So I finally listened to "Roar". Good goddamn, I've seen Katy Perry be arrogant and obnoxious, but those are attitudes she wears well. I never expected her to be this dull. It's a song all about shouting proudly, but it's sung with so little energy and enthusiasm, and is full of such rote "believe-in-yourself" clichés apparently rejected from "Firework" for being too obvious ("Scared to rock the boat", "You held me down but I got up", "zero to hero", "eye of the tiger", motherlovin' "floating like a butterfly, stinging like a bee"?!), it utterly fails to get you pumped. There's no driving guitar rising gloriously above, the percussion sounds so muted and weak it's like they're made of paper...I know Perry's borrowed from Queen before with "E.T." reusing the drumbeat from "We Will Rock You", and this is an attempt to make a big anthemic inspirational stadium rock ballad, but she is no Freddie Mercury. Freddie could elevate subpar material just through force of personality - "Under Pressure" doesn't even have finished lyrics, but he and Bowie willed it into being better. Perry just ain't got it, even at her loudest.
It's a Xerox of "Firework", but at least "Firework" had good production. "Roar" doesn't sound cheap, but it sounds minimal, and hacky: the producers went into this track at 8:30 in the morning, nursing their hangover with a Starbucks, and said, bleary-eyed, "You know what? Let's not do anything fancy or memorable, let's just make Katy sound less like an airhorn in labour and take a half-day. Sound good?" There's absolutely nothing remarkable about the music here: it doesn't change or progress in any way, it just kinda stays in a rut. "Roar" aims for one mood, that of vaguely inspirational platitudes, and strums it numbly. I had to will myself to listen to it all the way through.
Actually, I've just realised what "Roar" is. It's the musical equivalent of this:
[img139]http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lmwu4qamAv1qci8czo1_500.jpg[/img139]
