Katy Perry Is Annoying, But She (Thankfully) Keeps It Brief

From time to time, we like to round up the all-important, all-summarizing last sentences of the biggest new-music reviews. Under consideration in this installment is One Of The Boys, which is Christian pop singer turned Girl Gone Mild Katy Perry’s Glen Ballard/Dr. Luke-assisted effort to break out of one-hit-wonderdom:

• “‘Mannequin,’ a lament about a guy who’s too stoic (‘You’re not a man, you’re just a mannequin!’), recalls Cher’s Eighties catalog. And the acoustic ode ‘Thinking of You,’ which compares an unrequited lover to ‘an Indian summer in the middle of winter,’ is generic Dawson’s Creek schlock. Yes, Perry has a heart, but it sounds like her bustier’s too tight for her to use it. ” [Rolling Stone] • “But Ms. Perry, who wrote or helped write every song here, has an easy way with melody and is best served by producers who give her room to emote. Dave Stewart (of Eurythmics) takes the helm on ‘I’m Still Breathing,’ a calm and certain obituary for a dead relationship. And ‘Thinking of You,’ produced by the underappreciated Butch Walker, is gently and compellingly angry. Turns out that feeling deeply is shocking enough.” [NYT] • “Engineered for short attention spans at just 44 minutes, One of the Boys is still more than enough to make this one long, hot summer for Perry.” [Billboard] • “The problem is not with Katy’s gender-bending, it’s that her heart isn’t in it; she’s just using it to get her places, so she sinks to crass, craven depths that turn One of the Boys into a grotesque emblem of all the wretched excesses of this decade.” [AMG]