I Can't Believe They Got Signed: Katy Perry

[I Can't Believe They Got Signed is my new feature in which we discuss why an artist shouldn't have released an album and why the current record model is rapidly heading to ruin]

The Offender: Katy Perry
The Evidence: I Kissed a Girl
Perfect Jury: Jill Sobule, Kathleen Hanna, Cyndi Lauper, Joni Mitchell, Grace Slick, Kira Roessler

Katy Perry, with her husky voice and Zooey Deschanel doppelganger looks, is the summer’s biggest star, placing her in the upper echelons of other summer anthem makers such as Skee-Lo, Montell Jordan, New Radicals, Vitamin C, Len, Wheatus and Dynamite Hack. The thing about being one of those acts is that if you’re not relegated to Reality TV shows with other D-List celebrities or county fairs, then you’re career is pretty much over (and hey, I liked Skee-Lo’s album).

Perry’s overproduced debut album, with its girlicious single “I Kissed a Girl,” is currently being shucked-and-jived for the Warped Tour crowd, who apparently are just as vapid as Perry herself. Perry’s image – a walking American Apparel billboard – is pretty much the only thing she has going for her. Hell, she could’ve made a fairly respectable “career” being a muse for one of those internet photographers like The Cobrasnake (God knows he’s probably sick of that Cory Kennedy and Steve “The New Long Duc Dong” Aoki).

Instead, Perry’s antics as a musical siren resulted in a plastic disc that costs $2 to manufacture and we’re expected to pay $13+ for. Bullshit. The mere existence of Katy Perry as a musical act is akin to Michael Bay’s existence as a film director. They both have respective roles in entertainment and people pay their hard earned money to indulge themselves in these atrocities that pass themselves off as art, when at the end of the day, it’s really a trite peace of crap with nothing new to offer to the masses.

Katy Perry and her album, the over-sexualized, “One of the Boys,” is the kind of deplorable waste that’s destined for the $.99 dust bin. It spits in the face of women who’ve made strides in popular music despite the male domineering environment (see: 7 Year Bitch, Bikini Kill, or even Eisley). The faux girl power atmosphere that Perry offers is not unlike Foxy Brown and Lil’ Kim’s “sex-as-a-weapon” mantra.

Then again, this time next year, there will probably be some new chanteuse who’s making the hits, while Perry plots out a tour with the likes of Bif Naked (Google that name).