Katy Perry
Katy Perry heard the chorus of "I Kissed a Girl" upon waking one morning and did nothing with it for eighteen months. She was "a little perplexed." With two days of studio time left, she finally finished it. Capitol Records CEO Jason Flom's own executives "thought it was awful" and begged him not to sign her. He reconsidered while listening alone in his garage on Christmas Day. Before any of that, Perry had been dropped by Island Def Jam and Columbia Records. At Columbia, an executive named Angelica Cob-Baehler took Perry's music files and snuck out to deliver them to Capitol, describing it as rescuing her from being "held hostage."
In our deep dive into I Kissed a Girl, we trace the song from eighteen months of indecision to the Christmas garage listen to the executive who snuck out with the files, and what it reveals about a career that almost didn't happen four times before it finally did.
