Katy Perry’s Dressin’ Up leaked online last night. The leaked version is in low quality but it still gives the idea of the whole song. I’m a bit concerned about the lack of bass in the first verse so I’m hoping that’s due to the way the song was re-encoded to remove the watermark.

The intro to Dressin’ Up is identical to the demo. The vocals on the first verse are more produced and have a slight reverb effect on them. Midway through the first verse, the beat kicks in and unlike the demo it slows the track down with a dubstep effect. The demo had a fast pace which really added to the song.

By the time the chorus hits, the song gets back on track and redeems itself with a punchier, louder production than the demo. The chorus is going to sound amazing in clubs. The only real difference vocally in the chorus comes at the end when the last “dressin’ up” is put through a vocoder.

The second verse is much, much better than the first. Although it’s not faster, the production is a lot edgier and like I wrote in a previous blog, it sounds similar to E.T.

The middle eight is a mixture of good and bad. It doesn’t start off too well. There’s a lot of vocoder used and it slows the song down until Katy sings “beads of sweat drip down your neck,
breathing deep, gaining speed, about to peak, trembling, trembling, trembling” which speeds up suddenly and gives the song momentum as it leads into the final chorus. The faster half of the middle eight has become my favourite part of the song.

Overall, I’m really happy with the finished version of Dressin’ Up, as long as the high quality version has some bass in the first verse.

You can listen to Dressin’ Up below:

Teenage Dream: The Complete Confection will be officially released on March 26th.