VIDEO: Katy Perry, "I Kissed a Girl"Katy Perry is munching on cheese puffs on a day off from the Warped Tour when I ask how she hooked up with the army of hot-shot producers and hitmakers who’ve helped push her debut album, One of the Boys (Capitol), to the top. “Glen [Ballard] found me when I was 17, brought me to Los Angeles, and kind of put me under his wing. He told me, ‘Write a song a day so you can, you know, get that muscle flexed.’ And I did — I wrote 65 to 75 songs for my record over the course of five years, with different people, producers, by myself. I tried everything.â€
The album does sound like the product of trying everything: an almost unholy mash-up of Alanis and Britney, the former’s trashy candor mixed with the latter’s dance-floor whoomp. And it can’t be an accident. In addition to Alanis guru Ballard, Perry, now 23, worked with writer/producer Max Martin (Britney’s “Baby One More Timeâ€), whose grubby Europrints are all over the smash #1 single “I Kissed a Girl.†Even with all this heavy-handed production artillery, the song and the album still rock hard enough for Perry to straddle both the pop charts and a boys’ club like the Warped Tour (thanks in part to the guitar-army production of pop-punk vet Butch Walker).
“I am the pink in a sea of darkness,†she points out. “There’s all those screamo bands and metal bands, and it’s all just kind of dark with black merchandise and T-shirts, and I’m coming out with like pink amplifiers and pink Les Pauls and SGs. It’s pretty funny. I think that as much as I’m a pop girl, I put on a rock show. I try to jump around as much as any of the other bands. I have bruises on my legs — the female physique on the Warped Tour basically gets thrown around, it gets dented.
“I’ve been to Warped Tour many times, and I consider it almost my family — although I’m the black sheep of the family. Of course, I’m the black sheep of my family in real life, too.â€
Perry, who grew up the daughter of two pastors and wasn’t allowed to listen to secular music, began her career with a 2001 Christian album under the name Katy Hudson. “When you grow up from 15 to 23, you do change a little bit, and I changed a lot. I’m very happy to be where I came from, and I’m glad I have that foundation and I still have faith. But I’m out on my own now, and I make decisions on my own. Hopefully those are successful decisions.â€
So what was the epiphany that led her to embark on a career of heathen music? “I remember hearing the song ‘Killer Queen’ by Queen when I was 15 and it was just an influential musical moment in my life where I realized, ‘Okay, I finally have somebody that I look up to that is someone that I want to base a career on.’ His [Freddie Mercury’s] lyrics, to me, are so colorful and they are such a different perspective on life that makes you broaden your general perspective.â€
Unlikely as it might seem, Katy Perry is a polarizing figure in the pop world, where “I Kissed a Girl†and 2007’s “UR So Gay†could be seen as exploitational examples of everything that’s wrong with pop culture or as encapsulations of post-millennial neuroses set to a Gary Glitteresque thump and flamboyantly catchy choruses. “I’m very sassy with my lyrics, and I really appreciate humor in songwriting. I’m still growing up, you know, I’m not conclusive about anything I believe in. I’m just experiencing life. All of my songs are about my life.â€
KATY PERRY + BOUNCING SOULS at Warped Tour | Comcast Center, 885 South Main St, Mansfield | July 23 at noon | $26 |www.livenation.com
