Cram it, Katy Perry

Whenever I'm in Montreal I slide into a music bubble. What's going on in mainstream music? I suddenly have no idea. I'm still not sure who Hannah Montana is, or what she does. Or if she's not just a clever hologram deployed by the Italian leather-booted thugs at Disney. At least in Guelph, I had basic cable and was desperate enough to tune in to the Edge. In Montreal, I just put on podcasts and rent Russian action movies. When I do listen to music, it's either stuff I've scavenged from the superior music collections of my brother and my dad, or synthed-out eighties stuff I've downloaded in shame. I can't imagine how empty my life would be without downloading. I would be too embarrassed to go to the record store to fill the hole in my heart, a hole that can only be filled with synthesizers and fake hand claps.

How out of it am I? Well, when Madonna's Hung Up came out- the one that sampled "Gimme Gimme Gimme (A Man After Midnight) and I started hearing it everywhere, I just assumed Montreal was in the throes of an ABBA renaissance.

So, it takes a rare song to penetrate the fog of my ignorance. Unfortunately, Katy Perry's "I Kissed a Girl" has done so, helped along by my So You Think You Can Dance addiction. Can she go away now? Not only is the song annoying- her voice sounds tinny and Pro-Tooled, the production's flabby- but her act bothers me. I don't mind when someone like, oh, Madonna plays around with sexuality. And it isn't that a failed Christian-rock singer is capitalizing on fake-lesbian chic that bothers me. Rather, it's her purposefully dim stage presence. I don't have much patience for the kind of little-girl antics that make women pout and stand all knock-kneed. It's not that it makes them look stupid stupid, it's that it makes them look like they want to look dumb. Which is just sad. And then she puts her hand to her mouth when she hopes her boyfriend won't find out about her girl-kissing ways, because she's just too naughty. The whole song reminds me of girls who make out with other girls not because they want to, but because their boyfriends want them to. No one but Focus on the Family's bothered, hetero norms aren't challenged, and only men are getting off. Ten bucks says most of the girls who'll make out in clubs to this song- and to whistles from their guys- will be raising kids in the 'burbs ten years on. Even the ones who think they kind of liked it. And I'll bet another ten that Katy is on some one-hit wonders compilation. Or maybe that's just what I hope.

Now, to get that taste out of your mouth, how about a fun dude-on-dude song?
High School Confidential- Carole Pope