Ever the effervescent queen of sugar and girl power, pop sensation Katy Perry satisfies the criteria for success once again with her empowering new album, “Prism.” Since her blockbuster album, “Teenage Dream,” reached the highest amount of No. 1 hits from a single album since Michael Jackson’s “Bad,” fans eagerly awaited her post-divorce and post-documentary album.
With countless awards and a divorce under her belt, Perry has come a long way since her “I Kissed A Girl” days of scandal and leotards. “Prism” enters new conceptual and thematic territory with spiritual references at every turn. “Roar,” the album’s hit single, is already one of the year’s most inspiring anthems. The mid-album ballad “Love Me,” on the other hand, stresses the importance of a healthy self-love as the foundation of any great love affair, which is advice fans hope she will implement in her on-again, off-again relationship with American singer-songwriter John Mayer.
While the lyrical content of “Prism” is uncharted territory for Perry, the beloved bubblegum-pop feel of the album remains the same. Perry’s high energy resonates at its core, as does the sweet lust for life Perry implements in her music.
However, recent interviews with Perry imply this sugary sweetness might no longer be her objective. In an interview with “Billboard” last month, Perry said in the near future she will “probably turn into more of a Joni Mitchell.”
If Perry seeks to achieve Mitchell’s folksy, airy tone on “Prism,” she falls severely short. Though several of the songs deal with heavier emotions, the vocal styles of Perry and Mitchell could not be more different. Perry’s songs are dense with instrumentals, while Mitchell’s sound has always been hollow and airy.
“By The Grace of God” describes Perry’s short-lived contemplation of suicide, a subject close to Mitchell’s personal life. Though these lyrical parallels stand out, the album’s genre stays far away from Mitchell’s folk style. If the album’s spirituality attempts to relate to great folk singers of the 1970s, it is thinly veiled at best.
The songs on “Prism” simply wait to blare inside sorority houses across America. They garner performances doused in peppermints and lollipops, just like Perry’s music should. Though it does not quite clear the lyrical hurdle, “Prism” does show Perry’s growth as an artist and unearths new songwriting grounds that promise Perry’s stardom can only grow from here.
