Every Single Album - What's Going on With Katy Perry and Camilla Cabello? | Every Single Album

Episode Date: July 19, 2024

Nora and Nathan talk about the new Katy Perry single 'Woman's World' within the context of her career (1:00) and why this new song feels so oblivious to the current moment (19:24). Then they discuss Camilla Cabello's new album 'C, XOXO,' which has not one but two Drake features (36:43) and ultimately falls flat (46:57). Hosts: Nora Princiotti and Nathan Hubbard Producer: Kaya McMullen Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Greetings, it's now. Call your banners because it's time to head back to Westrose for House of the Dragon, season two. The ringers dragon riders will soar alongside you each week with a heron-hall-sized slate of conversations. The dragon has three heads, and on Sunday nights immediately after Hot D. Concludes, Chris Ryan, Joanna Robinson, and I will be with you for Talk the Thrones. Then on Mondays, two more shows away. Van Lath and Charles Holmes, Steve Allman, and Jomea Denneron, aka the Midnight Boys, Pugh!

Pugh! We'll head to the tourney grounds to share their reactions. And of course, Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald will sip the Arbor's finest vintage on the watch. Then on Tuesdays, Joanna and I will head to the bowels of a pleasure den for our House of our deep dives. Then on Thursdays, Joe, Neil Miller, and Dave Gonzalez will gather the Ravens for trial by content. In this season, full episodes of Talk to Thrones, House of Ar, and the Midnight Boys will also be available on video on Spotify and the new Ringervverse YouTube channel. Podcast episodes available on Spotify or wherever you get your podcast. Hello and welcome to every single album.

I'm Nora Prunciati and I am here as always with Nathan Hubbard. Nathan, how are you feeling? Are you feeling sexy, confident? Are you feeling so intelligent? So I'm on vacation right now, Nora. And I had to do a lot of work just to get internet. And I'd want to be so for real with you. as the kids would say,

what the fuck are we doing today? What are we doing today? So what we're doing today, I think every once in a while, as listeners of this podcast to know, there comes an opportunity for us to get together and really just chit chat a little bit about the goings-on, such as they are.

And today is one of those days. This episode is one of those episodes. We're going to do maybe... Good, because all I brought to this episode is a cocktail and no notes. Well, that's the right energy because we were going to be talking about some confounding, different levels

of confounding recent musical outputs from some of the pop girls, but some of the pop girls that we weren't necessarily expecting to include in our coverage this spring and summer, people who sort of snuck up in surprise, us. That is, of course, starting with Katie Perry, who put out her new single Woman's World.

It is the lead single to her upcoming September album, One, Two, Three, which is ILY, I Love You in ChatSpeat. A lot of this went horribly wrong, and we're going to talk about why. But first, I want to ask you, Nathan, as you sip your beverage, and as you so kindly donate your vacation, time to this to this exercise. How did you consume this song, its music video, the rollout? Tell me how a woman's world found its way to you. Well, first let me just talk about my relationship to Katie Perry. Okay, in my family, we go out on Tuesday nights for dinner in many cases. And we have a thing called Katie Perry Tuesday. where, not surprisingly, on the drive to the restaurant,

we listen to Katie Perry. Okay, and we will play. I'm so seated. I'm so excited about this. I don't even really know what's happening, but this is a great thing that you do. Katie Perry Tuesdays, some people do Taco Tuesday. By the way, the best thing is to combine Katie Perry Tuesday and Taco Tuesday. Katie Taco Tuesday is fucking awesome.

But so are songs like Wide Awake and Friday Night and one that got away and on and on and on and on and on. In the Katie Perry anthology, I love me some Katie Perry. Well, right. The reason you do this is because Katie Perry has bangers. Katie Perry is like I went to the Vegas show and sat through like the, the, weird talking trash can thing. Like the whole show was wonderfully campy. Also, you know, a little weird.

But I loved it because I am in on Katie Perry. And I am all the way out on this song. And I wanted it to be awesome. And I know that you're going to make an argument that it's like supposed to be it's like ironic or that's probably not the right use of the word irony. You're going to make the case

that it's very tongue and cheek or something but I am out on this song. I don't. Yeah, Nathan, I will be doing no such thing on this podcast. Why do people get popular and famous and wealthy and insulate themselves from

people who will tell them the truth. Joe Biden. Katie Perry seems to be in a bubble now where no one is going to tell her the truth. And the truth in this moment is that this moment does not call for this song. It is a long way back when you've been on American Idol for a while to make that jump and get it. It's hard. Like Katie Perry is awesome. But this is landing like an absolute ton of bricks. This song a major label song is streaming less than the independently released Kesha song. Irony, speaking of irony,

because this song produced by Dr. Luke. I mean, the reason that I'm happy about Taylor and Travis to the nth degree is because I believe in my heart of hearts that Travis will always tell her the truth because I don't think he has the don't speak your mind, gene in his body. And so if they stay together, there's going to be some moment where he's going to be like, hey, maybe sit this one out.

Well, somebody should have said, Katie, sit this one out. There's a whole generational thing happening right now in pop. And for whatever reason, this song is not it. Tell me why I'm wrong. Please tell me this is going to grow on me. Tell me one, two, three is going to be better. Baby, you're a firework. Well, the only one of those things that I could possibly give a go at would be

that the album could be better because simply I don't know how it could get worse. I mean, it's, look, here's, you said this moment is not crying out for Katie Perry or crying out for this song. And I want to unpack that to sort of get to the bottom of what went wrong here.

