Friday, August 16th, 2013

Katy Perry – Roar

Grrr…


[Video][Website]
[4.54]
Edward Okulicz: Good title for a single, particularly one from such a prominent yawper; all the words that describe a raised voice are evocative and powerful (shout, scream, howl, yell) so naturally lend themselves to pop songs. “Roar” falls some way short of its titular forebears though, because it’s sung with little conviction — the brief “I’ve got the eye of the tiger” hook is as noteworthy as it gets, but the song’s wrong for her voice, making no benefit from her playful bitchiness or cheeky sexuality. Actually it sounds a bit like she wants to be Florence and is curdling her voice to include some of those tics, but in the face of a chorus that just gives up halfway in favour of “oh-whoa-oh,” it’s too much fat and not enough meat.
[3]

Will Adams: For all of their faults, the Teenage Dream singles were each hits, winning pop moments that cemented Katy Perry as a force to be reckoned with. Even the re-release singles “Part of Me” and “Wide Awake,” innocuous as they were, made an impact of some sort. “Roar” is such a non-event that it doesn’t even deserve jokes about its name more like “Meow” am I right?. Everything about it — the music (a radio-friendly bump that is completely featureless); the songwriting (looks like someone forgot to write a bridge!); and the lyrics (mixed metaphors and a relentless stream of clich?) — flies in the face of what a lead pop single should be. Katy can be many things: annoying, offensive, brilliant, and ridiculous, but boring? It’s not a good look for her.
[4]

Brad Shoup: Katy Perry is my ideal pop singer, in the sense that I’m not usually looking to hang my interest on the hook of personality. I’ve no doubt the tune was written and released with all deliberation, but even without the sales-cycle narrative, I’d respond to the image of Perry hopping around, salting the enemy’s earth. Especially because it’s done with her usual earnest tone. Katy Perry doesn’t chirp. She doesn’t belt. Hell, she doesn’t even roar. She just throws those California vowels off the roof and watches ’em splatter. Lateral bass synth grounds the playground cadence, and the bridge is constructed on sustained, placid guitar chords, a mildly surprising choice. Since I’m currently renewing on a per-single basis, releasing something that sounds like “Under the Sun” was a good call. I’m once again on board.
[8]

Crystal Leww: The bizarre irony of this track is that it starts by trying to start with a juxtaposition of old Katy Perry with now, and what she describes as what she’s not anymore is exactly what “Roar” sounds like. “Roar” is the sound of being scared to rock the boat epitomized. “Roar” is all about that sitting quietly life, almost literally as it sounds like it could be played at low volumes in Starbucks. “Roar” stands for nothing and falling for everything, like the worst kind of trendchasing. The weirder thing is that the “old Katy” she describes didn”t really exist either; Katy Perry broke out with a song called “I Kissed a Girl.” As heinous as the song’s politics, at least that Katy Perry had some kind of point. This Katy Perry sounds like she’s phoning it in. “Roar” doesn’t sound like a roar at all; it just sounds boring.
[4]

Patrick St. Michel: Sara Bareilles should feel a little ripped off, because “Roar” does sound a lot like her “Brave.” “Roar” is also a whole lot more interesting than “Brave,” though that’s fully because of the whirring synths in the back of Katy Perry’s track, the one element of this single that’s remotely interesting. Yet even that detail gets shouted out by some Nick Jr. level inspiration and those background shouts which are an obvious attempt to win cred with whatever crowd loves The Lumineers. Just totally uncompelling, and nobody should be clamoring to be the person behind this on an artistic level.
[3]

Katherine St Asaph: Music blogs’ ripoff! stories devolve fast into histrionics if they weren’t there from start, but it nevertheless must be said: this is a lot like Sara Bareilles’s “Brave.” The only real difference is how Perry pops it up. Gone is the Sara Bareilling, the guidance-counselor affect and multisyllabic good cheer. Instead, Perry plunks down platitudes in eighth-note staccato (“you held me down, but I got up), sings them in a mix of the Top 40 techni-i-ique of syllabic stre-e-e-tching and the inimitable Katy Perry… something (she’s only gotten more distinctive, in the worst sense), and imbues them with all the depth of a flashcard. Cynicism is everywhere; that “HEY!” exists 100 per cent because of the Lumineers, and that lion/tiger metaphor exists 95 per cent because Katy markets to her fanbase as “Katycats.” (The other 5 per cent is the part of you that’s never ever ever gonna not sing “…it’s the thrill of the fight!”) Of course it’ll be a hit; listening to this and imagining its effect on radio is like being on an ice floe that an army’s approaching with flamethrowers. Of course it’ll inspire all manner of vaguely lion-related ways to fuck the haters; we can only hope Perry doesn’t make a video of fursuit burlesque. Of course Katy Perry’s won; you know she has, because her career’s progressed so that the only way to respond to singles is with “of course.”
[5]

