Bigger Than the Sound wonders: Does Perry’s latest mark the death of the album? By James Montgomery Katy Perry’s Teenage Dream Photo: Capitol Records Conventional wisdom these days seems to hold that the album is dead, singles are the lifeblood of the music industry, and people prefer their music as bite-size chunks, in whatever bit rate available and on their phones whenever possible. This is conventional wisdom, of course, because it is probably true. Just look at the carnage on the Billboard albums chart for proof. It would seem that nobody buys albums anymore (unless they have Eminem’s name on them) and that we’re all just a few short years away from the complete extinction of the medium. That is not as farfetched as it might seem. In fact, it’s basically a certainty at this point. Still, perhaps you continue to believe in the power of the long-player, in the majesty of the deep cut. Perhaps you are holding out hope for the return of the 80-minute magnum opus or the darkened-room, double-disc experience. Who’s to say you are wrong? Well, I am. And so is Katy Perry. Because next Tuesday, she’ll release Teenage Dream, 44 minutes of shimmering, pitch-perfect pop music that may very well signify the end of the album as we know it. Sure, it will undoubtedly top the Billboard albums chart and will almost certainly go platinum many times over, but really, Dream is an album in theory only. There is a cover, and a track list and a lengthy list of songwriting credits attached to it, but those things all seem like formalities. This is a collection of singles, a Whitman’s sampler of pop tunes, with seemingly no thought given to cohesion or sequencing. It is a no-concept record; there are no through lines or plot points or so-called “album tracks.” You can listen to it in any order and have roughly the same experience. In fact, it’s almost better that way. This is perhaps the first album in history that lends itself to the shuffle function on your iPod, which is sort of ingenious when you think about it. And none of that is meant to suggest that Teenage Dream isn’t a genuinely rousing success (in parts, it definitely is), but rather, I mention it because it makes writing about Dream as an album rather pointless and unfair. Because as an album, it’s sort of a mess. Sequentially, it jumps from a sweeping ballad (“Firework”) to a song about dudes with big dongs (“Peacock”) to an angry breakup tune (“Circle the Drain”) to a sweetly voiced lament on lost love (“The One That Got Away”). It’s the kind of arranging only R. Kelly is crazy enough to try — check his 2007 album Double Up, on which he follows a song called “Sex Planet” with “Rise Up,” a tribute to those slain in the Virginia Tech shootings — and it’s jarring, to say the least. And then there’s the matter of Perry’s emotional range, which, on the album, seems limited to just two extremes: starry-eyed ing