Because in the first place, I think the first thing that went wrong to state it fairly plainly is that, Katie Perry made a song called Woman's World. Right. With one of her most frequent collaborators in Dr. Luke, though they haven't worked together before this since 2013, which was a year before Keshire accused him of rape and a lot of other abuses. Those claims have obviously been litigated, settled, called into question.

supported in a number of ways. But even beyond that, there are a whole host of women in the music industry who have spoken about how Dr. Luke is at minimum pretty crappy to work with. It seems specifically with women. And so I think, like, I've read a lot of, and the coverage of this has been obviously very negative, but also in a lot of cases very funny.

But there are some sort of like sweeping judgments of no one wants to hear sort of like empowerment pop right now. It's, you know, she can't speak to the political moment. She can't speak. I don't know that there are sweeping judgments to be made. I think this was just an all-time fumbling of the ball. Like, she made a female empowerment anthem with Dr. Luke. It's stupid.

I don't can't, like, there are rich and famous and insulated. people who have a modicum of self-awareness that goes beyond that decision. I, too, love Katie Perry. Peak Katie Perry was when I was in late high school going into college. Like, I felt blessed by those bobs. The experience of, like, coming into your own and driving in a car with friends to last Friday night or something, like, that is formative for me. I love this one.

at the Warp Tour was cool as shit. Like she was like the crossover cool rocker. You know, I kissed a girl was, it is still like an iconic anthem that sort of made pop cool again in some ways. I just don't understand. Like, it's okay. I would say yes and no to that because I think here's the thing. Katie Perry timed her first moment so well. She rode that like really upbeat beginning of the EDM era pop wave.

And she was perfect for that. And she was funny. And she, you know, along with, really along with Gaga, along with Kesha, along with some of the Rihanna singles, like, dominated that era. And she had a particular goofiness that was really well suited to it. there's obviously a lot of smarts that goes into doing something like that. I will say, Katie Perry, you know, religious background, some fumbling of the early singles that had really, you know, cringy at best references to gay people.

She's been incredibly accused of tone deafness before. Obviously not to this extent. I'm, I just, I'm a little hesitant to characterize this as like, how did this person who's always had her finger on the pulse? That's not what I'm saying. F this up so bad. I'm saying, I'm saying if you're going to enter the kingdom of Mariah Carey, I don't know her, you know, like, just like complete bubbledom. You got to have people around you, which she does if you read the liner notes and you look at the label that she's on. the management that she has, these are good people who, for whatever reason, did not do the

Secret Service thing where you just got to jump in front of the bullet and be like, we're not doing this right now. And I mean, the video, tell me about the video, it's just a lot, man. Is this what we need right now? It's just a lot. And I feel badly for saying this because she's so awesome. Can you imagine? No, I don't, I really like Katie Parenthood. this is next level lack of being able to read the room. I mean, and she's had a great career and she was making a lot of money on American Idol. I think, you know, if she feels like she's got something to say and got an album to put out, I will certainly listen to it.

I will certainly give a shot. I'm not going to try to sugarcoat that this is not a total flop. The music video. Let's put ourselves in the room. Let's put ourselves in the pitch room. and start storyboarding this. We open with a Rosie the Riveter situation, but on scaffolding,

we're sort of doing the lunge atop a skyscraper situation, but also all of the boobs are oiled. A lot of oil. There's a lot of oil. She has the Stars and Strikes Span bikini. It's not like, perhaps a gentler way of talking about this would be to say that it would be fair

to claim that Katie Perry might have learned the wrong lessons from Left Shark. I think she knows that there is an appetite for her, or there has always been an appetite for her to be silly. But

it has usually felt that the silliness has included at least a little bit of being in on the joke. And And that one, it just went left somewhere. And, like, they put the music video out. First of all, the other thing that I think went wrong with this

was that they leaked the snippet of the song, like a week before it came out. So everybody has a chance to- Because every- Well, because it's because the song is bad. What are you going to do? The song sucks. That's all there is to it.

By the way, the album is 1-4-3. I think I said 1-2-3. It's one four three. Yeah, because it's the I-L-Y. I just, I mean, there's nothing you can do. They should have leaked a snippet of, you know, I don't know, Red Wine Supernova. They just shouldn't have done the song.

There's just nothing to do in this moment. It's like everybody has taken their swing and then somebody just comes over the top, like super late timing, wrong time of year. I don't know. It's just, if Dr. Luke had not worked on this song, so if we take that ickiness out of the mix.

Yeah, I know. It is so clearly a Dr. Luke produced song, but let's just humor me for a second. If Dr. Luke had not been involved in this, and therefore she could sort of avoid all of that ickiness, and the song was about something else. Like it was not. Right.

It was about something. something more like the roar or the firework. But also so broad that you- Nothing, but that song rules. Well, but so this is the Katie Perry thing. Katie Perry thinks change of the rhythm is about something. Katie Perry thinks that, because remember that was when she started talking about, she wanted to do like purposeful pop.