Alfred Soto: Amazing. There isn’t a single verse that coheres into any kind of sense. When she drops the “eye of the tiger” line she might as well have said “smell like I sound/I’m lost and I’m found” before those horrifying chorus war whoops.
[3]

Jonathan Bradley: The plinky bounce of the verse is something for new Perry, even if the sub-“Firework” motivational poster uplift isn’t. The plague of clich?s is obviously intentional, from “I stood for nothing so I fell for everything” to “float like a butterfly”/”sting like a bee,” though I can’t for the life of me puzzle out the actual intent behind it. That chorus, though. It wheezes like Jessie J in the 25th mile of a marathon.
[2]

Ramzi Awn: This chorus feels like the market I went to tonight that changed my life. This chorus feels like The Wizard of Oz. This chorus is like the perfect blend of the Pixies and the machine. This chorus is golden like the sun. This chorus is like a tiny music box and a D-battery boom box and when it’s over, this chorus leaves you really high and really dry. It almost doesn’t even matter that the verses kind of suck, or that they sound like a new Alanis Morissette song, and maybe if I listened to Sara Bareilles, I’d be upset that she got ripped off, but I don’t, and I’m not. This chorus is like the Pussycat Dolls’ Kimberly Wyatt gone solo. This chorus is like Hall & Oates. This chorus is like bubblegum and classic rock and Katy Perry and Lite.fm. This chorus is on repeat.
[8]

Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: Here is this autumn’s expensive paint-by-numbers Max Martin and Dr. Luke confection, buffed to within an inch of sleek perfection and stuffed with enough triumphant chanting to make your heart swell an extra two millimeters. As choppy Perry is as a singer — still pretty indistinguishable beyond moments of loud peppiness — she sounds plenty devoted to her message of Overcoming The Odds and Achieving Self-Discovery. When she sings the song’s title, she swoops the vowels of the word around her mouth as if unleashing an incantation, then dives into the aforementioned triumphant chanting. It’s all very professionally executed. Now, surrender to its force; the roar was only the beginning.
[5]

Anthony Easton: I kind of like hacks because it suggests a minimalist efficiency about work. Get in, do the least you need to do to get the job done, and get out. The work is the thing, and so the useless, or the aesthetic, or the formal mean less than the actual functional nature of the process. But there is nothing redeeming about this, even if you think of it as parodic or ironic, even if you don’t believe it as legitimately inspirational, it fails. Even worse, I cannot imagine the damage that people would do with this if they thought it was an inspiration.
[2]

Scott Mildenhall: It’s probably somewhat unfair on Katy Perry to feel that “empowering” first-person affirmations like “I am a champion” sound a bit hollow coming from someone who actually does seem to be doing quite well for herself, but it’s hard not to, and equally hard to separate them from Katy Perry The Popstar. Luckily that doesn’t impinge too much on this though, a radio-friendly yet still distinctive production with a strong chorus that’s nonetheless unlikely to frighten the pigeons, and it’s perhaps that that prevents it from really hitting the heights.
[6]

Jonathan Bogart: Katy Perry working a flip of Amy Grant’s “Baby Baby” is maybe the least surprising musical event of year; but the fact that the source material was unassuming even for 1991 keeps Katy from indulging her worst instincts (bludgeoning maudlinism; bullying in the guise of empowerment; trying to stay hip). If the price to pay is yet another self-esteem anthem of limited utility to anyone whose name isn’t Katy Perry, well, it could have been so much worse.
[6]

Reader average: [4.74] (31 votes)

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10 Responses to “Katy Perry – Roar”

  1. I want to like this, but to me this doesn’t copy “Brave” so much as it dilutes it in tepid “Firework”-sentiment – and it doesn’t add nearly enough M(axmartin)SG to work.

  2. I’ve tried those Katy Perry Pop Chips and they are NOT good.

  3. Her voice reminds me of a cartoon vagina. One that can’t really sing. Or write.

  4. Ramzi gets it.

  5. ramzi otm

  6. I was surprised by how much I liked this, though admittedly I didn’t have sky-high expectations. And I totally agree with Will that the song is in serious need of a bridge.

  7. the chorus is NOT like Hall & Oates. Hall & Oats maybe.

  8. I could maybe enjoy the chorus if she didn’t sing it so abysmally. she sounds like she really has to hock a loogie.

  9. H&O would never have had such a watery hook or delivered it wish such a plinky backing.

  10. In honor of her eighth US#1…

    SCREENCAP MAKEOVER