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Discussion: UK critics choose Katy over GaGa at iTunes Festival, why?
ATRL Contributor
Member Since: 8/8/2006
Posts: 42,086
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UK critics choose Katy over GaGa at iTunes Festival, why?
The Independent
-Katy Perry
Quote:
The UK's first live glimpse of Katy Perry's third album PRISM comes just two days after the pop princess's fairytale took its darkest turn yet. Echoes of a Billboard interview in which she discussed suicidal thoughts following the end of her short marriage to Russell Brand might be heard reverberating around a venue distinctly free of the candyfloss scent pumped into venues on her kitschorama Teenage Dream tour.
Former cupcake Perry has become adept at drawing publicly and deeply on her love and life turmoils. It's a seasoned pop tactic, but one that fits her particularly well, lending a graphic personal power to the self-helpy survivalist streak that's always been her strongest suit.
Perhaps it's about connectability; more so than, say, Beyonce, you can buy struggle and survival from Perry, an indefatigable trier who made it good on her third shot at a pop career, and whose dancing suggests she'd wade through a lake of blood and berkish comedians to get where she's going.
And that destination is here-to-stay pop maturity. The 90s-toned, hi-NRG house-pop of new track "Walking On Air" is followed by a sharp one-two of "California Gurls" and a ravey "Teenage Dream". Things darken up with second new track "Dark Horse", a dubby, moody thing akin to Rihanna's "Russian Roulette" where our sugarlump-snaffling frisky pop pony attempts to flash a sexy dangerous side with questionable credibility. Tonight's only previously unheard Prism moment, "By The Grace Of God" is a more genuine moment of shade, a darkest-hour piano ballad with hints of early Tori Amos ("Looked in the mirror and decided to stay/I wasn't gonna let love take me out that way").
Perry's never downbeat for long, though. "I need nothing to complete myself," she asserts during "Wide Awake", bending down to face an insufficiently self-valuing fan and bellowing "You know that!" with terrifying motivational vim before erupting confetti up to the ceiling from her hands before everybody’s even finished eating out of them.
She closes with an explosively inspirational double whammy of "Firework" and comeback single "Roar" (a slow-burning slice of genius acclaimed by none other than fellow fallout specialist Stevie Nicks as a feminist anthem). Katy and her dancers do their Rocky routine, punching all their burgeoning self-worth into that fantastically Phoenix-like chorus. Short but sweet set over, Katy hurls her glittering skipping-rope into the crowd and strides off to survive another day, leaving her London adorers to the most empowered Monday night tube ride imaginable.
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Score: 4/5
- Lady Gaga
Quote:
The Gaga experience, rather like a dress made from meat, was never going to stay fresh forever. Last night at the Camden Roundhouse, before an audience of 5,000, the self-appointed Monster-in-Chief, headlining the first night of the iTunes Festival, laid down another bonkers pop manifesto: “When we're in this space together we make the most beautiful thing in the world - we make love”. And yet behind the fireworks, the fanfare and the Fame, we saw 2013 Gaga as a figure diminished.
Ms Germanotta, theatrics in tow, was of course at her provocative best. Arriving in a truly nightmarish Hannibal Lecter-esque mask, she was channelling her new brand of creepy minimalism. Wigs, typically, featured heavily (one choice costume-change saw her morph disturbingly into what appeared to be Shakira circa 'Whenever, Wherever').
Click here or on "View Images" for the many guises of Lady Gaga in pictures
And yet the six new tracks with which she delivered ARTPOP, her third album, to the world, did little to shake the persona so embedded in pop culture. The thumping techno overlaid with swelling vocals remains a formula to which she clings, and upon which her chart bankability relies. Her ability as a singer is formidable, but musically, she is less inventive than her wardrobe would suggest.
'#Swinefest', as the gig was bizarrely dubbed, perhaps wasn't one of her more dulcet promotional slogans, and yet a Twitter-primed crowd, composed of her Little and not-so-Little Monsters, was rammed into the Roundhouse, accessorised with pig noses and squealing for more.