And it was about our modern media ecosystem and like being addicted to scrolling, but to everyone who listens to that song, that's just about a song that has a good beat and sounds fun. So, like, again, I do- It has a good beat and it is fun. Right. But you're not listening to that and being like, uh, yeah, man, all those tweets, crazy. No. No, and in the show, there's-in the Vegas show, there were like, you know, talking turds and

like, all kinds of crazy shit. I can't, yeah, it was, it was an absurd. The whole thing is absurd, but that's like her brand. Her brand is the campy craziness. Her brand is, she's in fucking tears destroyed. Her heart is split in a million pieces by Russell, you know, QAnon brand. And she's under the stage in Rio or wherever she was. And they're like, is she going to play? Is she going to play? She's just a wreck. And she's on the lift. And boom, as she goes up, she makes that Katie. Perry face. And she's just playing this part again of silly goofiness. And on she goes. That's Katie Perry. By definition, the brand in the lane of Katie Perry is you don't have to take it that seriously. It would be as if Sabrina Carpenter put out an anthem to inspire voter turnout. It's just not going to happen. But Katie Perry, she's talking to birds in the Olympics commercial. Key, key, first of all, I really like that commercial. That commercial is funny. I do too. it's awesome.

Katie Perry, one of the most prominent high profile visible Hillary Clinton 2016 surrogates like celebrity endorsements. She was on that campaign. She has made...

Yeah, it worked great. That's what I'm saying. I'm saying that I agree with everything that you're saying about her, but I also think that that was an era of Katie Perry that has in some ways lasted in people's consciousness, because everybody still listens to those songs

because those songs are great. But that era kind of ended the better part of a decade ago. And since then, she's been... Dancing with a talking toilet in Vegas. She's been dancing with a talking toilet in Vegas. She's been aligning herself with politics in general.

She's, she's, which at that point, I admired. But it just doesn't seem, I mean, I think one of the pieces in the cut was just sort of like Katie Perry is literally stuck in 2016 and the kind of cheery girl boss. I don't even think that like you can say that the issue with women's world is like that it's two girl boss era feminism. It doesn't even. I mean, can I tell you my. favorite part of it. Yes. It's the line

where she sings, we ain't going away as in women. It's like, yeah, no, Katie, like, I'm not worried. We're all worried about like, you know, the handmaids to help come to life,

but not like that we're going to go extinct. Like, that's not the issue. Yeah. Like, who possibly thought that was a good idea? It's not. And again, it's like following feminine nomin on with women's world. Like, no. It did like give way for some new, interesting, you know, generationally relevant thinking on this topic.

You know, I say as a man who doesn't fully get it. No, Nathan, you get that this is weird. You can like give yourself, give yourself the grace. that I believe as a woman, as a mother, hopefully, of cats someday. I believe that you get it on this, that this is a wax song. Yeah, it's just a weird time to reinsert yourself. And look, I will tell you the truth. Like, I've talked to a number of managers of pop stars over the, right?

I talked to a number of managers of pop stars on occasion. And there are a lot of managers of pop stars over 30. who are saying things like, we're going to take a step back for a minute because they have read the room and they do understand that there's something really exciting and really evolutionary at play in pop. And if you think about the career of Madonna,

she was always, and until I think probably in my estimation, the most recent tour, but maybe even with the most recent tour, she has always known when to step back and observe and then assimilate. And in some cases, people would say appropriate, but how to align herself with music of the moment and people of the moment. I mean, don't forget, she had red fucking foo on stage at the Super Bowl.

Now, that was one hit wonder, but in the moment, somehow Madonna made that shit cool. It was cool. And that's part of the greatness of Madonna was understanding when to be there and when not to be there. And in this always-on TikTokization moment, there is this desire, I think, from some of the folks who weren't born of that generation

to find a way to be always on. And I can see how if you were Katie and you were on television, on a relatively highly rated show, on an ongoing basis, you get a little anxious that removing yourself from the consciousness of the pop audience, some of which watches American Idol, presumably, that you've got to find another way to just like stay in it, right? Contrast that with Adele, who today told press in Germany, she's backing away from music. She has no plans for new music. She's doing this stint in Germany.

And then she's going to disappear for a bit and presumably go focus on her. personal life. I think, you know, in this case, Katie just didn't get the advice or didn't read the room. In the way that I'm telling you actively, other managers of pop stars right now are saying, we are stepping back, a la Madonna, a la others, or we're going to put our client, our artist, through a little bit of a boot camp to learn a little bit about what's actually happening in culture right now so that when he or she re-inject themselves into the flow, they're a little bit of little more conscious of what's happening right now. And I don't pretend to know what that advice is. That's what great managers do. I have some thoughts on that. But I think in this case, this is just

one of those where if you were looking at the room, you go, Renee Rap is crushing festivals. Chapel Rhone is crushing festivals. Sabrina Carpenter has the number one and number two songs in the world. Beyonce just put out a record that probably is going to get her deep in the running for album of the year. Taylor Swift is the biggest star on the planet. Where do you, you, fit in. But here's the thing, though, and I think that all, that's all really, it's interesting to hear the perspective of how the people on the management side approach it. And I think everything that you're saying makes sense. The only thing that I would caveat is that people were kind of

rooting for her, I felt. I was. I am. I remember when she went to, she went to, I think it was Coachella and she was wearing, you know, one of the sort of dumb little outfits, and I say that as a compliment, that I think some people are like, oh, she's sort of doing a Charlie XX impression, but whatever. Like she's wearing a skimpy kind of futuristic little Coachella outfit, and she looked great. And I remember seeing a tweet that was just a photo of her at. again, I'm 80% sure it was Coachella, but wherever this was. And it was like, oh, she's got that big dick pop star energy back.

