The Summer of Girly Pop

Katy Perry’s breakout moment, in the late two-thousands, had a type of frivolity and irreverence that feels difficult to summon now. Her début single, “I Kissed a Girl,” from 2008, is just what it sounds like, a giddy retelling of some lightly illicit experimentation. “I kissed a girl just to try it / I hope my boyfriend don’t mind it,” she sings in the chorus, as the anthemic track marches to the forceful beat of a kick drum. “Teenage Dream,” Perry’s album from 2010, was a frothy delight that exploited the most beloved tropes and the broadest promise of American pop music: eternal youth. The title track hewed closely to the theme: “We can dance until we die / You and I, we’ll be young forever.”