Katy Perry’s ‘Teenage Dream’ Defined a Pop Era — But Also Marked the End of One

With the primary quarter of the twenty first century coming to an finish, Billboard has been trying again on the 25 Best Pop Stars of the Previous 25 Years. Under, we take a deeper look into the height of our No. 25 pop star, Katy Perry, and the way her sophomore major-label album outlined a second in pop and music business historical past, at the same time as that second was coming to its shut.

When Katy Perry’s single “Final Friday Night time (T.G.I.F.)” hit No. 1 on the Sizzling 100 in August 2011, it made Billboard historical past: For the primary time since Michael Jackson, an artist had topped the chart with 5 completely different songs from the identical album. For 14 months, Perry and her second major-label album, Teenage Dream, had dominated the Sizzling 100, with “California Gurls,” then “Teenage Dream,” then “Firework,” then “E.T.”; the star and her 5 ubiquitous singles held the Sizzling 100’s prime slot for a mixed 19 weeks over that interval. 

With Max Martin, Dr. Luke, Stargate, and a still-rising younger gun named Benny Blanco in her nook, Perry constructed a bulletproof, era-defining pop album – one which topped the Billboard 200 and is at this time licensed diamond by the RIAA. However whereas Teenage Dream marked Perry’s transition into full-fledged pop famous person and heralded a decade the place she’d prime the Sizzling 100 three extra occasions and headline the Tremendous Bowl halftime present, it additionally represented a broader sea change within the music enterprise and the best way audiences consumed music. 

 “Perhaps CDs will likely be extinct subsequent time I put out [an] album… so I wished to exit with a bang for individuals to recollect this,” Perry stated when she revealed Teenage Dream‘s pin-up-inspired art work a number of weeks earlier than the album’s August 2010 launch. Positive sufficient, by the point she launched her subsequent album a bit of over three years later, Spotify and streaming had develop into a cornerstone of the music enterprise, YouTube’s viewership had multiplied a number of occasions over and Instagram had gone from a soon-to-be-released picture app to a key part of Fb’s social media empire. The web had modified – and so had the best way listeners digested pop music. 

Incidental prescience apart, this was seemingly not Perry’s headspace in 2010. At the same time as album gross sales on the business’s prime tier dwindled from their turn-of-the-century peak, Perry and Capitol Information ran again the examined report launch playbook: two titanic pre-album singles to steer a savvy advertising and marketing marketing campaign and juice pleasure, adopted by 4 well deployed singles after the undertaking hit report shops (the sixth, “The One That Received Away,” didn’t prime the Sizzling 100, however was no chart slouch, peaking at No. 3 greater than 16 months after Teenage Dream‘s launch).  

Looking back, the music is equally transitional. Teenage Dream epitomizes post-recession, Obama-era pop: huge, brash synths and the embrace of EDM; unabashed tonight’s-the-night celebration vibes; and some questionable lyrics right here and there that wouldn’t make a serious pop launch at this time. As a lot as Teenage Dream was Perry’s accomplishment, it was additionally Max Martin’s, who co-produced 4 of its 5 No. 1s; regardless of his profitable ’00s, at this time the album clearly marks the beginning of his ’10s renaissance. In 2010 and 2011, he notched two different No. 1s (with Pink and Britney Spears) together with different huge hits (Taio Cruz’s “Dynamite,” Usher’s “DJ Received Us Fallin’ In Love”), and the subsequent few years would deliver an onslaught of Martin-produced hits by Taylor Swift, Ariana Grande, The Weeknd and others. 

Perry’s 2008 singles “I Kissed a Woman” and “Sizzling N Chilly” had been the prototype for her Teenage Dream period, largely as a result of – like “Teenage Dream and “California Gurls” – their credit embody the triumvirate of Martin, Dr. Luke and Benny Blanco. Luke and Blanco outlined this period, via their work with Kesha and a slew of different artists. However the place Blanco is a vital pop throughline from the late ’00s to the ’10s – when he helped craft ubiquitous hits by the likes of Justin Bieber and Ed Sheeran – Luke quickly grew to become a non-factor, marginalized by the allegations of misconduct in opposition to him, though he’d go onto to reignite his profession via hits with artists like Doja Cat and Nicki Minaj. (Dr. Luke denied the allegations, from former collaborator Kesha, and countersued for defamation; the prolonged authorized battle led to 2023 with the 2 events settling the countersuit out of court docket.) Stargate, which co-produced “Firework,” together with a number of different key singles from the period, additionally quickly pale in affect because the musical panorama of the ’10s settled into place. 

However excess of defining the period’s aesthetic, Teenage Dream additionally captured a music enterprise in transition. For many years, pop megablockbusters loved protracted rollouts the place each single mattered – and whereas Perry labored every of the album’s singles to the hilt, like an ‘80s famous person may’ve, she additionally utilized a distinctly trendy sensibility. As an example, on singles Nos. 4 and 5 she added Kanye West and Missy Elliott (to “E.T.” and “Final Friday Night time,” respectively), extending the lifespans and business ceilings of these singles alongside the best way. Although some business onlookers cried foul on the time, such chart-boosting maneuvers would quickly develop into commonplace for giant pop artists. 

Streaming afforded a sure flexibility to artists – by the mid-’10s, the shock launch grew to become the stylish technique for superstars – and diminished the necessity for main singles to increase an album’s longevity. Take Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Division, which continues to dominate the Billboard 200 regardless of missing singles with related business legs. (The opposite facet of that coin: Had Perry’s peak coincided with the streaming age, it’s simple to think about a brand new album from her charting all or most of its tracks on the Sizzling 100.) Streaming has basically reoriented how singles work together with the broader pop world – probably on the expense of the year-plus cycles that made it really feel, a bit of, like a pop artist had really taken over the world. 

Perry’s reign in 2010 and 2011 was among the many final of its variety, because the solar set on the period the place fourth, fifth and even sixth singles nonetheless actually mattered. And with each passing yr – at the same time as Sizzling 100 data fall because of idiosyncrasies of the streaming economic system and trendy chart tabulation – her report of 5 Sizzling 100 No. 1s from a single album appears more and more untouchable, like sure gaudy stats from baseball’s dead-ball period. No artist, not even Swift, has even notched 4 Sizzling 100 No. 1s from a undertaking since. Nonetheless, there’s a purpose why even underneath the outdated paradigm, Perry was solely the second artist to realize the feat: She had the basic singles to again it up.