Are commercials looking more like music videos, or are music videos looking more like commercials? And, since they’re more or less the same thing — footage artfully assembled to sell something — was the elision inevitable? In the video for “Teenage Dream,†the second single off Katy Perry’s still (somehow!) unreleased album of the same name, Perry and her very well-muscled love interest cavort with friends on the beach and stretch out in convertibles, looking like they just wandered out of an Urban Outfitters catalogue or an Arizona Jeans commercial, or both — excepting one scene, about two-thirds of the way through, when Perry does her very best My So-Called Life homage, staring shyly at her man in stripped-down makeup, half hidden behind a locker. She looks lonely. It’s kind of sweet, and not at all in a “melt your Popsicle†kind of way — turns out, Angela Chase isn’t a bad look on anyone. Also, a surprising touch: Perry wearing that rare species of music-video lingerie — white, cotton underwear.