Lady Gaga leaves after her iTunes performance at London's Roundhouse last night. Lady Gaga leaves after her iTunes performance at London's Roundhouse last night. With her every conceptual step (for those keeping score, we're now, with ARTPOP, on an exercise in reverse-Warholism in which art penetrates pop culture), the music, purportedly, shifts gear too. And there is no doubt that the thumping Euro-disco of The Fame Monster moved into the broader and more avant-garde avenues of synth- and electro-rock in the sprawling Born this Way, nor that she is returning (via a little 'complextro') to her pop roots with the new album. And yet, in spite of a mammoth collaborative effort, the result sounds just like everything else in the charts.
In popland today, outrageousness has lost all meaning. Trangression, experimentation, 'art' (for want of a better word) - these are ends in themselves. Gaga has sparked a movement which cheapens and commodifies the very boundary-pushing she stands for; she has diluted herself as both an artist and a brand.
Not to downplay the crazy, which was, in true Germanotta fashion, all kinds of off-the-wall. But with a platter of mediocre records - which fall, regrettably, in the month of Mileygate - she is, despite all the Applause, just another attraction at the zoo.
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Score: 3/5
Standard
Katy Perry
Quote:
This year's iTunes Festival closed last night, with Katy Perry and Lady Gaga acting as none-more-glamorous bookends to a star-studded month.
Perry, a natural inhabitant of the gigantic pop arena even when she was playing pubs, didn't strip things down for the theatre setting. Only two different outfits across 10 songs might count as restrained, but one of them did incorporate a moving LED image of a tiger.
Rotating rainbow-coloured triangles foreshadowed the title of her third album, Prism, due later this month and expected to sell like the hottest of cakes. Lasers, confetti, upward bursts of steam and a pneumatic dancing team all made appearances, though this wasn’t quite business as usual.
An early airing of breezy new song Walking on Air, California Gurls’ carefree funk and the vivid synthpop of Teenage Dream were a false start. Perry has been married and divorced from Russell Brand since she first sang about wanting to be “your teenage dream tonight”. Today she is a worldly woman singing of survival – less Kitty Kat, more Bear Grylls.
Wheeling out a piano and long-term songwriting collaborator Greg Wells for By the Grace of God, she almost went full circle back to her days as teenage Christian singer Katy Hudson – before she kissed that girl and liked it. “By the grace of God I picked myself back up,” she sang on a powerful tune that clearly referenced her doomed marriage.
Recent single Roar – her fourth number one here and remarkably her eighth in the US – treated the self-help theme with more of her trademark wink.
“I’ve got the eye of the tiger,” she bellowed from within a makeshift boxing ring, then jumped a skipping rope with some skill. She didn’t play the underdog for long. Thankfully for the pop world, she’s back on the prowl.
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Score: 4/5
Lady Gaga
Quote:
She described her rush-released single Applause as a "pop emergency" and there was feverish anticipation on the streets of Camden for Lady Gaga's intimate comeback at the opening night of the iTunes Festival.
In the event, the closest we got to an emergency was the singer's backside, exposed for much of this theatrical performance for her little monsters — as she calls her fans — who threw toy pigs in honour of a new song.
Arriving almost 30 minutes late for a show streaming live globally on iTunes, Gaga appeared in black wig and ninja-style costume, brandishing a knife. She was manhandled into a cage by her dancers during Aura, which featured Middle Eastern rhythms, squelchy electronics and Gaga singing "Do you wanna see me naked?".
The New Yorker, 27, was soon stripping off on stage into a skimpy outfit of metallic shells plus bouffant wig for Artpop. While the look may have been inspired by Botticelli, the shimmering synthpop and wailing vocal owed a debt to Annie Lennox.
In a set dominated by unfamiliar material from third album Artpop — due in November — Gaga lost her way on something a "little bit different". Jewels & Drugs, featuring rappers Too $hort and Twista, was not exactly a meeting of minds.
Gaga was more assured on the smutty Sex Dreams and pounding tune Swine, reverting to a natural look to underline its soul-baring lyrics. "Here I am, the human underneath the wigs," she declared.
