Katy Perry Is Putting Her Exes On Notice


Carly Simon once sang “you’re so vain, you probably think this song is about you.” If you happen to be one of pop singer Katy Perry’s ex-boyfriends it’s not just your vanity doing the talking; according to her, the song really is about you. “One of my best friends says the pro of dating Katy Perry is she’ll probably write a song about you and it will be fantastic,” she says with a grin, “the con is if you dump her she’ll write a song about you and the whole fucking world’s gonna sing along.”

A lot of folks have been singing along to Perry’s current hits “I Kissed a Girl” and “UR So Gay.” She says her lyrics in the latter are “not necessarily targeted at one person, but were kind of my general feeling about these sensitive guys with guyliner that borrow my jeans and wear them.” Perry readily admits she’s also poking fun at herself, noting “I’m just as much a part of the joke as all of my exes. I shop at H&M and I MySpace and I do all those things. I live in Los Feliz, which is basically the Williamsburg, Brooklyn of California.”

Los Feliz hasn’t always been home for Perry, who grew up fairly sheltered in a Santa Barbara household with parents that were traveling ministers. “My parents weren’t spinning Rolling Stones or Beatles records in the background having glasses of wine,” she remembers, “they were teaching me ‘Oh Happy Day’ and we were taking communion.”

All this changed for Perry in her teenage years when she would travel down to Nashville to work under the tutelage of a number of producers and songwriters. One day one she was sent home with a question to consider. “I was asked if I could work with one person in the world who would it be.” Perry turned on the TV to VH1, which was airing a show on Alanis Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill, Perry’s personal favorite artist and album at the time. The name Glen Ballard came up and that’s who Perry came back to her producer with. Shortly thereafter she and her father were pulling up to Ballard’s office for a meeting.

Perry remembers that meeting and not realizing how big it really was. “When you’re like 16 or 17 you don’t know what you’re dealing with. You’re just like, ‘I write songs, I like to sing, I like to sing about the boys that dumped me.’ You don’t know that you’re taking a meeting with Glen fucking Ballard.” Ballard, however, liked what he heard. The two started working together and Ballard gave Perry her first assignment. “He told me ‘write a song every day. I don’t care if its shit, just write a song every day.’ I was like who can write a song every day?! I’ll tell you, I can write a song every day now if my life depended on it.”

The Ballard experience was followed by a few false starts, one at the age of 18 with Island and another with a band she was a part of that was signed to Columbia. Now, however, the start is very real. Perry has the Warped Tour dates to prove it.

Knowing that Warped Tour has a notoriously rock oriented crowd Perry expects some skepticism when concertgoers first see her. “Since I’m an unabashed pop girl I’m sure they’re gonna come to the stage with their arms crossed wondering okay, who is this major label douchebag girl?” Perry hopes her performances will do all the explaining for her. “Let people be surprised and entertained and have them go back Katy Perry fans saying she fucking brings it.” The “bringing it” in Perry’s case involves the mixing of a live rock show with songs that have a synth pop element to them. She’s also looking to channel a little bit of early Gwen Stefani and No Doubt from when they were on Warped Tour, noting “she looked like she was having so much fucking fun.”

It’s apropos that Perry brings up No Doubt because much like when bassist Tony Kanal broke up with Gwen and it led to the writing of the group’s mega hit “Don’t Speak,” if you mess with Katy Perry’s heart her next song will be about you.

Story originally ran on beyondrace.com

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