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The Singles Bar: Katy Perry, “Part Of Me”

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Posted by Katherine St Asaph on 02/14/2012 at 1:59 PM Reviews, Sponsored

The Popdust Files: katy perry

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It’ll be a new era for Katy Perry at some point. All the requirements are checked off: split from husband, split from megaproducer, stretch of time that could be used or spun as songwriting and growing-up time. Considering Katy Perry’s sound is the reigning pop sound, the one newcomers try to emulate and the one that gilds every comeback, any new musical paths she were to go down would either find themselves trod smooth within a year or be completely rejected as the pop masses stampede someplace else. There are stakes here.

2012 is not Katy Perry’s new era, at least not this early in the year. Her upcoming album is a re-release of a re-release: Teenage Dream: The Complete Confection. In other words, it’s still her old era–an era that’s been rather good to her. The rationale’s obvious, the mechanisms easy to discern: by stretching the Teenage Dream era as far as it’ll go and scraping up the remnants of Dr. Luke’s gloss left in the studio, Perry not only hangs onto what’s made her so successful but gets one more shot at something her team really, really wants: beating, not tying, Michael Jackson’s record for most No. 1 hits off one record. Jackson and Perry both have five, but “The One That Got Away” was in fact the one that got away, chased off not only by Adele’s all-but-preordained hit “Someone Like You” but also by “Sexy and I Know It,” a novelty hit by arguably-novelty group LMFAO. Unfortunately, Billboard just changed the rules to make that impossible; re-releases, or at least this one, will count separately.

Does all this seem like arcane wonkery, obsessing over a chart feat that’ll be cut by asterisks even if it does happen? Try looking at it a different way. This is Katy Perry’s chance to assert that she’s earned the same longevity as the King of Pop and his immediate court, and to have statistics backing her. Chart achievements, after all, measure popular demand in theory if not completely in practice; they’re the sort of statistics press releases and retrospectives and tributes love to quote as proof of pop dominance. How many times have you seen announcements that marvel at Metacritic scores, or pan over glittering vistas of chart peaks? There were stakes there, too.

The question for Katy Perry, then, is how to earn a surefire hit that’s a symbolic sign of dominance. Teenage Dream already had a couple possibilities in “Circle the Drain” or “Hummingbird Heartbeat”; “Peacock” has the right sound, but its lyrics–essentially one extended double entendre that you can guess from the title–could plausibly be too much of a radio liability. But since Perry’s re-releasing Teenage Dream again, which involves buffing up her older demos and outtakes, it’d probably make more sense to go with something new. The strategy’s been successful in the past–in the recent past, with pal Rihanna’s “Disturbia,” also a seventh single from a re-release, and with Nicki Minaj’s “Super Bass,” a bonus track turned iconic single.

And that’s how we got “Part of Me,” a proven sound with proven producers–specifically, a scrapped bonus track with a demo floating in the YouTube flotsam, and it was written by Perry with the Big Three: Dr. Luke (pre-Sony solitary), Bonnie McKee, who may have won a car for her work here. But there’s one bonus. Presenting material as new means you can present it as newsy as well–say, by penciling in a line about a wedding ring, proven as a biting insult even if it weren’t so darn timely.

All this is a long way of saying that “Part of Me” sounds like the result of whisking the year’s biggest pop successes until they’re completely combined. The beat kicks in and out like “Hot N Cold,” Max’s guitars glide through their chords, smooth as if they’ve been brushed with butter, like any of his pop-rock hits of the past few years. Each successive chorus builds like pop always has–in Katy’s repertoire, it’s a lot like “Firework,” which is quoted. The writers go for the venerable lizard-brain dopamine hit of dropping the instrumentation out right before a chorus that slams it back in. Everything’s streamlined; even a dubstep breakdown–2011′s only remaining trend–would get in the way. Aside from a few glitches–the chorus could sustain a smidge more melody–”Part of Me” is industrial-strength pop, built to the year’s highest specifications. You already know very well whether you love or hate this sound, but at least it’s not sloppy or slapped-together like Jessie J’s “ok FINE I’ll sop to the States” track “Domino.” If you don’t like it, it’s not for anything the producers neglected to do.

In fact, “Part of Me” is downright smart. We’ve mentioned the wedding-ring line, and it doesn’t matter whether Katy and her team wrote it in 2009 or 2012, because they’re presenting it now. The words don’t jolt any less for being rehearsed. More than that, though, “Part of Me” strikes a balance between, yes, platitudes like “sticks and stones,” “chewed me up and spit me out,” cliche only because people know to relate; realer talk–the beginnings of each verse are among the strongest lyrics Katy’s written or chosen; and a savvy double metaphor. The chorus’s affirmation, “this is the part of me that you’re never gonna ever take away from me,” works equally well as an ex diss as one to Perry’s own doubters. If you’re looking to climb back atop the throne, why not summon all the pop machinery at your disposal to give you a boost?

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Rating: 3.8/5 (4 votes cast)