacable. And I wonder if some of the silliness and campiness, and Katie Perry has her stands for sure, but that the lack of deep emotional attachment to the music, outside of it, bringing up memories just like, you know, the black-eyed peas does or something for people, like, if that is part of what makes it hard to have an extended career, again, the Vegas residency, super fun. Really glad I went and I enjoyed it. But like do I need to have this album? Is there space in my playlist? When my listening time is a non-scalable resource, I have a, you know, constraint. Is there space for this? Well, I'd love to believe it, but I can think of a number of other artists who might be making that comeback 10 years later. And comeback's the wrong word because she's been present and doing her thing. But asserting their artistry at this moment in time, at this phase of their life, who I might be a little bit more excited about. But I really want to be wrong and I want

to be surprised because Katie Perry through her whole career has done the work. She will go, she'll wear the costumes, she'll go to the shows, she'll do the interviews, she will, I mean, even what she's been doing around this album, I respect the hustle. And she is nothing, if not an advocate for herself. She slung from the rafters. And willing to do it, man. And there are some artists who wouldn't. She cares.

So I'm going to give it a full, earnest, honest, honest, listen. It is time to grade this thing. And I think I've tipped you off a little. Can I tell you what I think about what you just said quickly before we do it? Please. I'm trying to find a way to phrase this that reflects... how wonderful her career has been. I love Katie Perry.

Totally love Katie Perry. She's, again, as we've talked about, like, formative to me. And I think this album is like, it's hard to, you know, and we'll get to the grade. It's hard to call it like truly one of the best albums of all time, right? Because there is, there are some real misses. But it's historic and deservedly so.

And the singles and the hits are just totally unparalleled. and I love them so much. Katie Perry is sort of good at one thing and she is unbelievably good at it. But Gaga, I think, has probably done more over the course of her career to succeed in a bunch of different lanes

and to surprise people and to have moments where she zags and it works out. And you find yourself going, This Tony Bennett thing is really cool. And oh my gosh, Lady Gaga was great in a movie that's getting Oscar nominations and where there's an element of surprise there. I think as we've talked about a little bit, the campy exuberant over the top sort of dreamland pop aesthetic of the songs that did the best off of Teenage Dream. is something that she, I think, was one of the perfect people to sort of inhabit that type of energy.

I also think she stumbled into it a little bit. And I think it really meshed with what people were interested in listening to. At the end of the 2000s, when you have sort of the start of the like EDM, dance, pop, these really upbeat hits. And in some ways the black-eyed peas, like, that feels too, you know, almost insulting. But it's a good comparison because it's just sort of like you know exactly what that song is supposed to sound like. But it creates a problem for longevity because I can just listen to these songs. And I don't really want Katie Perry to do anything different necessarily. But then it becomes kind of a lose-lose because it's like if you can't make an album that has

more mega hits than Teenage Dream? Well, then why did we even get up in the morning? Why did we do it? And then that's just such a high bar. But when she's tried to do something else, it hasn't really worked out. So I think it puts her in a tough spot. Yep.

How do you grade this thing? I think I am less bothered by the fact that there are just like disasters. songs on this than you are. Somebody stand up for the quality of an album. This is not called every single Mega Smash collection of six hit songs. It's called every

single album. I know. I know. I know. But like I can't. It's so hard to bring myself to issue a demerit to an album that includes Teenage Dream last Friday night.

California girls. Firework, the one that got away. E.T. That's all the good songs. And depending on our definition, part of me and wide awake. Right. I mean, just stop there.

Just stop right there. Put out the album. Ship it. Ship it. And it is goat quality record. No, you know what it should be? It should be those songs, those eight songs.

And then just the. the end, Peacock. That's a perfect album. To me, that's a perfect album. Then I would have had mad respect for it. The first A plus in the history of every single album. Yeah. I mean, what I understand is the progression of this artist

from Christian music singer to warped tour sexuality-bending rocker to here comes our next album, I kind of understand that the powers that be at the record label were maybe like, well, I don't know exactly what we have here. Let's put her with some people.

I think she's a pop star, but let's sort of try some stuff and see what happens. That happens a lot behind the scenes, where you've got a lot of stuff. I think it was more likely to start happening when it's like, okay, you know, there's this lady got. character who's popping up and who's doing these sort of wacky looks and making these kind of

arty dance pop songs. Like, let's see if we can try to capture some of that. And that's sort of what I'm talking about, where I wonder if it is the most in a weird way. Like, I think it really works for her, but I don't actually know if it's what she set out thinking that she was going to do. I don't, I don't know either. I think they ended up publishing too much of the cutting room floor. Look, the album isn't a, I guess. It has to be. I'm sorry, it just has to be. It has to be because it is. It's like, you know what it is? It's a retro. And this is, this reflects how,

if you look up teenage dream reviews, what you get is you get a lot of the stuff that came out in real time, which was more mixed because a fair amount of people were like, what the hell is going on on Circle the Drain? And who am I living for? Yeah. Then you get, because we've had the, you know, the 10-year, you get the 10-year retrospectives that are like, this is a 10 out of 10 album. Yeah.

