“I Kissed a Girl” by Katy Perry represents a complete departure from her upbringing.
Born Katheryn Elizabeth Hudson on October 25, 1984, in Santa Barbara, California, Perry spent her first 16 years with parents Mary Perry and Maurice Hudson, who were Pentecostal pastors for over 40 years and are now motivational speakers.
“I went to church on Sunday morning, on Sunday night, on Wednesdays,” said Perry. “They gave me my compass in a lot of ways. They really gave me a lot of integrity. They taught me how to treat people.”
Inside the house, with sister Angela and brother David, they were not allowed to watch channels such as MTV and VH1. “The only things I was allowed to listen to were the Sister Act 1 and 2 soundtracks,” Perry said. “I wasn’t really allowed to even acknowledge the opposite sex. There wasn’t a lot of talking about it, and that’s okay. I mean, they did what they knew how to do, right?… I didn’t have that education. I was homeschooled, went to the Christian schools, and they didn’t really teach that.”
By age 9, Perry started taking singing lessons, and then learned to play guitar at 13 in 1997. “When I was 13 I asked for a guitar, and that’s how I really started explaining my point of view,” said Perry. “The church bought me this faded, green acoustic guitar for my birthday, and I was real pumped ’cause I would go over to my hippe/surfer family friend’s house and we would just jam… considering I only knew, like, 5 chords back then.”
In June 2000, at the age of 15, Perry traveled back and forth to Nashville with her mother to record a Christian alternative gospel album, eventually signing with Pamplin Music under its Red Hill Records label. Using the name Katy Hudson, she released her self-titled debut album on March 6, 2001, however, Red Hill Records shut down in December 2001. The album sold approximately 200 copies. “It reached literally maybe 100 people, and then the label went bankrupt,” said Perry.
Billboard wrote a review of the album, stating, “Katy Hudson occupies a different niche from that of her counterparts. Instead of polished pop or youth-oriented hip-hop, Hudson delivers a textured modern-rock collection that is equal parts grit and vulnerability. She also either wrote or co-wrote all the songs on this impressive debut.”
Perry moved to Los Angeles at age 17 to focus on her music career, honing her songwriting and voice, noting, “I wrote a lot of songs on the guitar. I started a lot of songs like ‘Ur So Gay,’ ‘Thinking of You,’ and ‘One of the Boys,’ and a song called ‘Mannequin… the first song I wrote when I moved to Los Angeles from Santa Barbara, like the first proper song on the guitar… one that I actually still play to this day, was a song called ‘Thinking of You,’” recalled Perry.
The decision to move to Los Angeles shifted Perry’s thoughts about people and expectations. “I moved to LA when I was 17, and it was just a whole different perspective boom. I met different people. I’m like, oh, you’re not a bad person. I grew up thinking you were this way. I was taught this way. Oh, you’re not. So I saw more humanity… And all this education and all this oneness, I feel from really observing people and getting to know them. That was my education.”
“At 17, and that’s when really my sexuality started and experimenting and not having as many rules and restrictions. I had those experiences, and then I sang about them. And I was like, oh.”
A transformation happened within Perry as she briefly performed under the name “Katheryn Perry” before adopting the stage name “Katy Perry” to avoid confusion with actress Kate Hudson. This represented her evolution from gospel singer to pop artist.
Knock and the door will be opened to you
The goal for Perry was to work with producer and songwriter Glen Ballard, who was most known for his collaboration with Alanis Morissette on ‘Jagged Little Pill.’ Perry, determined to follow her calling and have her singing become a career, eventually knocked on his door.
“When she came a knock on my studio door, she was an artist in her own right and she was searching for the ultimate expression, but she had already done hundreds of gigs, written hundreds of songs. She was committed. A committed artist, and that was the first thing for me is that I knew that she had put the time in,” said Ballard.
“I was making another record in a control room with my CEO when she came in and opened her guitar case. I had never met her, and within two minutes, she was playing me a song she had written. I was knocked out! I got to tell you, that was like ‘stop the press! Who is this? What’s your name again?,” said Ballard. “Immediately, I said, ‘I want to sign you; it’s you.’ People don’t knock on my door every day. Honestly, the last time someone did was Alanis Morissette. ”
Perry signed with Ballard’s label, Java Records, which was under The Island Def Jam Music Group, and started to work on a solo record that was scheduled for release in March 2005. However, a setback happened when Java Records was dropped from Island Def Jam.
“We were with Island Def Jam for just over a year,” said Ballard. “She had everything absolutely necessary but couldn’t get the label to pay attention to her. At that point, we moved to Columbia Records. One of Columbia’s senior executives approached me and showed me a music video she had shot with for a song called “The Box.”
That executive at Columbia was Tim Devine who signed her as a solo artist. Perry started to work on an album, this time titled Fingerprints, with a planned release in 2007.
While signed to Columbia, Perry was also the lead female vocalist for The Matrix’s self-titled debut album. The Matrix was a production team behind Avril Lavigne, Ricky Martin, and others. Perry recorded with The Matrix when she was 19, and Blender named her “The Next Big Thing!” in its October 2004 issue. Despite the attention, The Matrix shelved the album weeks before its release.
Then in 2006, changes in leadership at parent company Sony Music led to Columbia dropping Perry. After leaving Columbia, Perry briefly worked at Taxi Music, an independent A&R company where she worked primarily as a receptionist. Perry kept working on her craft and performed at venues in Los Angeles like Hotel Café.
