The song had been out and on the radio for a while before I heard it and week or two ago. 'Unconditionally', by Katy Perry, had only being playing for about twenty seconds when I noticed something odd. It's not that Miss Perry's voice is hard on the ear - I find it quite nice actually. It was the very odd pronunciation of the title word which caught my attention. For some reason, she pronounced it repeatedly (thirteen times in fact) with the stress on fifth syllable, rather than the third, making it sound like: 'un-CON-dish-OWN-ally'.
Why she would choose to write and sing the word this way appears to be unexplained, and seems to have created very little buzz over the internet or on the radio. Yet, who pronounces the word 'unconditionally' like this? No-one, in my experience.
This leads me to question the writer's ability with English. Now, English is Katy Perry's first language, so how could she get this so wrong? Either she has a poor understanding of the normal ways of stressing words in English, or she lacks the ability to match the syllabic pattern of the words she uses with the beat of the tune she chooses to put them to.
Her performance in interviews would lead the observer to conclude that she has no problem with getting her pronunciation right when speaking. Therefore we must conclude that she is an incompetent when it comes of writing words which fit the tunes she comes up with (or perhaps the other way around). What I find worrying though, is that despite such a blaring mistake, she was happy to sing it that way, no-one in the recording or producing process intervened to get it right and no-one much since seems to have found it worth commenting on. Most blog comments seem to express admiration for the power of the song or the strength of the lyrics. Yes - she does sing it powerfully and perhaps many people do find the lyrics stirring, but that does not stop it from ending up sounding ridiculous.
A poor grasp of rhythm is not something a musician should be ever be proud of, and the listening public should be awake enough to notice when something does not work. Is it too soon to start despairing?
