A white girl from Santa Barbara is about to beat the King of Pop. She’s only 26 years old, and this is only her second album, but music fans are waiting with bated breath for what seems like the inevitable: Katy Perry is about to tie and may eventually break Michael Jackson’s over two decade old record of most #1 songs from a single album.
What has the world come to? That’s what some people are saying. When a tiny pop star singing about alien love dethrones a musical legend, there are questions to be answered. Is she really that good, or has our collective musical taste become really that bad?
Michael Jackson set the record for most #1 songs from a single album with “I Just Can’t Stop Loving You,” “Bad,” “The Way You Make Me Feel,” “Man in the Mirror” and “Dirty Diana,” from 1987’s Bad album. Katy Perry is one song shy of matching this record, thanks to her singles “California Gurls,” “Teenage Dream,” “Firework” and “E.T.,” from her current album, Teenage Dream.
Click here to view a Grio slideshow: Can anyone seize the King of Pop’s crown?
If her most recent single “Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.)” performs as expected (it jumped 27 spots on the chart to #4 this week), she will be the first female artist to have five #1 songs from a single album, and get the bragging rights of having tied Michael Jackson for the title.
Needless to say, Michael Jackson superfans, and pop music snobs in general, are heated. How could she unseat the King? Surely Katy Perry’s music isn’t that good (a fact that some fans will even admit). Her name doesn’t hover on the tongues of tastemakers the way Lady Gaga and Beyoncé’s names do.
There’s nothing impressively outstanding or unique about Katy Perry, her celebrity persona sitting at the intersection of Pink with a splash of Rihanna for good controversy. In short, nothing feels special about her — she is somewhat of an average pop singer who has happened upon some really really successful songs.
“And she didn’t even work for it!” Crotchety old MJ fans lament the days they had to walk six miles through eight feet of snow just to buy a vinyl record, whereas nowadays these youngsters with their fancy mp3 players can just click a button and download any old crappy pop record. Critics think Perry’s coming by success easy, and shouldn’t be compared to Michael’s hard-earned 80s-era musical triumphs.
In reality, Katy Perry’s success is actually quite outstanding, a remarkable feat in an industry that has suffered in the digital age. The record industry bubble popped at the turn of the century, when digital downloading made stealing songs easy, and going platinum became a legend of the golden age. Thanks to Katy Perry and Adele, album sales are up for the first time in seven years.
The Katy Perry versus Michael Jackson debate is overdramatic and unwarranted. Just because she’ll tie a record with Michael Jackson doesn’t mean someone’s going to run out with a crown and coronate her as Queen of Pop. Critics are probably right, her music isn’t timeless, and will probably be forgotten in five years or less.
The reason why Katy Perry is successful is because her music is fun — she sings about being yourself, going to parties, falling in love — general topics that a wide swath of America can enjoy without feeling morally corrupted or marginalized. She makes pop music at its most potent: fun, relatable, and so catchy you’d be hard-pressed to find someone who can’t at least hum the chorus of “Firework.”
Katy Perry is successful because we put her there. Well, maybe not me and you, but our fellow Americans and probably a good deal of pre-teens with active iTune accounts. Children of the same people who once tried to give a pair of lip-synching German guys a Grammy award. We’ve handed over success to worse people than Katy Perry. That doesn’t mean she’s going to be a generational icon, or that she’ll be buried in a casket gilded in gold, it just means that right now her music is entertaining a lot of people.
I’m sure that Katy Perry not only doesn’t compare herself to Michael Jackson, she doesn’t want to. So we shouldn’t sweat the connection either. Sure, she might share a title with the guy, and that’s plenty to be proud of, but in the end his contributions to pop music have had more of a lasting impact than anything Perry can aspire to at this point. There is enough room in pop music for Katy Perry to experience some success without implicating the downfall of pop culture.