But wait, hold on one second. Doesn’t this story sound a little too familiar? Because the last time I checked, this very same success story actually occurred six years ago to a young Canadian punkette-wannabe in a wife beater and a tie. What was her name again? April? Advil? Oh, Avril, that’s right. Good old Avril Lavigne.
Now that you’ve thoroughly dusted off the old memories of that waif (not that you really wanted to), it’s time to step back and look at the curiosity just presented to you: Katy Perry is the new Avril Lavigne. I know it’s a little hard to relate the two at first, seeing as the former doesn’t necessarily emulate the latter’s sartorial or musical style, but ideologically, they are the same woman with six years of pop cultural shift between them.
When Lavigne arrived on the mainstream music scene in 2002, she was seen as a breath of fresh air. Punk with the authenticity of a Hot Topic store, this “sk8trgrl” didn’t look, sound or act like the bubblegum princesses that were popular acts at the time. Instead, she prided herself on her rock sensibilities, “don’t mess with this chick” attitude and ability to be one of the guys. That these rock sensibilities turned out to be nothing more than repackaged Alanis Morrisette-lite alt-pop doesn’t take away from the fact that Lavigne ushered in a new wave of female recording artists whose guitar-infused love songs all of a sudden made them believe they were rock stars. Miley Cyrus eats the pie that Ashlee Simpson and Kelly Clarkson baked and that Lavigne mixed all by her lonesome.
But now its Perry’s turn for a slice of that pie. Try to argue that her smash single “I Kissed a Girl,” that screw-the-establishment, electropop nod to ’80s new-wave (with a pseudo-lesbian twist!), couldn’t have been done by Avril. Their sounds are practically interchangeable, their voices distinguishable from one another, but not terribly unique. Although they both claim to be from the “I’m a girl and I’ll do what I want!” school of Third-Wave aughties pop, their spectrum of song topics generally ranges from boys to ... boys. It’s always about a boy with them. Even their supposedly feminist mantras (Perry’s “Fingerprints,” Lavigne’s “Nobody’s Fool”) are clearly directed at boys who don’t understand their need to be their own kick-ass selves.
With her bright colors and neo-’40s/’50s floral print dresses, the ultra-femme brunette Perry may not resemble iconic Lavigne in her golden years of boys’ black skater pants and straight, plain blonde locks, but don’t let the chanteuse fool you—she, too, is just another one of the boys (at least, that’s what she’d like you to think). In fact, “One of the Boys” is both the name of her album and the first song off of it. (Although in the song she proclaims, interestingly, that “I wanna be a flower / Not a dirty weed / And I wanna smell / Like roses / Not a baseball team / And I swear / Maybe one day/ Your gonna / Wanna make out with me”—so much for screwing the establishment, Katy.)
You might argue that Katy Perry doesn’t see herself as a punkette as much as she does a hipster. Well, you’re right. But ideologically, the middle school punkers of yesteryear are the college hipsters of today—trying so exceedingly hard to reject the mainstream that they’ve actually commoditized themselves. Both groups no longer represent the kinds of subversive principles they originally stood behind. Instead, they’re more like fashion statements in desperate bids for anti-banality. (Good luck with that.) If Avril Lavinge is a poseur extraordinaire, then please tell me, what is Perry? How can the summer’s number one hit, her song waxing rhapsodic about the joys of lesbian-chic, come from someone who, in fact, never actually kissed a girl until a few weeks ago? She’s a fashion statement unto herself, not unlike her predecessor. I just hope her boyfriend don’t mind it.
Robyn Bahr isn’t going to try to pretend she doesn’t blast “One of the Boys” in the comfort of her own room. But even she doesn’t have Avril on her iTunes.