This came out in 2004 – or at least that’s when I got it. Here’s what I said about it back then (with some minor editing):
She’s sweet 16. She swears more than Liz Phair. She supposedly has a troubled past. And she has a video provocative enough to make any male viewer who’s old enough to vote feel like a guilty little Humbert Humbert after just one viewing.
Meet Katy Rose, the latest bad-girl Lolita in the pop-tart pantheon — and a young woman whose motivation for making an album seems to be brazenly broadcast in its title: Because I Can. But she didn’t do it all herself. She had plenty of help from keyboardist dad Kim Bullard — a veteran session man and alumnus of CSN and Poco — who co-wrote, produced and engineered these dozen slickly generic cuts, which deftly aim for a sound (and a marketing niche) somewhere between the bruised angst of Fiona Apple, the chart-loving pop of Avril Lavigne and the foul-mouthed indie rock of Phair. If there’s a weak link in the whole campaign, it might be Katy’s inferior vocals, which are flimsier than a teenager’s excuses and shallower than an episode of The O.C. Katy Rose may live up to her potential someday, but for now, we can all learn a lesson from this: Just because you can doesn’t necessarily mean you should.
