"Peacock" is a song by American singer Katy Perry, taken from her third studio album, Teenage Dream (2010). The song was written by Perry alongside Ester Dean and Stargate, the latter group also producing the song. Because the dance-pop song was filled with suggestive lyrics pertaining to male genitalia, Capitol Records initially opposed the idea of including it on her record. Similar to what happened with another song of hers – "I Kissed a Girl" (2008) – she refused to withdraw it from the record. The song was initially released as a Radio Promotional Single with focusing on the Billboard Dance Club Songs on September 6, 2010. On March 26, 2012, a remix version by Cory Enemy and Mia Moretti was later released as a promotional single on iTunes. "Peacock" was panned by music critics and, musically, was compared to the 1980s song "Mickey" by Toni Basil, and Gwen Stefani's "Hollaback Girl" (2005). The song charted at number 52 in the Czech Republic, number 56 in Canada, number 101 in South Korea, and number 152 in the United Kingdom. It has also received platinum certifications in Australia, Canada, and the United States. Perry has performed "Peacock" on several occasions, including during her 2011 world tour California Dreams Tour. When performing the track, the singer usually wears colorful or glittery clothing.
Production Mikkel S. Eriksen, Tor Erik Hermansen, and Ester Dean assisted Perry in writing "Peacock" for her third studio album, Teenage Dream, released in 2010. According to Perry, the whole point of writing "Peacock" was to play with words. Midway through recording the album, Perry recalled saying to the people she was working with: "Look I've got a lot of jewels, but I really don't have the crown. I really don't have that full-blown presentation". So she then decided to get back into the studio and work with Stargate, a production team co-producing Teenage Dream, during a late-night session and made several more songs, including "Firework" and "Peacock". Originally, the singer's recording label, Capitol Records, was against the inclusion of the song as a track on Teenage Dream as they deemed "Peacock" too controversial. "They were all a bit worried about the word 'cock' and it gave me déjà vu because they did the exact same thing with 'I Kissed a Girl,'" Perry stated. Unhappy with the idea of making her music more family friendly, she insisted on including the songs the label objected to. "They said, 'We don't see it as a single, we don't want it on the album.' And I was like, 'You guys are idiots'." When asked about "Peacock", Perry stated: "I'm hoping it will be a gay-pride anthem, peacocks represent a lot of individuality..... It's not just like, 'I wanna see your bulge.'" And then she went on to clarify: "It does have the word cock in it, but art is also in fart! It's all in how you look at it." Prior to the release of Teenage Dream, the singer debuted "Peacock" in early August 2010 when she performed it at the MTV World Stage in Malaysia.
Composition
"Peacock" is a dance-pop song, with an up-tempo house music beat, that lasts for three minutes and 51 seconds. Sheet music for the song was in the key of D minor in a time signature of 44 with a tempo of 138 beats per minute. Perry's vocal range spans over an octave, from B♭3 to D5. Lyrically, the track contains a double entendre with suggestive wording. New York magazine writer Willa Paskin observed that Perry did the obvious with the song's hook ("she used a common word for penis and made it mean penis!"). Paskin also wrote that "Peacock" could perhaps be the most outrageous example of an entirely obvious double entendre. Perry herself has considered it to be the biggest innuendo in the world. During an interview with MTV News, the singer said that she is a fan of using puns and double entendres and often looks for ways to incorporate it into her material. In the song, Perry repeatedly asks to see their peacock, if they are "brave enough" to do so. Its composition was compared to Toni Basil's cheerleader anthem "Mickey" by many reviews as both songs are stomping jams, bursting with double meanings. Leah Greenblatt of Entertainment Weekly dubbed it a shamelessly silly revival of Basil's 1980s track. Rob Sheffield from Rolling Stone noticed the two songs shared a drum hook, and thought of "Peacock" as a sequel to Gwen Stefani's 2005 single, "Hollaback Girl".
Critical reception The track garnered generally negative reviews and criticism from journalists, who mostly criticized the song's "cock, cock, cock" line. Greg Kot from the Chicago Tribune said that "Peacock" adapting the beat from Basil's "Mickey" into a suggestive metaphor "barely qualifies as an off-color joke let alone a song." Stephen Thomas Erlewine from AllMusic found the singer to have distinguished herself through "desperate vulgarity". Erlewine concluded: "All this stylized provocation is exhausting, and not just because there's so much of it (none of it actually arousing). It's tiring because, at her heart, Perry is old-fashioned and is invested in none of her aggressive teasing." Elysa Gardner from USA Today advised people who buy the album to skip the song. In his negative review for the album, Matthew Cole of Slant Magazine found it difficult to think of a song more unrefined or more irritating than "Peacock". He believed all reviews of Teenage Dream will discuss the track, which will be because it is "potentially historic in its badness, to the point that, once you've heard it, you too will have to describe it to other people just to convince yourself that it really exists." Spin magazine writer Mikael Wood remarked that the song contains a double entendre that even a performer such as Kesha could find crude. Writing in music website Sputnikmusic, Rudy Klapper said she would bet that "Peacock" would "never [be] seeing the light of day, primarily because it's a terrible song with a double entendre so blunt it would make Ke$ha blush". Klapper also said the lyrics do not complement Perry's writing skills. The Washington Post staff writer Chris Richards' review of the track was also negative. Talking about how hooks on Teenage Dream are catchy, but quickly start to erode if listeners pay more attention to the words, he cited "Peacock" as an example of this. Describing its chorus as "an earworm of the highest order," he said some of the lyrics are enough to make people clench their teeth.
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