Katy Perry's 'Teenage Dream' defined an era of pop – but also marked the end of one

As the first quarter of the 21st century draws to a close, Billboard looks back at the 25 greatest pop stars of the past 25 years. Below, we take a deeper look at our pop star Katy Perry's No.25 peak and how her sophomore album defined a moment in pop and music history, even as that moment came to an end.

When Katy Perry's single “Last Friday Night (TGIF)” reached No. 1 on the Hot 100 in August 2011, she became Bulletin board History: For the first time since Michael Jackson, an artist topped the chart with five different songs from the same album. For 14 months, Perry and her third album, Teenage Dreamhad dominated the Hot 100, with “California Gurls,” then “Teenage Dream,” then “Firework,” then “ET”? star and her five ubiquitous singles topped the Hot 100 for a total of 19 weeks during that time.

With Max Martin, Dr. Luke, Stargate, and another up-and-coming young gun named Benny Blanco in her corner, Perry crafted an era-defining bulletproof pop album—one that topped the Billboard 200 and is now certified diamond by the RIAA. But while Teenage Dream marked Perry's transition to full-fledged pop superstardom and heralded a decade in which she would top the Hot 100 three more times and headline the Super Bowl halftime show, it also represented a broader shift in the music industry and the way the public consumed the music.

“Maybe the CDs will disappear next time I'm out [an] album… so I wanted to go out with a bang so people would remember it,” Perry said when she revealed Teenage Dreampin-up-inspired artwork just weeks before the album's release in August 2010. Of course, by the time her next album was released just over three years later, Spotify and streaming had become a cornerstone of the music business, TV viewing of YouTube had proliferated and Instagram had escaped a soon-to-be-released one. photo app to a staple of Facebook's social media empire. The Internet had changed – and so had the way listeners digested pop music.

Random consciousness aside, that probably wasn't Perry's headspace in 2010. Even though album sales at the industry's top tier have declined since their turn-of-the-century peak, Perry and Capitol Records ran back the tried-and-tested record book : two titanic pre-album singles to drive a clever marketing campaign and excitement, followed by four cleverly developed singles after the project hit the record stores (the sixth, “The One That Got Away,” did not top the Hot 100; but it was by no means low, peaking at No. 3 more than 16 months later Teenage Dreamrelease of).

In retrospect, the music is similarly transitional. Teenage Dream it's the epitome of post-recession, Obama-era pop: big, brash synths and the embrace of EDM. Cheeky night parties tonight. and a few questionable lyrics here and there that wouldn't make a big pop release today. As much as Teenage Dream It was Perry's achievement, it was also Max Martin's, who co-produced four of his five No. 1s. Despite his successful 00s, today the album clearly marks the beginning of his 10s renaissance. In 2010 and 2011, he scored two more No. 1s (with Pink and Britney Spears) along with other big hits (“Dynamite” by Taio Cruz, “DJ Got Us Fallin' In Love” by Usher) and in the following years he were bringing an onslaught of Martin-produced hits from Taylor Swift, Ariana Grande, The Weeknd and more.

Perry's 2008 singles “I Kissed a Girl” and “Hot n Cold” were original for her Teenage Dream era, in large part because – like “Teenage Dream” and “California Gurls” – their credits include the trio of Martin, Dr. Luke and Benny Blanco. Luke and Blanco defined this era through their work with Kesha and a host of other artists. But where Blanco was a pop staple from the late '00s through the '10s – when he helped create ubiquitous hits from the likes of Justin Bieber and Ed Sheeran – Luke soon became a non-factor, marginalized by allegations of misconduct against him. , though he would go on to rekindle his career through hits with artists like Doja Cat and Nicki Minaj. (Dr. Luke denied the accusations, by her former collaborator Kesha, and sued for defamation; the extended legal battle ended in 2023 with the two sides settling the counterclaim out of court.) Stargate, which co-produced “Firework “, along with several other key singles of the era, also soon faded in influence as the '10s musical landscape settled.

But much more than defining the aesthetics of the era, Teenage Dream he also took over a music business in transition. For decades, pop megablockbusters have enjoyed extended runs where every single mattered – and while Perry worked each of the album's singles to completion like an '80s superstar, she also applied a distinctly modern sensibility. For example, No. 4 and No. 5 singles added Kanye West and Missy Elliott (on “ET” and “Last Friday Night,” respectively), extending those singles' lifespans and commercial peaks along the way. Although some industry watchers cried foul at the time, such chart-boosting maneuvers would soon become commonplace for major pop artists.

Streaming gave artists some flexibility – by the mid-1990s, surprise became the fashionable strategy for superstars – and reduced the need for big singles to extend an album's longevity. Take Taylor Swift's Department of Tormented Poetswhich continues to dominate the Billboard 200 despite no singles with similar commercial strands. (The other side of that coin: If Perry's peak coincided with the streaming era, it's easy to imagine a new album charting all or most of its tracks on the Hot 100.) Streaming has radically reoriented the way with which the singles interacted with the wider pop world – possibly at the expense of the year cycles and which made it feel, a little, like a pop artist had really taken over the world.

Perry's reign in 2010 and 2011 was among the last of its kind, as the sun was setting on the era where fourth, fifth and even sixth singles still mattered. And with each passing year — even as Hot 100 records tumble thanks to the vagaries of the streaming economy and modern chart classification — her record of five Hot 100 No. time. No artist, not even Swift, has scored four Hot 100 No. 1s from a single work since then. Still, there's a reason why even with the old paradigm, Perry was only the second artist to accomplish the feat: She had the classic singles to back it up.