Katy Rose

Because I Can

V2

Remember how when Britney Spears shook and shimmied her way up the “Total Request Live” countdown, we were inundated with a horde of blonde-haired, hip-swiveling clones?

Remember Willa Ford? No? Well get ready, because another young, blonde teen pop starlet has unleashed a legion of MTV girl zombies.

The unexpected success of Avril Lavigne at first seemed like an antidote to the plastic bubblegum image-making of the Britneys and Christinas who ruled the world just a few years earlier.

Her earthier, skate-punk girl image and pop songs, not built from whirligig dance beats, offered a fresh alternative for the little sisters who failed to appreciate, the superficial pleasures of Queen Brit. Unfortunately, what seemed like new and different quickly turned as stale and flat as the previous pop empire. Lavigne’s ubiquitous singles (when were they not plastered all over the radio?), the girl’s trendy new fashion sense and even the girl herself were everywhere. She became as hated and as overexposed as the jiggling princesses that came before her.

Only adding fuel to the fire are the record companies shamelessly chipping away the Lavigne monolith by developing their own faux-punk, rebel-grrl upstarts. First we had Fefe Dobson, asking us to take her away. Now we have Katy Rose, panting about being in “Overdrive.”

“Because I Can” is the debut album for Rose, the 17-year-old daughter of a 1970s session player who has worked with acts like Crosby, Stills and Nash. The album certainly reflects that a teenager made it; there’s none of the precociously coy sexuality that marked the previous generations of pop girls. Rose’s lyricism and voice show off the kind of brattiness that are the hallmarks of a true teenager.

Not surprisingly, Rose’s thematic concerns aren’t of a variety any more complex than young love. Considering the girl’s age, that’s not a problem. And her wry lyrics offer a convincing balance between attitude, edge and vulnerability. It’s possible that only a musician this young, one still touched by the naivet