And I was kind of like, yeah, I think she might. Or at least I would love it if she did. Did you think that after Paris Fashion Week, where she walked in with the 900-yard cape with the lyrics to this song on it? So I think if I'd read, I didn't think that much of that, frankly. Like, I just sort of, that didn't, that didn't so much happened to Paris Fashion Week, that for some reason that one didn't, didn't... That one, for me, it was like,

it feels a little desperate, we're trying to get some attention, I can't even read the lyrics on this dress. I think if I had read the lyrics. You couldn't read them. It was all moving too fast. Which, believe me, that was a good thing. It was like watching the start

of a Star Wars movie on like 10x speed. Right. Everything was just whizzing by you and it was all folded and weird. So yeah, I think I was kind of like at least fine with it, if not here for it. I was excited to listen to the, you know, I was making all the little jokes about like,

got to get through this Joe Biden press conference so we could listen to Women's World. Although by that time, you'd heard the snippet and knew it was going to be kind of crazy. Oh, man. I just had hope there was going to be like humor. But I think she had a lot of goodwill. I really do. Like, because I also think that there is. And to your point, it's coming from a younger generation, but I think there is.

And I wouldn't frame this as like backlash to Taylor, but I would frame this as an appetite for something that. is a counterweight to our tortured pop girlies and our more authorial pop girlies as like, oh yeah, let's get the stuff back in the mix that is more of an espresso kind of vibe, right? Like, that's a great song, but that song also is- Don't make me think so much. Right. I need an escape. Let me dance.

And again, like, I think Katie Perry, and I'm almost reluctant to ascribe so much. much like, ah, this is where it all went wrong, because where it all went wrong is just the song is lyrically really, really whack. And she should... And the creative director... Yeah. Was aggressive. But I do think that she has this idea that where she fits into the landscape now is as

someone who, like, infuses quasi-political or sociocultural. ideas into these big tent pop bangers. And first of all, I don't want to listen to the political moment that I feel like we are in now in my big tent pop bangers. It is too thorny. It is too complicated. I've got enough of that. Thank you.

Unless you're running for president and your name is Taylor Allison Swift, I don't really want to hear it. Yeah. I don't mind. Appelrone at Gov Ball, you know, was interesting. She was political in an interesting way. Yeah, well, but she's, I'm not at all talking about, like, speaking out and using the platforms that you have.

And there are certainly a lot of ideas about queer identity, being a woman in this particular world, if not Katie Perry's woman's world, that have been really well executed in a lot of the albums that we've talked about. I mean, we talked about Charlie in this. in this way, and there's a bunch of different examples. The political, the political art of Cowboy Carter. Fascinating. What I'm talking about is making the big cheesy pop song, which again is something that I say with a lot of love, making that politically anthemic.

Because I just don't think that that really... There's nothing new to say about it. Like this wasn't additive to the dialogue, was it? No. And it also, like, that sort of big tent thing, I don't think is going to accurately reflect what it feels like in culture right now. So it's just not, you know, I think even when it was Katie Perry's moment for that, like we talked about with a song like Change of the Rhythm, which she views as cultural commentary. and we view as like, fuck, this sounds good on the way to dinner. It didn't necessarily work the way that she thought it was working,

even when it was working in a different way. And now I think it's just, it's, it's too much. Can I tell you what my biggest problem with this song is? Yes. Can you believe we haven't talked about it yet? The biggest problem that I have with this song is there is a singing, sye moaning thing that you, she does in this song that is just, for me,

it elicits like skull-splitting pain, and she ends, she has the gall to end the song with it. After using it in weird places throughout the song, she ends the song with the sing-s-sign-simon thing. And it just, for me, is the ultimate, it's like the red wedding of song endings for me. and then I, oh, I just can't, I can't, I just can't get there. And again, she did come in with some momentum, Nora.

Like she'd healed the divide with Taylor. And, you know, they'd exchange some pleasantries and some little flowers or gifts or cards or notes. Guess what you haven't seen on Taylor's Instagram or Katie's Instagram. You haven't seen a handwritten note from Taylor congratulating her on women's world. You have not seen Katie in the VIP box. No, I cannot imagine. The woman's world music video, the hot dog and the burger had shown up again.

I mean, it'd been great, but I'm telling you halfway through the video. That would have been it for me. I'm locking up and possibly walking into the sea. Yeah, Taylor would have had that face that she makes. Taylor would have had the duo face. when somebody walked up to her at the festival and tried to play her the 30 seconds of song.

Taylor would have had the face that Katie Perry made when she did an Instagram live about the making of the song, the making of this album, and she noticed that somebody in the comments said, why did you work with Dr. Luke? And somebody screen grabbed it right at the moment that she sees that comment

and she looks like she just smelled something pretty funky. Yeah, it's a who farted face. and I made it during this song Taylor definitely made it during this song and it's a reason why everybody's just slowly lifting up the carpet Did you think Taylor has heard women's world? 1,000% It showed up in a wave file in her texts

Weeks ago from Katie From Katie Yes And what do you think Katie says in that text? like, hey, listen to my song. It's about ladies. Love you. Hope you're up's great. Just wanted you to hear this.

