To some, the most surprising part of Katy Perry’s sophomore success is that it exists.
After all, this was the ever effervescent girl who rose to fame two years ago with a song about girl-on-girl action. She dressed like a cross between Betty Boop and Judy Jetson and sang songs about metroSєxual boyfriends and partying in Vegas.
Fun and catchy – but surely not built to last.
Cut to 2010, and it’s been Perry’s year. Her No. 1 smash “California Gurls” has become the song of the summer; she’s got another big hit with the racy “Teenage Dream”; and her second album of the same name debuted at the top of the charts this week, selling a little over 192,000 copies for one of the year’s best debuts, according to Nielsen SoundScan.
And her engagement to British comedian Russell Brand hasn’t hurt her exploding star power.
“It’s really validating, but not in like a mean girls’ kind of way feeling,” says a wide-eyed Perry, with her girlish voice, in a recent interview. “I’ve always believed in myself and it’s just wonderful that people can finally jump on the train and be a part of something really exciting.”
The 25-year-old California girl hasn’t toned down the zaniness much on her latest album – and listeners get the feeling she couldn’t if she tried. In person, Perry comes across like a walking candy confection – on this day, she’s wearing her jet-black hair pulled back in a ponytail; her eyelids are colored in a bright blue; and she’s wearing a low-cut, тιԍнт minidress that’s a rainbow of colors (though she covers up with a gray jacket because of a H๏τel chill).
The video for “California Gurls,” the infectious pop groove featuring Snoop Dogg, features Perry in a Sєxy version of Candy Land, and the theme continues with her album. The first 1,000 copies were made with a scratch-and-sniff scent of cotton candy; she’s considering having candy instead of confetti rain down on her audience as part of her upcoming tour, which she plans for next year.
Yet there’s grit behind the fluff. “Teenage Dream” features songs about toxic relationships, moments of conflict, self-doubt and even inspiration.
“(This album) shows the evolution that people weren’t expecting,” says Amy Doyle, MTV’s executive vice president of music and talent programming. “There are songs on this album that go a little deeper into her feelings and aren’t just these poppy little numbers. I think that she gets into a deeper lyrical side of herself.”
Perry calls the album her “black box” – where she reveals Katy Perry the artist, often obscured by Katy Perry the caricature.
One song that shows another dimension is the angry “Circle the Drain,” where she lashes out at a lover who is destroying himself and their relationship with drugs. While Perry says it came from her past, she declines to say whether it’s about former boyfriend Travie McCoy, who has acknowledged that he’s battled substance abuse. However, Perry says it’s not about her fiance, who has openly talked about overcoming such addictions.
“It was difficult to write it because it’s not where I am now, but it was a feeling that I had stored away a long time ago, in my emotional filing cabinet,” she says.
Grammy-winning producer and songwriter Christopher “Tricky” Stewart, who worked on the track with Perry, says the song was “a very important subject for her to get off her chest.”
Moreover, Perry was interested in showing that she could offer more than danceable, playful pop grooves.
“More than anything, it was an atтιтude, a certain type of tone that she wanted to take on her record. We’re both fans of Alanis Morissette’s ‘Jagged Little Pill’ album,” he said. “We were looking for something edgy, something women could get behind.”
While much of pop music is focused on a dance beat, and songs like “Last Friday Night” are geared for the party, Perry wasn’t interested in making an album for the clubs.
“Sure, I wanted to make a record with more tempo, but I didn’t want that to mean that I had to write about just DJs and dancing and getting drunk. … I need a soundtrack for all the rest of my emotions, and that’s what I really wanted to provide with this,” she says.
“If you had all that ‘Last Friday Night’ as the subject matter for every single song, it would be like, ‘You’re soulless, your spineless. Is there anything else to your world?’” (Take that, Ke$ha.)
Besides her growing collection of hit records, Perry has a wedding to plan: She and Brand became engaged in January after a whirlwind romance, and their relationship and impending nuptials (no wedding date has been announced) have made them tabloid favorites.
“They’re two very interesting, very funny, very compelling people, and they just seem to be so deeply in love that people are fascinated by watching them,” said Doyle. “They just seem like such the superstar match.”
While Perry has no problem talking about Brand (she refers to him as her boyfriend), she makes it clear that their romance, despite their public displays of affection, isn’t for the cameras.
“We’ve decided that after we get married, we’re not going to talk about our relationship anymore, because it’s like, we’re married, so we’re married. What more can I say?” she says. “But I think that we understand the general excitement, and we’re two people in love, and people in love like to tell people we are in love.”
Perry’s focus now is on pushing her “Teenage Dream.”
“This record is going to kind of solidify the fact that I have something different to offer, a different perspective,” she says. “This record could be more important than the first. It shows that it wasn’t a lottery, it shows that it wasn’t luck – it just shows that it’s good.”