Katy Perry's "Woman's World" took a lot of shit, but I don't know if we've taken a hard hard look at Ava Max's "Kings and Queens" (a top 20) for the reasons she thought she could get away with it.
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The hook is baffling to me. The overly layered vocals, the hook, the pace of the vocals, every single note feels like a joke. Like a pop producer transported from 2010 and only heard Fight Song for a month wrote a pop song
Ava's song has the same melody as "You Give Love a Bad Name" and "If You Were a Woman (And I Was A Man.)" Apparently the chorus tune is really popular, given it was put into a bunch of other one hit wonders in the 90s. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhlts67hevg&list=LL&index=36
i didn't have to see whatever was in that woman's world video with kings and queens though. some of those shots were... not necessary.
not enough people put some of the blame for the interpolation hell we've been in for a few years on ava max though. she's at least partially responsible
Part of that is I feel like the expectations for Ava Max were pretty low. (What other songs of hers have charted? "Sweet But Psycho"?) Katy Perry, on the other hand, has a bunch of bangers to her name. Kings and Queens is good for Ava Max; Woman's World is bad for Katy Perry.
just read the lyrics for the first time and i think the sound might be doing a lot of the heavy lifting. it's so hyper produced that i only latch onto the vague sense of the lyric before i'm blared to the next one. the chorus was a trend on tiktok and i didn't get how odd it was until now
I have a feeling it's because Ava's song is decently catchy and intentionally ridiculous while Katy's is bland musically and has the subtlety of a flaming sledgehammer. Not that I'm a super big Ava Max fan either, but man Katy dropped the ball HARD last year.
It’s cause Katy worked with Dr. Luke. More people were happy to hate on Woman’s World because Katy was showing blatant hypocrisy by working with someone who has been accused of r*pe
It's hard not to hate a song called Woman's World produced by Dr. Luke before you even hear it. It's the most heinous example from the music industry so far of female empowerment as a soulless commodity.
I can think of several key differences here, the most cynical being that no one cared enough about Ava Max to scruitinize her that closely; more charitably, her song doesn't come off nearly as obviously insincere as Katy's does. Also, those guitars sound pretty good, not gonn lie.
i think those are both right. the differences are not big between them but there is absolutely a tired, last-gasp quality to "Woman's World" that "Kings & Queens" does not have
I mean it didn't have the clusterfuck of problems Katy Perry's had including being a song about "fEmiInISM" with an actual sexual predator producing it, probably because she wanted a hit and thought doing that would somehow make fetch happen, but it's NEVER going to happen. Also the music video_
for Katy Perry's is so intentionally offensive and awful in a way that isn't shared by the Kings and Queens video, and Ava Max has the excuse at being new to fame and that her song actually sounds like she's trying to be supportive. On the other hand, that sincerity kinds of makes it more boring too
tangentially related in terms of getting away with it but how are we as a society letting david guetta and his friends' yearly old song sample chart every single time
I think it really does just come down to Dr Luke, the girlboss of it all gets extra obnoxious when he's involved. Plus this was Ava at her artistic peak, relatively speaking, so there's more goodwill.
Perry has the energy of the kid at Tee-Ball who keeps swinging the bat just that *little bit* too high and tapping the top of the ball each swing while never knocking it off.
I think expectations for ava’s music is much lower, kings&queens is a catchier song while w/ Katy, ppl wanted teenage dream so when women world came out&its a poorly written(even for katy),poorly produced song abt women empowerment w/ dr.luke as producer ppl pushed back hard
I think one factor is that Kings and Queens caught the tail end of the girlboss pop era (it probably would've went top 10 in 2015) and rode Ava's then rising-momentum, whereas Woman's World was stuck in that era far too late.
I would also say Ava throws herself into Kings & Queens a lot more. It's a ridiculous song but you can tell she believes it whereas Katy -usually- goes full force but sounds like she's going through the motions on Woman's World.
I'd developed a grudging tolerance for this song for being so incredibly stupid that it kinda came out the other side, or at least that's how I felt at the time, I don't know if I'd be that charitable now.
i used to work at a taco bell (i've since found better work thank christ) and this song was on rotation. i hate it with a burning passion and i thank every divine power known to man every day that i never have to hear it at my current job
That’s cuz it’s lifted from “If You Were a Woman (And I Was a Man)”, which Child wrote for Bonnie Tyler then rewrote with Jon and Richie into “You Give Love a Bad Name” later
Honestly, even before the election squandered our hopes that Americans care about ANYTHING important as a collective nation, people still thought Woman's World was a lousy, problematic single.
If anything, Mango Mussolini's re-election just makes the song look even less appealing in hindsight.
Yeah I don't think either song is particularly subtle - one is just catchy enough to skate by and the other is so tuneless that the only conversation that could be made about it WAS the horrible lyrics.
Currently googling these Ava lyrics though.. and man. It's wild that this was released lmao.
I agree with this too, even if Kings and Queens is kiiiinda dumb the melody of that Bonnie Tyler song that was reused for Bon Jovi is just such a powerful piece of music. Kings and Queens is certainly the worst use of it, but still
Plus at least the verses of Kings and Queens sound…finished. Woman’s World is just Katy saying random vaguely empowering words and phrases up until a chorus with an annoying melody
Agreed. There certainly isn't anything subtle or profound about Kings and Queens, but it at least has an easy to track narrative that's fun to shout while dancing. Katy's song is just pure sound bites, which makes it unbearable.
I think most people's take away from Ava is "you're all kings and queens, now dance". The lyrics could not matter less once the beat hits. Katy otoh is making a really lame political statement lol.
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https://youtu.be/GFlzCOhjTtc?si=ejwst-YXdSqGr6mu
not enough people put some of the blame for the interpolation hell we've been in for a few years on ava max though. she's at least partially responsible
Personally I think kings and queens is fine, it felt like Ava Max was having more fun with the concept at least
And yes, I know. "Subtext" in a song as non-subtle as this. But based on how my friends react to it and where it gets played, I think it's there.
Woman's World was a blatant vanity project.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jH1RNk8954Q
https://bsky.app/profile/machinegunphilly.bsky.social/post/3lfs4vwohrk2g
2024 showed that it is, in fact, NOT a woman’s world, and we are NOT lucky to be living in it.
If anything, Mango Mussolini's re-election just makes the song look even less appealing in hindsight.
https://youtu.be/GkuYpdwhqbY?t=99
the Annoying Metalhead Brigade is here to help(?)
Currently googling these Ava lyrics though.. and man. It's wild that this was released lmao.