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Katy Perry’s #1 song California Gurls just broke a 17-year record for the most plays in one week.
So what is this song about and how do we talk to our kids about its message? Glad you asked.
If you haven’t heard Katy Perry’s song California Gurls featuring Snoop Dog, then maybe you haven’t been outside your house. 🙂 Because if you’ve walked into a Wal Mart, a Target, a Best Buy, or taken your kids to swim practice… anywhere where they’re playing secular music… then you’ve heard the song.
A week after reaching the chart’s summit, Katy Perry’s “California Gurls,” featuring Snoop Dogg, rewrites the mark for most weekly plays in the 17-year history of Billboard’s Pop Songs radio airplay chart.
“California Gurls” logged 11,816 plays among the survey’s 132 panelists, an average of 90 plays per station, in the chart’s tracking week of June 21-27, according to Nielsen BDS. The song passes the 11,224 plays tallied by previous record-holder Ke$ha’s “TiK ToK” on the chart dated Feb. 6, 2010.
What is this song about? Watch the music video (with her lying naked face down in a cloud) and you’ll easily discover what Katy Perry’s intention is– I talked about that a little in this blog last week. But one of our ministry’s writers Dave Urbanski goes a little deeper with a brand new piece of curriculum he wrote using this catchy little song to jumpstart a discussion about where we get fulfillment. In this discussion piece, Dave provokes teenagers to ask the sincere question: To what extent have we considered the message this very, very catchy and supremely popular tune is communicating?
I encourage you to take a peek at that free resource for a great discussion, including scripture and discussion questions.
Posted in Entertainment Media, Music, Parenting, Youth Culture, Youth Ministry Planning | | Leave A Comment
This can be such a minefield. I just asked the kids that were singing this song on our mission trip a couple weeks ago to stop. Didn’t go into an explanation. I don’t want to introduce 12 year olds to terms they don’t already know (what exactly does “melt your popsicle” mean?)! It was a similar situation several years ago when kids would always be doing the Soulja Boy dance. I didn’t want to explain why “Superman” is actually extremely vulgar and not a reference to the Man of Steel.
By the way, the kids switched to singing “Baby” by Justin Bieber. So much better…