That’s what you get for waking up in Fresno…
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[4.93]
Doug Robertson: For the first time in what seems like forever, Katy takes her place on the left hand side of the “ft.” part of the artist name, but that’s the only sense in which she’s doing any sort of leading here. You can pretty much hear Snoop counting his money as he turns in an uninspired verse, while Katy herself fails to grab the attention that she reckons California girls should get as a matter of course. Still, it’s always good to hear the word “Popsicle” in a pop song, so she can have an extra mark for that.
[4]
Martin Skidmore: A disco tribute to her home state, apparently written in response to “Empire State of Mind”. It’s bright and lively enough, I like the very danceable music, and I always enjoy Snoop, who is unusually restrained and polite here. I don’t find Katy at all inspiring, though — her voice sounds rather stilted and strained.
[5]
Katherine St Asaph: Katy’s never been much of a singer, and this melody does her no favors by showing off her sandpaper gasp of an upper register. Also: sand in one’s stilettos — uncomfortable; melting one’s popsicle — horrific; Daisy Dukes — Southern.
[2]
John Seroff: Tremendously easy to hate on for any of a half dozen good reasons: the stupid lyrics that never have the cojones to get stoopid, the desperate recycling of “Tik Tok” without any of the fun, the debasement of Snoop (“bikinis/zucchinis/martinis”?), Perry’s soulless studio-goosed warble, the mouth breathing blank verse jingoism, insert your beef here. This couldn’t be much more unnecessary, but I’m sure a remix will prove me wrong soon enough.
[2]
Frank Kogan: Tune isn’t distinctive enough to make this a classic, but I kind of love it anyway: Katy going sweet and light, disco reflections sparkling in the surf, no attempt to be characteristically raw and Katy. More like Gwen Stefani referencing “Best of My Love” or some such. Glad that Dr. Luke is veering dance again and pulling back from his last few years of sonic avalanche.
[7]
Al Shipley: I took a break from the Dr. Luke party train a year or two back when he moved from fist-pumping guitar pop to synthier confections, but this is enough of a halfway point to satisfy me, and the slap bass only sweetens the deal. Perry’s vocal inflections are still infuriating (the mess she makes of the word “us” alone is staggering), but “Hot N Cold” was damn near a classic in spite of them, and this comes close to matching it.
[8]
Edward Okulicz: The backing sounds like Medina’s “Kun For Mig” sped up, and Katy’s sunshiney schtick is as perky as a tourism advertisement. If you ignore what she’s actually saying, the tune’s pretty good. Snoop’s verse is sufficiently phoned in that you’d wish he’d quit with the lowly-mixed, muffled interjections for the rest of the song, but in power pop, much like in life, you can’t have everything.
[7]
Jonathan Bradley: “I know a place where the grass is really greener.” California not über-alles but as über-America: the country heading west in pursuit of happiness until it strands itself teetering at the end of the continent like Wile E. Coyote overrunning a cliff’s edge. But where Courtney Love’s Golden State apocalypse is Dantean, Perry’s is Dionysian; an eternal dance between a party just starting and a party never ending. Hers is a new breed of Californian womanhood: typified not by the consumerism and vacuity of the Valley Girl archetype, but by a plain wallowing in the determined shallowness exemplified by MTV’s “The Hills,” and found anywhere cheap wealth, cheap sex and cheap celebrity collide. The tune is cartoon bounce beneath trance synths of souvenir stand-quality, and squeezed into a sunscreen-thin smear. Perry’s performance is effortless in the sense of lazy, which make the odd flutters of melody in the chorus (“Daisy Dukes, bikinis on top!“) even more pleasurable. Snoop crashes the revelry like Duffman portrayed by an actor who has unaccountably avoided being pensioned off, and the less said about him the better. Something this insipidly inspired might almost lead you to believe partying shouldn’t be hard work.
[8]
Chuck Eddy: As Axl once pointed out in “Paradise City”, the grass is actually greener when you get away from California. But the summeriness of this is fairly undeniable, and even if several of its fine fresh fierce adjectives feel dorky, Katy considerately resists slipping into her usual schtick.
[7]
Alex Ostroff: This is automatically more ingratiating than anything from Perry’s first album, if only by dint of having a bit of swing to it, rather than trafficking in the lumbering bosh beats of “I Kissed a Girl”. “California Gurls” is fairly slight, neither as mind-numbingly catchy as that song or as brazenly energetic as “Hot n Cold”, but the guitar sample and hints of disco swagger are far more important than the song itself. The instrumental is the halfway point between 90s house and Earth, Wind & Fire — a mix of unabashedly corny fun which sounds just about right for summer 2010.
[7]
Alfred Soto: Inoffensive and zippy, with Perry’s performance about as subtle as a Camaro’s hood. Snoop decorates the title hook as lazily as a longtime resident.
[4]
Pete Baran: Don’t call it a comeback, you’ll barely notice it. There is something almost obscene about Katy’s subtle hint at the Beach Boys in name only; it’s a flimsy pop track which only really picks up when Snoop lays a lazy superstar rap at the end. And if you can imagine how much a lazy Snoop rap can pick up a track these days, you can pretty much figure that the rest of the track is pretty flat. It then ends it with some vocoder shit that brings to mind Tupac and suddenly the song has compared itself to two stone cold classics and it seem even worse.
[3]
Mark Sinker: Katy sounds anxious and really quite unconvinced in the verse, maybe because the beat sounds like it’s slapping someone’s face, maybe because she’s well aware Hackney is nicer than California ANY TIME OF YEAR. This is the first song I ever heard with autotune that I didn’t much like, which is sad in its way. I’m generally fond of songs that list local placenames, but these are just names off of TV.
[3]
Tom Ewing: Scrubbed-up recreation of “Tik Tok” which fails because it’s happy to just reinforce the Cali images we already have, not put any new colour or feeling into them. Fails as exciting pop, that is: as a tourist board spot it’s no more or less imaginative than any other.
[3]
Ian Mathers: I really hate being told that something is “undeniable” when I’m already not much of a fan.
[4]