Can't wait to see you when we... When we... Just left her on fucking unread. She's going to respond a week from now. Sorry, bad service and Gelsen Kirsten. New phone. Who dis? By the way, I'm kind of pissed we didn't go to Gelson Kirsten. Well, she seems happy to sort of rolling through...

Europe. Isn't it funny how her her thank you to each city is getting shorter and shorter? She's so tired of this shit. She is definitely running out of gas. I mean, London is going to be awesome and I'm going to go. But she is

ready to get back to the States. The back and forth, jet lag is maybe not a choice, but doing all this is a choice. And I think she's giving it her all every night. Let's be clear about that. She's starting to dip into her bag on the on the surprise songs she's going into debut stuff she's going into she's

recycling some stuff she's just you know whatever it's all good it's all good every night is still super strong but the the monotony and repetition of it especially when you know the relationship that has been the center of her life for almost a year now is long distance i think she's just trying to put one foot in front of the other right now. I can do it with a healed and full heart. Yeah. I'm glad she didn't get sucked into the cycle of whatever this is. Anyway, I'm halfway through my vacation cocktail, Nora. What are we doing today? This is what we're doing. We're having a conversation about Katie Perry. Oh, this is it. Okay. Perhaps we will return in some way, shape or form when this album comes out. I mean, I do think I think I started saying this earlier and then

then got distracted by a bumblebee or whatever. I think if the Dr. Luke thing were not there and this song was just about nothing, I don't think it would be like great. Without the moan, I might agree. I think a bunch of people would have listened to it just in terms of, you know, what the production sounds like, what the baseline sounds like, what the melodies are. It's a bunch of, it. It's hooky enough. I think people would have listened to it and been like, yeah, cool, like a Katie Perry song. We'll play that in the car with the rest of them.

And it would have been, and she had enough goodwill built up that it would have been fine, good. And I would imagine that the album is somewhat likely to contain songs that are more like that. I will say, I think this song is going to leave a bad taste in a lot of people's sounds,

which probably doesn't know. It is. It is. But you know what? It's fine. Go listen to Wide Awake. Go listen to Firework. Go.

Yeah. There's so much good Katie Perry. She is a monster. And in the best way, this song is horrible, but we'll get past it. It's okay. She's allowed a swing and a miss. I'll tell you this. just like this next album

that I know you're going to make me talk about because you made me listen to this there will be at least one song on it where it will make the car it might be the ninth or tenth or twelfth towards the back but there's no way Katie Perry's putting out an album without at least one thing where you're like

oh shit yes yeah I mean if she makes a song about like Orlando on the surfboard with no clothes on. Right. Yes. Yes. Actually, great.

We found the creative direction. No notes. It's called two paddles. You have your assignment. I'll stream the shit out of the hat. Sounds great. All right. I think we've solved it.

I think we've come up with Katie Perry's new creative direction so we can move on. There's one more thing that I've brought you here to discuss today. And you are a little bit of, look, sometimes you are my podcast partner extraordinary. You are always my podcast partner extraordinaire. Sometimes you are a little bit of a captive audience. Like, I can sort of make you talk about things that no one else will talk to me about. I'm confused about Camilla Cabello. So we're going to explain to me why I should care about this.

This is the thing that I came in with. I will listen. I am all ears. I listen to this album, as you described. What the fuck is the Drake song doing on this? I don't understand, but I need you to explain this to me. It sounds like a documentary of her torturing Sean Mendez who runs around with his shirt off through my neighborhood all the time now. But you need to explain this to me.

The floor is yours. Okay. So, it's a lot in there for me to tackle. But so here's what I'm curious about. Here's what's been sticky for me. So Camilla Cabello puts out an album End of June.

It's called CXOXO. It's her fourth album. And my question is sort of like, I think we've gone through this with a number of albums this spring and summer of kind of like

rate-sizeding these things because if you take, you know, these are very different projects, but if you take something like the Gracie Abrams album, right? which has a lot of of songs that I enjoyed but felt growing on me a little bit cool um

um really it's still totally flat for you it's just no it's not but that this is a thing it's not flat it's like it's totally enjoyable but that's one where I'm like I don't know why I should care and part of it's it's not flat it's like it's totally enjoyable but that's one where I'm like I don't know why I should care and part of that is because I feel that as a pop music listener, I am being asked to care a lot. I am being asked to care in a way where it's like, this person is on a plane with, you know, Taylor and Beyonce and Dua and Ariana and the rest of them.

And I'm just, and even someone like Sabrina or Chapel who are earlier in the trajectory, but to me have a much more fully formed and original and their own artistic vision. I agree. I'm coming back to felt good about you and I am coming back to tough love.

She is not on the plane as those artists. And I agree. I think we got sold a bill of goods that is unfair to Gracie. So in the same, I'm not having the same. I don't think this Camilla Cabo album fits the same situation as that.