In 2007, Angelica Cob-Baehler, Vice President of Publicity at Columbia Records, brought Perry’s demos to Jason Flom, the chairman of Virgin Records (later Capitol Records). Flom signed her in April 2007, and helped skyrocket her career.
To officially introduce Perry as Katy Perry to the market, Capitol released a digital EP of Ur So Gay on November 20, 2007, as a free download from her website, with a video for the song uploaded to her MySpace page. The song gained attention, mainly from a shoutout by Madonna praising it on The Johnjay & Rich Show, stating, “I have a favorite song right now… It’s called ‘Your so gay and you don’t even like boys,’ you have to hear it… it’s by an artist called Katy Perry.”
Shortly after, on April 28, 2008, Perry released I Kissed a Girl. The song, which was co-written by Perry, Max Martin, Cathy Dennis, and produced by Dr. Luke, topped charts worldwide and had a seven-week run at number one on the Billboard Hot 100.
“When putting this record together and choosing the first song, I said, ‘Okay, this is the catchiest song on the record. I think maybe we should put the catchiest song on the record out into the world first,'” said Perry. “And it’s definitely not your typical song about, like, a relationship or something you’ve heard before, so I think that that definitely gains attention, but also, you know, I think it’s a catchy song, and if you take the lyrics out of it and you listen to the music, it’s like people are always going, you know, doing the melody in their head, and they’re like, ‘I can’t get it out of my head, I can’t get it out of my head.'”
“It was a rocket. It was a real rocket. And it was like, can you hold on? And I wasn’t present for some of it. It was really—I have to be present for some of it. I was like, oh. Every day was a different city,” Perry stated.
The years between 17 and 23 explain so much about the lyrics of I Kissed A Girl. They now make sense.
Lyrically: I Kissed A Girl
Perry stated one seed of inspiration behind I Kissed a Girl was “when I opened up a magazine and I saw a picture of Scarlett Johansson. I was with my boyfriend at the time, and I said to him, ‘I’m not going to lie: If Scarlett Johansson walked into the room and wanted to make out with me, I would make out with her. I hope you’re okay with that,’” said Perry.
Another seed of inspiration was from the girl she kissed. “There was as actually not one particular girl that inspired the song. The girl that I did kiss, I met through a friend,” stated Perry. “We were just having cocktails at a bar with our other friend… I was probably like 20.”
“I woke up, and I had the chorus in my head. Then I didn’t do anything with it for like a year and a half because I was a little perplexed. ‘What an interesting little chorus’… It would not go away; it was like a little pebble in my shoe. I said, ‘C’mon, you better record that song, or you will be sorry,'” said Perry.
The song revolves around spontaneity, experimentation, and courage, with Perry describing a brief, unplanned moment.
This was never the way I planned
Not my intention
I got so brave, drink in hand
Lost my discretion
It’s not what I’m used to
Just wanna try you on
I’m curious for you
Caught my attention
Based on her upbringing, this new, unfamiliar way of life was embraced and experienced, now subsequently shared with billions of people. “What I did know is that I was curious, and even then, I knew sexuality wasn’t as black and white as this dress,” Perry said. “And honestly, I haven’t gotten all of it right, but in 2008, when that song came out, I knew that I had started a conversation that a lot of the world seemed curious enough to sing along to.”
I kissed a girl and I liked it
The taste of her cherry chapstick
I kissed a girl just to try it
I hope my boyfriend don’t mind it
It felt so wrong, it felt so right
Don’t mean I’m in love tonight
I kissed a girl and I liked it
I liked it
If the first verse didn’t capture your attention, the chorus — the one that ‘would not go away’ for 18 months — navigates the tension between what was once thought as ‘normal,’ shifted to pursuing desires. The lyrics are direct and to the point, and one can taste the cherry chapstick.
With the lyrics “Don’t mean I’m in love tonight,” Perry reveals that the kiss is just something that happened along the journey of self-expression.
No, I don’t even know your name
It doesn’t matter
You’re my experimental game
Just human nature
It’s not what good girls do
Not how they should behave
My head gets so confused
Hard to obey
Throughout the song, Perry contrasts how one is expected to behave, especially within committed relationships or your faith, with the desire to break free and live out impulses, only to discover after doing so that they actually enjoyed it, which leads the mind to “My head gets so confused.”
Us girls, we are so magical
Soft skin, red lips, so kissable
Hard to resist, so touchable
Too good to deny it
Ain’t no big deal, it’s innocent
“I think girls are beautiful creatures,” Perry said.
“If anybody’s listened to pop music for the past, ever, you remember when Elvis Presley came out and he was the devil, and ultimately he became the king, and Madonna came out and she was a scandal, and ultimately she became the queen, and I think pop music has kind of showed, you know, different sides of life and maybe things that some people are like, ‘Oh yeah, I’ve thought about that. I’ve just never heard it actually put into words,'” said Perry. “I knew that I was showing the kind of tongue-in-cheek side of myself, and I knew that some people were going to get the joke and others would just love to to be offended, but that’s how some people live their lives.”
The lyrics to I Kissed a Girl end with “I kissed a girl and I liked it / I liked it,” confirming what we now know. Katy Perry kissed a girl and she liked it.
“I’m just a singer-songwriter, honestly. I speak my truths, and I paint my fantasies into these little bite-size pop songs,” said Perry. “For instance, I kissed a girl and I liked it. Truth be told, I did more than that.”
