Dave's 500 Bus Albums No 12 - Katy Perry "Teenage Dream" (2010)

I pick up on a lot of music by hearing a song out of context, generally googling a line of lyric and finding out who it's by. Last year I heard a piece of music I really liked while watching the TV series "Misfits". A lyric search brought up the song "Teenage Dream" by Katy Perry, someone I'd never heard of at the time.

My mate Pete is constantly amazed at the gaps in my current musical knowledge. But he's a Refrigeration Engineer who spends most of his time on the road, listening to Radio 1. I spend most of my time on buses (hence this blog entry), in work, or at home. I'm very rarely in the car, and when I am I don't listen to the radio. In fact I never listen to the radio, so I really don't pick up on recording artists until they have thoroughly saturated the mainstream. I think this is generally a good thing, because it means I have no preconceptions of what I "should" and "shouldn't" be listening to.

So I came at this album completely cold, so to speak, and I really like it. I love the "over-produced" feel of it, and the fact that it's unashamedly a "pop" album. I've got a great fondness for music from this kind of "dance" genre to be honest. I think it's the combination of relentless repetative rhythm and the sheer "wall of sound" feel that I like. I would go so far as to say that almost every song on here could be a single (and they're certainly all ripe for extended remixes). One track in particular - "Circle the Drain" - puts the lie to the idea that this album is full of vacuous and shallow songs. In fact now that I know who Katy Perry is, and who she's married to, the lyrics to "Circle the Drain" seem eerily autobiographical. I'm sure that's not the case though.

Anyway, it's a an album that's made to be played loud, either in the car or while cooking a meal, just so long as you can bang your head around and sing along. This is probably Amy's favourite album as well, so there you go, I share my taste in music with an 8-year old. This is also not an untypical choice of music for me, and would fit nicely on a shelf next to my Sophie Ellis Bextor, Charlotte Church and Lily Allen albums.