But in the sense that there's sort of like a, okay, is this a pivot? Is this person sort of like emerging? Are they trying to find? themselves like where where is it and the reason that this one is confusing to me is because you i think are not alone in basically not giving a crap about it uh in barely knowing it exists in not having what happened to it unless well hold on hold on unless i had asked you to do this in preparation right right right at the same time this album it has

She does the whole, you know, she does the whole makeover. She bleaches her hair. People say she's sort of doing a little bit of a Charlie thing. She has Drake on this album twice, one in a song that she's not even... It's a Drake song. Don't make me put out these credit card statements and show you to prove it'll get ugly. It's just a Drake song. She's not credited as another artist.

And it's on her album. It's being a bad timing. This is Drake or, or great timing, it could have been. This is Drake making his return post-Kedra Beef with two features. They not like us. Yes, he took an L. Yes, he's in a low, but he's got a lot of eyeballs. He's going to get a W on the Camilla Cabo record?

I'm not saying that he's, I'm just saying the fact that he is there. Why the fuck is he there? There are so many features. There are so many samples. Why is Lil Nas X here? This is what I'm asking. This album was expensive. This album required calling in a lot of favors. This album required getting a lot of people to buy in. And it seems like, you know, team Camilla, who I enjoyed. You know, I enjoy. She's had big hits. She's had big streaming hits. She's had big features. Okay. Who I don't think has like a huge, you know, stand-based type fan base, but certainly has, has been around and has had success as part of Fifth Harmony, has had success on her own.

It seems like the people working with her, the people behind her and she herself threw everything at the wall with this thing. Right. And I'm curious why they're doing it. now. And I'm just interested in the fact that that happened. I don't hate it. Did you see the two of them? Did you see her and Sean Mendez at the Copa America final? Argentina-Colombia. Yes, I did. I did. Do you think they had tickets or do you think they jumped the line and were part of the rioters? I think they had tickets. That game was delayed like an hour and a half because people were just busting through the gates who didn't have tickets. It was just a

complete melee. There they were. And if you listen to this album, I feel badly for him. It sounds like she just owns his ass psychologically and knows it. That's interesting because I feel like one of the reasons, I would say one reason why this is maybe not hitting is I do think that like, in the same way that Katie Perry had a lot of goodwill built up, I think there's something about her that a lot of people just sort of don't love.

Who? Katie or Camilla? No, Camilla. And I think part of that is people know. Well, there was the Sean Mendez relationship, I feel, is the number one somewhat recent celebrity relationship that I, that like had a lot of allegations of being fake and being staged. Which I, you know, I don't have a clue.

But I just feel like that was so in the water stream and was. a thing that rubbed people the wrong way about her. And that is why it was interesting to me that all of a sudden they were seen together for the first time in a long time. So, sorry, are you telling me you think that it's fake? I'm just telling you that I think that that is a popular assertion about the two of them. All right. Well, I don't know. Yeah. Yeah, I have no clue. I mean, she's got 65 million Instagram followers. It's not nothing. She just had huge hits. Yeah. Most of them are are with someone else have some featured artist or she's a featured artist on them, but she has had huge, huge, huge hits.

She hasn't had big albums, and this is not the first time that she's tried. I'm just, I'm curious for your perspective as someone who worked in this industry, if you have, if there's anything that comes to your mind of like, why if you are, is it just because there's so many albums and there are so many people who have, who have captured a moment that if you are on, her team and thinking about her career trajectory, this would be a moment when everyone would be like, you know what, let's just, let's try to make fetch happen harder than we've ever tried to make fetch happen.

I think at best, I mean, there's a lot of Miami all over this album. Which I think is cool. I think it's cool, too. It's a moment in which there's a blending of a whole bunch of different genres and Latin is, seems to be taking streams from hip hop, not that she's necessarily like a traditional Latin artist, but there are lots of different successful genres of music blended together on this album

that at the end of the day for me ended up feeling like kind of an experiment. Like you said, a lot of spaghetti on the wall until I got to June Gloom. And I listened to June Gloom, and I adored it. Like, that's the one for me. I mean, this, first of all, this album is 14 songs in 32 minutes.

I mean, these are like, I mean, they're literally like TikToks. I don't mean to interrupt you, Nathan. I just feel that this is important. What is Joe Biden's plan to get rid of all the interludes? We need to stop, like, everyone needs to stop with the dumb little 45-second spoken word BS that is going. going on these albums. I am so tired of it. It was cool when Beyonce did it. You mean like the Koshy X-O-X-O? And I was listening to Camila. Her music got me through it. I think that was the first music.

Yes. Leading into the hot uptown with Drake. Yeah. No, I mean, it's fine. I just, I did not get this album. If you want me to not listen to your album, a really good way to make that happen is for every third song, to have to listen to not be a song. 26 seconds of something that's not a song. Yeah. Yeah, it is an inherently strange thing. Again, 32 minutes, 14 songs. One of them, she's not on.

One of them is a Drake song. So it's not a creative outpouring in any shape or form. I just, I'll take June gloom, be happy it exists. And that's all I can do with this. Honestly, I just, I was hoping when you told me that we needed to talk about this, that you were going to explain to me, that you're going to fem-splain to me why I should care about this. And what you are doing is fem-splaining that you don't get it. And I understand that.

