22 August 2013
The Katy Perry of 2024, up to her oxters in derision and controversy with the flop of her single ‘Woman’s World’, could do with a bit of the ‘Roar’ spirit right now. I won’t knock anyone for getting some sort of solace or inspiration out of it; the world is a dreadful place and if ‘Roar’ happened to get you through a valley or over a hill then that’s fair enough.
Anyway, in a timely boost to Katy Perry’s team morale, I find plenty that’s laudable in ‘Roar’. As a pop song it’s breezy, it builds expertly to a humongous chorus, and it’s catchy. ‘Roar’ also gives us brief respite from Katy’s regular wink-wink crassness – the usual try-hard goofy video aside, she plays this with a straight bat and the triumphant, skyscraping chorus is something she actually does well.
Where ‘Roar’ outstays its welcome for me is in the incessant vapidity of its generic inspo-quote lyrics, like a screen-reader scroll through some trainee life-coach’s first Insta stories: pasting in trite, tired platitudes like “I stood for nothing / so I fell for everything” and “I went from zero / to my own hero” is just condescendingly unoriginal and naff. And the video shows that even in sincerity mode Perry can’t shed her frat-girl skin. Despite the track’s merits and noble intentions, ‘Roar’ ultimately congeals into something superficial, calculated and wearying. Whimper.
