Katy Perry

Katy Perry kissed a girl, and she liked it. She had an ex-boyfriend who was "gay" but didn't like boys. These are the biographical pillars, the paradoxical details, on which Perry's pop stardom are built. And they're pretty ingenious. However, One of the Boys, Perry's major-label debut, is not especially original. Her voice wails like Alanis Morissette, and her rebellious lyrics are ripped from Avril Lavigne's punk songbook. But Perry, like her eternal teenage angst, survives — remarkably so, in fact. Though the singer's emotional registers are limited and her bi curiosity is commercialized, Perry's album is a soundtrack fit for the sun-drenched dramas of The Hills, The City or whatever Sapphic realities MTV creates next. Like the plots of those shows, Perry's problems — bad boys, unrequited love, metrosexual exes — are simple enough to be universal. And like the shows' actors, Perry sails into her problems with enough charisma to leave something compelling in her wake.