I came here with a lot of questions and very few answers. I don't have an answer for you on this one. I think the one thing I will say is interscope is the label. I understand why they would go for it. Because where I was going with the Miami thing is, hey, what we just talked about with Katie is, I don't understand the lane for Katie. Like, I don't understand where she was trying to fit. We know the Taylor Lane.

We understand the Beyonce Lane. We understand the Do-A-Vacation Good Times Lane. We understand the Billy Lane. We understand now the Chaparone Lane. The Sabrina Lane looks at all those other lanes and says, here's the sort of fun, goofy one for me where I'm almost evolving the Katie Perry thing

and I'm adapting it to this generation. The Sabrina Lane is actually the most interesting. It is. I'm doing a commercial with an animated bird like it is, you know, Sleeping Beauty, a Disney animated thing from the 50s or something, 40s, and it's working. All of it is working

because I have my finger on the pulse of popular culture. And I think that probably you could look at what is happening, the wonderful explosion of female pop artists who are each picking variants, different shades of the rainbow and owning that color. You could have, with the Miami thing and you could have said, hey, maybe there's a lane for Camilla Cabo here. So I understand why they went for it in ways that I don't understand why they didn't

pull Katie back and just say, hey, it's not time. but in this case, I just think it just didn't, it's not a creative, comprehensive enough creative piece of work to matter. The thing that you pointed out is what really matters to me,

which is there's a Drake song on here. The funny thing is even the Drake song is not, I mean, the Drake song, I think, the Drake, so Hot Uptown, which is the Drake feature, is the most, other than the singles that were out earlier, that it's definitely outperforming the rest of it.

But it's, you know, it's got 13.5 million streams on Spotify right now. This thing has been out for a couple of weeks. Like, it's not exactly lighting the world on fire or even meeting normal Drake standards. I'm sort of interested in, like, I think the Drake people are like, why are you on Camilla Cabo's record? And I'm not sure how many Camilla Cabo people there are. There are certainly some, but it just, yeah, it, it. After getting dunked on, it's just a terrible comeback for Drake, I think. It's not good.

My thing is like, it's sort of a tree falling in the forest. Like, she probably gets to have another comeback because I'm not sure people even really recognize that this happened. And there's part of it that's so sort of strange that I think a lot of, it seems like people are kind of culturally choosing. to just not engage with it because it's a little too bizarre to unpack. I will say, it's funny, June gloom is not for me because when we talk about the fact that she does not have, that part of the issue here is that the sort of artistic persona is a little wishy-washy. Although I do.

I like the Miami thing. But one of the reasons why that's tough for me is, you know, there were a lot of claims that this was a derivative album in a number of ways. The makeover was kind of like, oh, or are you, the makeover in combination with I love it being the first single, was kind of like, are you copying Charlie XX and trying to do a hyperpop thing and kind of trying to do the grungy club girl look?

I don't think that ended up necessarily coming true. I will say, June Gloom is just like, that's a lot of Del Rey song, man. Fine. I mean, I would have liked to have seen her go grab Tiny, the producer who worked with Bad Bunny, and do a full record. Like, go do that. Because you'll get the sort of cool pop.

You'll get a little bit of dance infusion in it. It just didn't hit. I mean, look, I contrast this Drake comeback, by the way, with, like, what Will Smith is doing. Like, Will Smith, say what you want, but, like, Will Smith is making interesting choices right now. He's going out and doing the work. He showed up the BET Awards.

Like, his Bad Boys 4 movie, like did really well. He's working on an indie film. You know, he's, he's sort of, he's doing the work and he's making like sort of deliberate choices. Movie stars age much better than pop stars. All right, but he, but from a music perspective, he's got a release with, I think, Sunday service or something, but like it's, like he's, he's been purposeful in approaching the, the music comeback sort of in parallel with the film. I guess my point is like, if you're Drake and you're going to go do something different, like go all the way indie instead of showing up on a Camilla Cabo record. That's all. And I don't fault Camille for having them on. I mean, great. You got Drake and

I'm pretty sure this was recorded pre, you know, they not like us. But I just, I don't know. Well, and that's probably why it wasn't a single. Right. Like, you probably would. Yeah. The weirdest thing is there is a full Drake song sitting in the middle of this album that is only 32 minutes. Like, it's a strange, it's a very strange thing, strange piece of content. And I sort of understand Daniel X's problem, Daniel X CEO of Spotify. Like there is so much noise out there right now. How do you really properly surface the good stuff? Because you got to surface the Katie Perry stuff. You got to surface the Camilla Cabo stuff. Because they're, they've got audience, right? But do you force it into a bunch of

playlist when it clearly isn't resonating. To a true newcomer, yes, they have audiences. These songs have not had audiences, have not had, like... No, but think about how much noise there is on Spotify.

