I am a sucker for summer songs. Whenever Bryan Adams' Summer of '69 comes on the radio I am not embarrassed to admit that I roll down my window and turn up the volume. This summer I have been searching for Drake on the radio but with that being said, whether it be Len's Steal My Sunshine or The Go-Go's Vacation, I admit that once the temperature starts to rise, I usually end up falling for a cheesy summer pop song. I can listen to (what seems like) all 36 versions of K'naan's Wavin' Flag but there are some songs that I cannot stand such as the new Miley (Jailbait) Cyrus song Can't Be Tamed or that Nickelback song where they do their best impersonation of a Kid Rock summer music video with This Afternoon. Now usually Nickelback would be the clear favorite for worst summer song but this year the song that I hate the most will probably also be the most played: Katy Perry's California Gurls.
The song brought in a heavy hitter to make it a commercial success with Snoop Dogg. You know because if you are singing about the West Coast then you need to have Snoop Dogg rapping at some point to give it some credibility even if the song feels like it has been overproduced to the point where it is unlistenable and gets lost in the shuffle of pop songs that are virtually indistinguishable from each other. If you listen to Perry's California Gurls and Ke$ha's Tik Tok I think you will notice that they sound eerily similar. In addition to sharing the same song both artists also being similar in that they seemingly both cannot spell. The worst part about California Gurls is that it sucks and we know it sucks but I bet it will be stuck in our heads for the entire summer which I guess makes it a success on at least one annoying level. Sure I am guessing that Perry was trying to do a tongue-in-cheek presentation with California Gurls and the song was supposed to be fun and silly, but there is a difference between fun and silly like Aqua's Barbie Girl and trying too hard to the point that it feels fake and stupid which is what California Gurls comes across to me as.
The song sucks but the video sucks even more. Fake and stupid also describes the story of the video where Perry travels through a board game called Candyfornia (clever I know) as Snoop Dogg rolls dice to control her. First of all, what the heck does Candyland have to do with California girls? Other than a Hollywood sign that I guess means California is like Candyland, the video has no connection at all to the lyrics of the song. What happened to the days where music videos relate to the actual lyrics of the song? One scene in the video shows a naked Perry lying on a cloud auditioning for Peter's Griffin's Side-boob Hour which normally would not be a bad thing but it also was the scene where I realized that Perry does not blink her eyes. She is like some weird snake or fish-human mutant hybrid that apparently does not ever need to moisten her eyes. So Perry walks along the board game and frees other women (my girlfriend noticed that all of these women are conveniently less attractive than Perry) who are trapped in wrappers and jello leading to the big scene at the end where Perry and the candy women do a terrible dance sequence and confront Snoop. Cause you know Grease and Michael Jackson's Beat It showed us that before any confrontation begins there has to be a coordinated dance-off. Perry defeats Snoop's army of evil gummy bears by overwhelming them with whip cream that fires from cans on her breasts. This actually happened... I'm serious.
I realize that this song is probably not meant to be taken seriously and neither is the video but I wish that the record industry would at least attempt to not resell songs and put some effort into making a video that actually makes some sense and at the very least, entertains me. Instead of being entertained or amused, after watching Perry's latest video, I am left wondering WTF does Candyland have to do with California and how do gummy bears become evil?
How is Snoop doing a song with Katy Perry anyways? I know street cred doesn't mean much these days but damn Snoop. The song is not good on any level (apart from the robot like California thing in its latter stages) but na, no song of the summer vote from me
snoop dogg's been in the self-parody/joke zone for about ten years now.
also, this song is so atrocious i can't even articulate it. katy perry may be hot, but there's only so many bad songs you can sit through (that timberland song is almost as bad) before the negative conditioning will make her unattractive.
o.m.g.
Gummy bears have always been evil. Try eating a bunch and see how your stomach feels after.
Really though, anything Perry does I'll sit through. She's in my top 5 (hottest women), so she could read the phone book for all I care, preferably with that side boob action happening at the same time (or full boob, I'm partial to both).