Wait a second. Katy, with everything at stake for her first new song since 2010, got together with Bonnie McKee, her collobarator on “Teenage Dream”, “TGIF”, “California Gurls” and came up with a rewrite Sara Breille’s “Brace”. Wow, come backs aren’t what they used to.
“Brave” is a very recent Sara song, its on her tedious The Blessed Unrest and is a singer songwriter empowerment song with a good drum pattern leading her through her so obvious lyric (it actually sounds like a rap pop song -maybe a Big Sean song?, on the verses) as she bullies a friend into facing a lover. It is pretty fucking dreadful.
“Roar” is an answer song, the girl being told to be “Brave” responds by being “brave” on “Roar”. “Roar” is ok, it is kinda strange how much difference the production makes because it is essentially the same song with an additional hook at the bridge at the end of the chorus. Bubblegum, yes, a chewy gobby glammy song which would be much better if it was much better without asinine “eye of the tiger, eye of the champion’ cliches if it wasn’t such a mess of a rip of. Remember Lady gaga’s “Born This Way rip on “Express Yourself”, though Sara took the plagiarism with much more grace: an “all love. all good” twitter post.
But the larger question is, couldn’t Katy have picked anything stronger for the first song? My sense is this is a really bad state of affairs. Will it get to number one? Sure. Will i be “Teenage Dreams”, I don’t see that happening.
Is the “arg arg arg” enough of a hook to pull the mediocrity by its bootstraps into the collective unconscious. Stay tuned.
Brave – Sara Bareilles – C-
Roar – Katy Perry – C+