Like, this is no... I would argue that both of these pieces of content are basically noise. But they are due attention because of the pedigrees and track records of these artists. Like, they've earned a look. How, in the hundreds of thousands

of pieces of content, that are certainly more worthy of attention than this. Do you put those in front of the ears of fans? That's the task that befuddles Spotify that is really interesting, that AI will help with as we sort of learn and fingerprint every user and get smarter about how to put content in front of them. But candidly, these songs were briefly on playlists, and will be briefly on playlist,

and then they will recede into the annals of nothingness on Spotify, but they probably filled airspace and listening time for artists that maybe will make more of an impact. I don't begrudge the fact that they got to look, but I do hope that there's other stuff because it's been such an exciting spring of new and different and interesting statements from, again, new and existing artists

when somebody comes forward and swings and misses. I hope that these algorithms learn really quickly to just say, hey, thanks. This one didn't work. Better luck next time. This is all, all of that is very interesting to me, but completely out of my grasp. I do think that seems true of woman's world,

other than maybe some people will listen to it somewhat ironically. But like, I don't think that that song is going to have any sort of. I'm not playing it for my mom here at the lake. My mom heard the, you want me to F you, baby, I will because I really want to line in the playlist that I made. And looked at me. It was like, this song is great.

And it gave me an existential crisis. Yes. Briefly. Yes. I was like, mom. I was so happy that mom was into it

and then I was worried that mom was into it. I really hope after we record this podcast you like walk upstairs or wherever you are and your mom is listening to like casual.

Oh, she is. No, she is listening to the chapel rhone album. That's awesome. I love it. Taste. She ain't listened to either of these pieces of content.

No offense. because she's definitely going to listen to some other Katie Perry, I'll tell you that. I'm playing Katie Perry tonight. Let me let me defend the actual album for a minute. Woman's World is a bad song. I think a lot of these are not bad songs. The thing that's curious to me is that Camilla feels kind of incidental to them.

There are so many features. There are so many samples. There is, as we've said, a song on this album, which is not a long album that she's not even on. But, like, my favorite song in the album is Dade County Dreaming. I think that's really fun. It's the city girls' girls who are no longer city girls. But their personality takes over that song.

And it feels cool. It feels fun. It has that Miami energy to it. And that is Camille and Camillo is from there. She grew up there. She, like, knows those spaces. She moved back there. She lives there now.

But the songs that I like, and I love it. I think it's cool. It does some fun stuff. It's a good, like to me, that's a fun summer car song. But again, you've got a feature and the feature is doing a lot of the adding of the texture and kind of making it enough to distinguish it from all of the noise and not noise because we have so many choices right now. And it's hard. I think the thing that ultimately makes it a tough sell is that the person at the center of it,

and this is another thing that we spend a lot of time talking about, is sort of like the cult of personality, the need to feel like you have this relationship and understanding with an artist and a star at the center of art, she feels secondary on her own album, which is a hard sell to make people want to go engage with it. I would argue that in this case, I don't think it's great. I don't think there's some, like, you know, really new, clear statement here.

It's also, again, it's short. It has interludes. But I think there are a few songs on this album that are fun and cool and interesting. And I'll, like, I'll be happy to listen to. If you like psychologically torturing Sean Mendez, I agree. Okay. I barely, like the fun songs on this album, I barely know what they're about. And I think that's appropriate.

And maybe that's why I'm not getting bogged down in this the way that you are. She's in the club. This album might be entered into evidence someday. She's taking her talents to South Beach. She's having a good time. She's going to a party other than June gloom. And I do. I like the, I like the hotel room service sample on the sad ballot.

boat, B-O-A-D. Okay. Yeah. Like, I think that's fine. I think that's a fun little touch. It's June gloom for me, and let's go back to the back catalog. Nora, I'm still unclear what we're doing today. Okay. But, um... Well, this has been a lot of fun for me.

Yeah, no, it's, it's been fun for me, but there's one thing that I'm going to do that you can ask producer Kyya to cut out, um, if you want. Did you hard launch your engagement on Instagram this week? I did. The thing that I'm going to say two, things. The first thing that I'm going to say is for the audience, Kaya, producer Kaya, I hope will go back and find the little clip of where two episodes ago, I think it was, you totally tripped over your words because you hadn't

hard launched your engagement yet, but you called your fiancé, who I knew was your fiance at the time, you called him your boyfriend. But it took you a little while to figure out what to say. It was when I was talking about his brother. See, listen to you. I'm in a group chat with my boyfriend's brother and sister-in-law and like a family group chat. Well, for the audience, they should know. They should know that during the course of the existence of this podcast, Nora's relationship with her fiance started. And we have quietly behind the scenes been tracking it and there is no one on the planet who deserves to be happier than Nora Princeati. So I love you deeply and I'm extraordinarily happy for you. And I'm so glad that the

world knows this now. And I hope that they all enjoy just like when they go back and listen to our hidden track where we were so wrong about Taylor and Travis that they can go back and love the little Easter egg of you completely fucking fumbling over the fact that you had a fiance, say not a boyfriend, but you didn't really want to tell the world about it. We just weren't. We needed, we were waiting for pictures. And, you know, I felt like, I felt like hard launching without discussion on a podcast was, was not how I wanted that information. The world should know that Kai and I had a very, very large laugh about that. They did. At the end of the episode. I was trying my best.

Do your thing. Take us home. Finish us off. All right, this has been every single album, the most sexy, confident, so intelligent podcast. I hope you'll hear it all this week. Stop saying that. You know, I've been playing along with this this entire time. You have known what we were doing on this podcast. Anyway, I'm Norvon Ciadi. He's Nathan Hubbard.

He's on vacation. He's kind of a vibe. Thank you, as always, to kind of. Hi, I'm Okmullen. The best for producing this episode. We will talk to you soon.