Click to return to Dave’s Music Database home page.

Released:

August 24, 2010


Rating:

3.504 (average of 9 ratings)

Genre:

pop


Quotable:

--


Album Tracks:

  1. Teenage Dream
  2. Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.)
  3. California Gurls
  4. Firework
  5. Peacock
  6. Circle the Drain
  7. The One That Got Away
  8. E.T.
  9. Who Am I Living For?
  10. Pearl
  11. Hummingbird Heartbeat
  12. Not Like the Movies

Sales (in millions):

sales in U.S. only 1.3
sales in U.K. only - estimated 0.6
sales in all of Europe as determined by IFPI – click here to go to their site. --
sales worldwide - estimated 2.2


Peak:

peak on U.S. Billboard album chart 1 1
peak on U.K. album chart 1 1


Singles/Hit Songs:

  • California Gurls (5/29/10) #1 US, #1 UK, #1 AA, #7 AC, sales: 4.4 m, air: 0.4 m
  • Teenage Dream (8/7/10) #1 US, #2 UK, #1 AA, #8 AC, sales: 3.255 m
  • Circle the Drain (8/28/10) #58 US
  • E.T. (9/4/10) * #1 US, #29 UK, #28 AA
  • Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.) (9/11/10) #67 US
  • Firework (10/30/10) #1 US, #3 UK, #1 AA, #4 AC, sales: 3.16 m

    * Album cut charted on 9/4/10. Single version, which included Kanye West as a guest, didn’t chart until April 2011.


    Notes:

    Remixes of “California Gurls” and “Teenage Dream” have been included on a deluxe version of the album, as were 2009’s 3OH!3’s “Starstrukk” and Timbaland’s “If We Ever Meet Again,” tracks on which Perry was a featured artist.


  • Teenage Dream

    Katy Perry

    Review:

    “Nothing comes naturally for Katy Perry. Blessed with a cheerleader’s body, the face of a second-chair clarinetist and a drama club queen’s lust for the spotlight, Perry parlayed all these qualities into success via her 2008 pop debut One of the Boys, an album that worked overtime to titillate. Working hard is Katy Perry’s stock in trade: whether she’s cavorting in the Californian sun or heaving her cleavage, she always lets you see her sweat, an effect that undercuts her status as a curvy Teenage Dream, the ideal she puts forth on her 2010 sophomore set.” STE

    “All this labor produces fetching magazine covers – sometimes accompanied by good copy within – and grabbing videos but it undoes her records, since we always hear her fighting to be frivolous. And all Perry wants to do is have fun: all she wants is to frolic in the spotlight, and she’ll follow the path of others to get there, raising eyebrows a’la Alanis, strutting like Gwen Stefani and relying on Britney’s hitmaker Max Martin for her hooks. There’s no question Perry is smart enough to know every rule in pop but she’s not inspired enough to ignore them, almost seeming nervous to break away from the de rigeur lite club beats that easily transition from day to night or the chilly, stainless-steel ballads designed to lose none of their luster on repeat plays.” STE

    “Perry acknowledges some shifting trends – she salutes fellow attention-whore Ke$ha on Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.), replicates Ryan Tedder’s glassy robotic alienation on E.T. but tellingly avoids ripping off Lady Gaga, who is just too meta for the blunt Katy – but these are merely accents to her old One of the Boys palette. And, once again, the music feels familiar, so Perry distinguishes herself through desperate vulgarity, wooing a suitor with ‘you make me feel like I’m losing my virginity,’ extolling the virtues of blackouts and an accidental ménage a trois, melting popsicles, pleading for a boy to show her his Peacock (chanting ‘cock cock cock’ just in case we at home didn’t get the single entendre).” STE

    “All this stylized provocation is exhausting, and not just because there’s so much of it (none of it actually arousing). It’s tiring because, at her heart, Perry is old-fashioned and is invested in none of her aggressive teasing. Not for nothing did she give her best post-One of the Boys song, ‘I Do Not Hook Up,’ to Kelly Clarkson; its pro-abstinence rally flies in the face of the masturbatory daydream she’s constructed. It's ironic that her best song finds her lurking behind the scenes, because Perry’s greatest talent is to be a willing cog in the pop machine, delivering sleek singles like Teenage Dream and Hummingbird Heartbeat with efficiency. Isolated on the radio, the way ‘Hot N Cold’ was in 2009, these singles will wind up obscuring the overheated and undercooked nature of Teenage Dream as a whole. Then again, the album itself is almost incidental to the self-styled fantasy that Katy Perry sells with this entire project.” RW

    Of course, critical acclaim and commercial success are often at odds with each other. As unoriginal and uninspiring as Teenage Dream may be as a trendsetter, it definitely clicked with the pop masses. It is only the ninth album in the history of Billboard magazine to generation four #1 hits on the Hot 100 chart. WK The album even landed a nomination at the Grammys for Album of the Year.

    The album’s lead single, California Gurls, was written as a response to Jay-Z’s #1 “Empire State of Mind.” It “pays tribute to women and the beach lifestyle of California.” WK As Perry said, “everyone has the New York song, but what the fuck? What about L.A.? What about California?” WK The single featured rapper Snoop Dogg and generated controversy when the Beach Boys claimed the song appropriated the line “I wish they all could be California Girls” from their own song of the same name. WK

    Following that song to #1 was the album’s title cut. Third to the top was the song Firework, which was inspired by Jack Kerouac’s novel On the Road. WK A remixed version of “E.T.” with a rap from Kanye West gave Perry her fourth #1 from the album.


    Review Source(s):

  • STE Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide
  • WK Wikipedia

    Videos:

  • California Gurls
  • Teenage Dream
  • Firework
  • E.T.

    Click on box above to check out the DMDB on Facebook.


    Last updated April 22, 2011.