Confronting her demons apparently required Gaga to wear a glittery pig mask and bang drums with legs akimbo, while dancers performed acrobatics in smoking snouts and spray-painted the stage set.
The precision pop of Applause was almost demure in comparison, a familiar finale to this dizzying, sometimes arduous, comeback.
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Score: 3/5
Thoughts?
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Member Since: 8/18/2013
Posts: 3,296
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People wanted the hits rather than new stuff and Katy delivered on that
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Banned
Member Since: 8/19/2013
Posts: 8,254
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because she was better in their opinion ? if you read the critics you wouldnt ask
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Member Since: 5/10/2012
Posts: 10,996
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So a review from two UK publications is the official consensus now?
I didn't view Perry's performance, so I can't weigh in my judgment quite yet.
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Member Since: 2/17/2010
Posts: 21,811
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Gaga lost touch with the public. She's not entertaining anymore, to say the least.
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Member Since: 3/29/2012
Posts: 28,833
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Quote:
Originally posted by Smithy
People wanted the hits rather than new stuff and Katy delivered on that
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This I guess.
Gaga served better vocals and performance overall though.
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Member Since: 8/16/2011
Posts: 5,414
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Katy's set was mostly old songs what everyone knew, however Gaga performed all brand new tracks. So I think Katy had more advantage? . However 'By The Grace Of God' was better than anything on Gaga's set. Although Gaga had the better vocals I prefer Katy's set.
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Member Since: 5/8/2012
Posts: 15,801
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Katy is the new it girl of the UK!
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Member Since: 10/2/2011
Posts: 43,174
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Probably cause of the songs but you shouldn't vote Katy over Gaga performance-wise
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Member Since: 2/26/2012
Posts: 9,914
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Because Katy is simply better. In every way.
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Member Since: 4/9/2012
Posts: 16,749
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Gaga just didnt connect well. She lip synced most of her set too.
It could just be that the songs were bad. IDK but something was off. She's visibly fallen off. She needs to get her sh*t together because she is so much more talented than Katy for Katy to be surpassing her.
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Member Since: 9/1/2013
Posts: 18,989
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Katy played mostly old tracks and sang for 45 minutes.
Gaga played only new tracks and sang for 70 miinutes with lots of breaks and talking.
Plus Katy is just more popular right now. I enjoyed both shows
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Member Since: 4/10/2012
Posts: 17,020
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Two critics? Fine
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Member Since: 8/19/2013
Posts: 16,407
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Member Since: 6/10/2011
Posts: 12,738
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Wow, two critics. How devastating to Gaga's career. I'm sure she's all broken up about it.
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Member Since: 3/15/2013
Posts: 43,126
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Quote:
Originally posted by ChandlerBing
Because Katy is simply better. In every way.
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This is so not true but i don't expect more from you tbh
Katy was no question but Gaga was just better imo
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Member Since: 3/16/2012
Posts: 7,827
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BTGOG is better than anything gaga could/would ever serve. Anyone who liked gaga's more probably just doesn't understand how a mainstream pop artist could release such a personal song since their fave could never.
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Member Since: 11/23/2011
Posts: 46,048
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Quote:
Originally posted by Smithy
People wanted the hits rather than new stuff and Katy delivered on that
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!
Only reason why Katy had a better score. Vocally and visually, the world knows that GaGa had a more stunning performance.
Quote:
Originally posted by ahauntingnearu
BTGOG is better than anything gaga could/would ever serve. Anyone who liked gaga's more probably just doesn't understand how a mainstream pop artist could release such a personal song since their fave could never.
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lol
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Member Since: 9/7/2012
Posts: 3,625
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Quote:
Originally posted by ahauntingnearu
BTGOG is better than anything gaga could/would ever serve. Anyone who liked gaga's more probably just doesn't understand how a mainstream pop artist could release such a personal song since their fave could never.
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I see you haven't heard speechless yet
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Member Since: 8/27/2012
Posts: 5,464
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The GP just isn't here for Gaga like they were I think By the Grace of God def helped Katy's scores go up. Plus I've seen a lot of people touting that she's "coming back" from her divorce with Russell, so she's got the sympathy factor as well.
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