And it's because, you know, when you're in the rearview mirror, you know that you can just skip that stuff. Whereas when you're in the moment, you sort of feel like, okay, this is all what she's putting in front of me. And now I think I feel the permission structure to be like, ah, whatever. Not like the movies, not like the rest of the album. When he's a.

Yeah, and I think, look, there are plenty of albums that have shit on them. Don't get me wrong. So there are plenty of albums that have, I think, the same amount of shit on them. This is smellier shit. It is. But the stuff that is good is better than almost anything that's ever been done in the 21st century. And that's what's fascinating about this album. And it is why Katie Perry is a superstar.

And she has probably in a lot of ways, I mean, I asked you the Taylor Swift question because I think she's actually, in this moment in time, massively underappreciated. I'm glad she got her moment on the VMAs, because I just think there's, again, the kind of music that she makes

is, I think, just less respected. It's less artistic, in this moment in time in particular, where you've got Chapel Rhone out on stage doing her thing, and you've got Taylor and you've got Beyonce and you've got sort of the thoughtful pop movement this kind of stuff has been left behind

and yet it ages extraordinarily well all of these bangers still hold up on my Katie Perry Tuesday as well as they did in 2010 and it sounds like for you too and they cross they're so good that they pulled in

everyone into the fun And so it warrants for all of the fun that we're poking at the back part of the album, it really warrants appreciation because I think when you start to contextualize it from a statistic standpoint historically, there are not five albums that have had this level of skyrocketing success from individual songs ever made. No, it's totally an old-timer. And I have to say, I mean, I have like, I don't, I don't. I don't have a particularly generous view on why the things that have gone wrong recently went wrong.

Like, I think that's mostly on her. If she wants to do the pink thing where she's going to swing from the rooftops and she's going to keep going, the VMA's performance and essentially, like, if she wanted to tour and do that, I'm buying a ticket. I'm like, I'm running to buy a ticket. Well, that's going to be the measure, because it's going to happen. she'll go out on tour after this album comes out, if there's any momentum at all. I mean, I might check the set list to make sure, you know, if I don't, if 143 doesn't end up being a surprise success,

it's probably the type of thing where I try to see if there's a way that I can pull off, you know, waiting to, waiting to buy tickets, check the set list. If it's all new stuff and then a couple of things, maybe you think differently. I think based on how she handled the VMAs, which I thought was very savvy and much appreciated, I think she would know that you got to play the hits.

And I'm signing up to go to that 10 out of 10 times. Yeah. Well, look, she's worth hundreds of millions of dollars. And so as she screamed on the podcast, I don't need a Ferrari. I could buy a fucking Ferrari. She has a different set of needs. And so maybe she won't to her.

Maybe she'll just go back and do a little bit of her Vegas residency. She's obviously very moved and invested in being moved by and invested in being a mother right now. So it may be something that she just decides not to do because she doesn't need it. And so, but if she puts this thing on tour, it, it, there's, there, it's not massive, but there is a tiny bit of J-Lo potential.

Just a tiny bit. And that is a shame because the overall quality and catalog of Katie Perry stuff and having seen the Vegas show, like it's great. It's great spectacle. But there, is, there should be some self-reflection before you go put an entire arena tour up head-to-head with everything else that's going to be out next summer. I think you're right to say that there is a tiny bit of potential of that. I would, unless they massively, you know, went big and they

book her for five nights at Madison Square Garden or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. Barring something like that, I would bet against it. Yeah. I would too. And I think a lot of that has to do with the legacy of this album. Yeah. People vote with their wallets. And it's going to be easy to stream this stuff. It was easy to watch the VMAs because it popped up in your social feed for free. You know, it's also easy to be like, oh, women's world, forget it. I'm out on Katie Perry.

But, you know, when she puts those tickets up, that's the best, best measure of how people feel about an artist in a moment. So we shall see. Happy Katie Perry Tuesday to you, Nathan. I'm going to get some tacos. All right. This has been every single album. That was Teenage Dream by Katie Perry. As always, I'm Nora Preciati. He's Nathan Hubbard.

Thank you to the fabulous Kai McMullen for producing this episode. And to you for listening, and we'll talk to you soon.