E.T. - Single Review (EDIT: Kany West feature reviewed)

Official Single Cover

Sometime in May/June of '10, Katy Perry's demo for "E.T." then labeled "E.T. (Futuristic Lover) leaked and up until then, all I had heard from the singer was "I Kissed a Girl", "Hot N' Cold" and "Waking Up In Vegas". Though my friend had burned me her album "One Of The Boys", I actually never listened to it until that summer, and I was very pleasantly surprised. I ended up getting pretty attached to the song, the chorus especially reminded me of another song, not entirely sure which one, some say t.A.T.u.'s "All The Things She Said", the repetition in both songs is similar.

I don't need to say anything more about Dr. Luke, he for sure knows what he's doing, and he co-produced this with frequent collaborator Max Martin and newer producer Ammo, a.k.a. Joshua Coleman, who also co-produced "Your Love Is My Drug", "We R Who We R", and "Check It Out". The writing for the song has the same whimsy as many of Katy's others, but she pulls it off without being corny, which, for a song called "E.T.", is quite a feat. The single has a great *thump thump clap* beat playing over a bleeping melody followed by a powerful chorus driven by a rapid hi-hat beat, swooshing electro gusts and an unintelligible noise someone is moaning, appended by a simple synth and chord repetition on the bridge. 

In my opinion, the demo is better than the album version, listen here. Maybe because that's what I grew to love first, but there are pros and cons to both; the demo of course is not as produced as the finalized product, so instrumental wise, not as great, however vocally, Katy sounds over-produced and the singing is much simpler on the final version, they take out some of her distinctive voice during the verses, especially on the runs on the emphasized last words of the lines (could you be the devil, could you be an angel). The song did not initially cross my mind as a single choice, I would've expected "Peacock" or "Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.) as it is a rather dark-sounding song, but its is unexpected, which is something Katy loves to be, so we'll see how it fares on the charts, strong downloads when it was released as a part of iTunes Countdown to the album made it peak at 42 on the Hot 100.

EDIT: Katy has since released the single that will be impacting radios and it features a couple verses from Kanye West. This union is a good example of a couple things; the difference between a song originally intended to be a collaboration (California Gurls with Snoop Dogg) and one that wasn't, compromising morals in order to sell more records (wasn't it Katy who Tweeted after the Taylor Swift scandal "FUCK U KANYE. IT'S LIKE U STEPPED 0N A KITTEN." which has surprisingly not been deleted) and a good idea gone awry.

It's not that the +Kanyeezy version is totally bad, it's that when compared to the original, it falls flat. It doesn't sound like he really grasped the concept of the song, or he just didn't care. His verses consisted of him talking about, what else, getting girls, sex, wearing nice threads, sex, being a legend and sex. So he really went out of the box with this one.

Bottom line: it's interesting to see someone's artistic interpretation of the song's theme. But please play the album version.

Official Single Cover