Sydney, AU. (Top40 Charts/ EMI MUSIC Australia) -
Katy Perry has a knack for courting controversy. The LA pop sensation has been all over the airwaves this year, raising eyebrows and pulses alike with her infectious tunes - and her new album, One Of The Boys, looks set to continue the trend. It features the hit singles "U R So Gay" and "
I Kissed A Girl" along with ten other tracks that make her contemporaries look shy and tame in comparison.
What makes Perry's story all the more remarkable is the fact that, until the age of seventeen, she led a sheltered existence where topics like sexuality were taboo, and the only music that was available was religious in nature. Perry's rebellion against her strict upbringing is one of the reasons her tunes pack such a punch.
"I came from a very kind of pseudo-strict household," she explains. "Both of my parents are still to this day, traveling ministers, and I wasn't allowed to listen to a whole lot of music growing up. I wasn't really involved in a lot of pop culture to the state when people have pop culture references from the 90s, I'm completely clueless! The New Kids On The Block are still the NEW Kids On The Block to me. There's no old in them. But I left home at seventeen and moved to Los Angeles and just kind of started changing and growing and singing about everything under the sun."
After relocating to LA, Perry quickly began to make up for lost time, throwing herself into glamorous and very adult lifestyle of the City Of Angels. Back at home, her parents were shocked that the girl they tried so hard to mould into an obedient Christian was doing everything in her power to erase their influence. "I'm not exactly the poster child of what they thought I would be when they had me," she concedes, "but I'm not strung out and doing spreads naked and stuff. I'm on track and got a head on my shoulders and I know I write about everything in life."
One Of The Boys is a highly confessional album that Perry describes as a series of "Dear Diary" entries. It took several years to write and record, and describes the journey teenage girls take on the way to adulthood - with all the heartbreak, confusion and curiosity that defines the experience. "The recording was a long experience," she elaborates. "I'm glad I didn't put out the record I thought I should have put out when I was seventeen/eighteen. When you're seventeen and eighteen, you know everything. Nobody can tell you different. But all kinds of different situations pop up in your mid-twenties and you're like 'I-I-I-I didn't know this was going to happen to me.'"
The song that has brought Perry most attention to date is the addictive sugar-rush "I Kissed A Girl". The track has dominated radio worldwide in recent months, topping the charts in Australia, the US and Europe. It's a no-holes-barred exploration of female sexuality and bi-curiosity, and it's attracted its fair share of critics. Some have claimed that the song trivialises the issue of sexual confusion and perpetuates stereotypes. But Perry dismisses these claims, saying simply, "It's a song about curiosity. It's a song that I wrote because I opened up a magazine and I looked and I saw, I think it was Meghan Fox or Scarlett Johansson and I looked up at my boyfriend and I said, 'You know what, I'm not gonna lie, I know you have your one. This is my one. If she were walking in through the door and she wanted to make out with me, Scarlett Johansson, I'm not going to lie, I probably would let her do so. Are you okay with that? Yep. It's okay.' So it's kind of about the beauty of a woman and how it doesn't matter who you are, male or female, if Giselle Bundchen walks into the room., everybody's jaw is dropping."
Then there's "U R So Gay", Perry's kiss-off to a former flame who seemed to effeminate to be straight. It's another track that has stirred up controversy, but Perry says the sentiments the song expresses are common for heterosexual women in today's sexually confusing world. "A lot of girls, I think, sometimes are asking themselves, 'Is he on my team or is he on the other team? Which team is he batting for because he looks like he's wearing my jeans, he looks like he borrowed my flat iron. And I think that he left eye liner on my pillow case last night.' So there's just this whole world of figuring out who is, who's not. Or even, I've dated guys where I'm like, 'I know in another life, wink wink, nudge nudge... you were a gay man.'"
Not every song on One Of The Boys is as risque as "I Kissed A Girl" or "U R So Gay", though. "Thinking Of You" is a driving pop/rock ballad that addresses matters of the heart: specifically, Perry's difficulties letting go of her first serious relationship. "It's a song I wrote by myself in my little apartment, and thought nothing of it," she says. "I was going through a period in my relationship, a transitioning period, that I think a lot of people go through where they have had that first love, and it's not necessarily right and they move onto someone else but they feel bad about it, and they've got that sick-to-their-stomach feeling even though you're not together, you're doing something wrong and 'this isn't natural and this isn't how it should be. It wasn't mean to be this way. I was supposed to be with you, but, it's not.' That's how it is."
Elsewhere, Perry teams up with Dave Stewart from the Eurythmics for "I'm Still Breathing", and lets her sensitive side show through on "Fingerprints", the album's closer. "It's the closing song on the record and it's an anthem," she says. "I have gone through so many different emotions. I don't wanna be one of the boys! You're not man! You're a mannequin! You're so gay! I Kissed A Girl, I got lost. I woke up in Vegas and I thought of you. By the end of the day, I'm leaving my fingerprints. And I want to break the mould. I don't want to be a stereotype."
Perry's journey to date has been a tumultuous one: from breaking the influence of her strict upbringing to establishing herself in a new city, navigating the perilous music industry landscape and putting together an album over which she had complete creative control. At the same time, she was growing up - dealing with the afterburn of adolescence and finding her place as an adult. Her success so far has been considerable, but Perry doesn't seem intimidated. "I always come to make a splash and do a cannonball with everything I do, of course," she says. "No regrets on that, but I didn't know it was going to be so fast. It seems like its happening really fast. I'm just like [gasp] 'seat belt!' [click sound]. I'm along for the ride."
