When you`re a musician talking about another musician, even the slightest tinder of a commentary can get a brushfire that`s re-ignitable by the merest Google search. It doesn`t matter whether it`s outright criticism or only a vacancy where the diss would go. The public wants feuds, and by golly, it will make them.
Case in point: Swedish pop star Robyn, opening for Katy Perry`s California Dreams tour, made this giggly/pointed comment in a Time Out interview:
You`re opening for Katy Perry this summer-how did that happen?
I was asked by her to do it and thinking it was a safe way of getting to love her audience. It`s larger than mine. [Laughs]
And are you a fan of hers?
You recognise what? I hold to go now. [Giggles]
As disses go, this one`s pretty wink-wink, but fans and haters alike interpreted it the like way: Robyn and Katy Perry have beef. Potentially tour-trampling beef. When Nicki Minaj passing on Britney`s European tour dates can get U.S. sites in a tizzy, you can guess how often of a job this could be, enough that Robyn had to take the rumors down in a mea non culpa MTV interview:
"I remember that girls are always expected to give opinions about each other, and perchance I don`t give an impression about some things, you know? _ We`re ever expected to get thoughts about what the other soul is doing, and I guess that`s silly. You very rarely get asked about another guy as a male artist."
She`s got a point: while male artists certainly raise beef and ignite fan wars, rarely do they prove to the no-explanation-needed level of Britney vs. Christina or, this year, Adele vs. anybody else. But there`s more to the Katy Perry/Robyn un-feud that makes it so plausible at first: the mind of authenticity.
There are the open arguments, of course. Robyn`s a left-field alternative pop star (who used to be a mainstream pop star, but nobody brings that up in these arguments) with an asymmetric haircut and boyish look; Katy Perry`s fully mainstream and fully enhanced with pinup makeup. Robyn`s sung about sex in "Flow with Me," but to our knowledge, whipped cream`s never been shot out of any piece of her costume. Robyn`s videos find her awkwardly punching the air; Katy`s have her lying naked on top of clouds.
More generally, Robyn`s hits-particularly in the Body Talk era-are mostly about championing the outsiders. She`s often the rejected lover, on "Be Mine," or her Royksopp collaboration "The Girl and the Robot," or especially her biggest hit this cycle, "Dancing on My Own." Even steelier songs like "Indestructible" have an underdog narrative built in. All Robyn`s strength, in other words, is bad from solitude, blows and sheer don`t-give-a-fuck. Meanwhile, if Katy Perry mentions the foreigner at all, it`s to pass them a nerd stereotype and sticks a hundred punchlines into it like pushpins.
Take a nearer look at the two artists, however, and things get more complicated. The "artificial" argument, for instance, falls apart like cheap polyester. There`s enough of processing on Robyn`s voice, then and now; meanwhile, Katy Perry claims not to use Autotune, and yet on studio recordings, her vocals tend toward the gruff. Katy Perry`s singles are built from the latest, most ubiquitous sounds in Dr. Luke and Max Martin`s everpresent production catalog-"California Gurls" sounds like "TiK ToK" and so forth-but Robyn`s just mining a somewhat different quarry of dance beats, and she`s got sight of Max Martin in her repertoire anyway. Take "Show Me Love," 100% a token of its time:
And yet if "sexy" equaled "fake" (it doesn`t), Robyn and Katy`s musical personalities and subject matter are rather similar. Both artists have their songs with a light, slightly cheesy wink-and both have had to stand off accusations of being too cutesy. Robyn`s "Fembot," for instance, is just the class of cheeky, gimmicky song Katy Perry loves-if the Swedish singer hadn`t laid claim to lines like "I`ve got a lotta automatic booty applications" or "I`m a very scientifically advanced hot mama," Perry could easily have sung them a few days down the line, perhaps complete with a picture where she`s a spark-shooting femdroid or Snoop Dogg`s robot pal. (Robyn`s got a Snoop collaboration too, incidentally.)
And both Robyn and Katy, at their best, excel at the like thing: cavernous pop songs that are louder than life. In the MTV interview, Robyn called the pre-chorus of "Teenage Dream" "amazing" and said that she wished she wrote it herself. It`s a complete example: not but is "Teenage Dream" Katy`s best song by far, but it makes love, teenage or otherwise, sound just this position of epic, realer than life. "Dancing on My Own" does the like thing.
So it shouldn`t be that surprising that the singers of two of 2010′s biggest songs are touring together. All these similarities, in a way, are beside the point. Katy`s a fan of Robyn`s work, Robyn`s a fan of at least some of Katy`s work, and anyone listening can be a fan of both, either or neither. There`s no motivation to reason about who`s "real" and who`s "fake"-the sole thing fake is the distinction.
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I hate when pop stars try to act like there better than other pop stars
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