Review Summary: On Cannibal, Ke$ha's going all the way.
It's hard to get attention these days as a pop artist. Just making great music often isn't enough, especially if you have a lot of peers doing exactly the same thing, though there are a few tricks that pop artists can to use these days to get the attention they want so badly: infectious beats, catchy choruses and, thanks to Ke$ha, shock. While it all started pretty innocent on her debut album
Animal, the best example of that being that she brushes her teeth with Jack Daniels (
Tick Tock) or that she'd rather have sex with someone she doesn't know (
Blah Blah Blah). Apparently
Animal was only a warm-up, because on
Cannibal she's going all the way.
Aside from the songs about Ke$ha's fantasies of eating people (
Cannibal), casual sex (
Sleazy) and partying (
We R Who We R), she's also showing her soft spot on
The Harold Song where she actually manages to sound convincingly cute while singing about not wanting to sleep alone at night. Cute, that's actually a good way to describe the second half of the album, for example the 'so stupid it's adorable'
Grow A Pear, about a guy who (surprise!) needs to grow up before he can date her. All this is rolling about on a simple but effective beat, which brings us to the best thing about the album: it's filled with modern, catchy dance tunes which will get to you one way or another.
Sadly,
Cannibal as a whole isn't as innovative or infectious as its beats try to make you believe. A lot of the songs on this EP sound like they have been done before, notably by Katy Perry on her
Teenage Dream. Luckily, Ke$ha actually has something to sing about, which was a big issue I had with
Teenage Dream. Not that Ke$ha's lyrics are so great, but they are sufficient enough to not ruin anything. I am also wondering why this sweet little girl is auto-tuning herself, as she doesn't need it and it takes a lot of charm away from her voice. The exeption to this is
Grow A Pear where it makes her cutesy performance even more adorable. Lucky save there Ke$ha.
Cannibal takes the dirty part of Ke$ha to the next level, but one can only wonder how far she is planning to go with this, as it does raise a few questions about Ke$ha's further career in music. But for now,
Cannibal suffices as a fine record which reminds us that commercial songs don't always have to be bad. Sure, the auto-tune is totally unnecessary and the lyrical execution might be a bit childish, but
Cannibal still sounds great as a whole. Take that, Katy!
