Singer/songwriter Katy Perry

During her soundcheck at the Mercury Lounge in April I got to witness the moment in which Katy Perry discovered her single "I Kissed A Girl" was going to go into heavy rotation on Z100. "I'm gonna be a big star!" she screeched before giving her guitar a nice long air-lick with the flat of her tongue. She seems to have been right about that. These days Miz Perry is all over the place but it seems like only yesterday that I interviewed the self-proclaimed "wild child". How quickly things can progress in little over a month! In Part 1 of this interview Katy Perry and I discuss global warming, her two preacher parents, and the unfortunate lack of showers on the Warped Tour...

So it's nice to meet you!
It's nice to meet you!

I enjoyed the soundcheck. Your antics. [laughs]
Oh, thank you! Those are very toned-down in comparison, but they are a warm-up.

[laughs] Getting ready for tonight.
Yep. For sure.

You been to New York frequently before?
Yeah, I come to New York maybe once a month. My boyfriend lives here and I also come out and work and now that the record's kind of starting to go, it's like there's so much business—it's either New York or L.A. So you make the music in L.A. and then you promote it in New York! Which is exciting because, you know, right now it's like beautiful April weather…

It's a little hot for April.
It's weird, right? It should be like mid-May weather. Or late May. Or June or something like that.

It skipped spring. For some reason.
Yeah. Well, I'm sure you'll get spring again.

Mm… I don't know about that.
I don't know. I think this weather is playing all kinds of tricks on us. Because of the environment. Build an environmental underground house, I guess, because it's all going to go into shit!

[laughs] Yeah. Where did you grow up?
Santa Barbara, California, which is about an hour and a half north from L.A., and… it's a beautiful place and I had never really realized that until I left. Because you know when you're a child you take for granted everything. It's like if you were a kid and you grew up in New York City you'd probably be like, "Whatever," but you know everybody dies to come to New York City. They're like, "I want to move to New York City so bad." But that was kind of like how Santa Barbara is in a very sweet cute French Riviera-type way.

Yeah. A lot of the time on weekends or vacations I find myself complaining about having nothing to do and then I have to stop and tell myself, "Wait. What are you talking about? You live in New York City!"
I know! Yeah.

But so you grew up in Santa Barbara. So you were used to L.A.?
Yeah. Santa Barbara's very beachy. You know, a lot of—tons of hippies. Tons of pot.

And you grew up with… two preacher parents.
Yeah. Both my parents are still to this day traveling ministers. Actually, they're… they're in New York right now as we speak. I love them to death. They definitely know that I'm a wild child. You know, a bit off from what they probably would have liked, really, as far as a picture-perfect child when they had me.

[laughs]
But I do my best. I'm not on drugs and I'm not getting naked and stuff. I'm just singing about rock and roll. I'm just being a rock-and-roller! There's not a whole lot of them left as far as the female pop stars.

Yeah. And you're on the Warped Tour too.
Yeah. All summer I'm going to be on the Warped Tour. It's going to be so grueling and exhausting and I know it's so not female friendly. I've heard there's no showers a lot of times—or like no time to shower. Because every day it's basically like a lottery to know who plays, so you don't know what time your set is every day so you kind of have to be available like all day. It's insane. You might play at ten in the morning one day or like noon or you might play at six. You never know. So you're in the middle of the field in god knows where playing these shows. It's such a traveling circus. But I'm excited! So many cute boys!

[laughs]
I used to go to all those festivals and now I'm a part of it so I'm like, "Cool!"

Yeah. It's funny, I just interviewed another one of the few female singers on the tour.
Automatic Loveletter?

Charlotte Sometimes.
Charlotte Sometimes! Yeah. I love her. She's really cool.

Have the both of you been preparing for being the only girls?
Yeah… you know, I'm sure we'll definitely bond— [laughs] For sure. And I know there's a girl named Juliet Simms who's in Automatic Loveletter. She's going to be on the Warped Tour. And I haven't met the gal in Charlotte Sometimes but—we'll all be best friends!

Yeah. She just calls herself Charlotte Sometimes.
Yeah. She's Charlotte?

But yeah. So you're going on the Warped Tour. Have you done tours on a smaller scale before? I mean, there's the one you're on now.
Yeah, you know—um, it's going to be our first big tour. We're going to hit up every major city basically in America—it's like 45 shows in 55-odd days or something. It's very early: I've played in L.A. a little bit and I just got a band together… this is like my debut New York show tonight. So it's exciting because usually the shows that we have done in L.A. or even like the little shows in New York have been like private showcase—you know, nothing that like fans can come to. I have a very small amount of fans just yet but they're trickling in one by one! Saying, "I vote! I vote for her! I vote! Let's go!"

And you've actually been around in the music industry for a while but this is your first album as Katy Perry.
Yeah—you know, I started making this album with the intent to release it like every year for five years. So I started it when I was like eighteen and I was signed by other major labels and was dropped. You know, had it all and lost it all. [laughs] I should have quit a long time ago!

But then you wouldn't be here!
Well I didn't quit! And that's why I'm here! And I'm very excited that I'm finally having this baby, as I like to call it. I am preparing the baby room.

[laughs]
It's actually coming! No more misconceptions!

Earlier on, you were also part of a project put together by the Matrix…
Yeah. In between those five years I was trying out a lot of different things, and I was—that's the thing, record labels don't really develop new artists any more, you've either got it or you don't. There's no more money left in the music industry. So I tried out doing a band thing with the production company called the Matrix. So there is a hidden record out there with my voice on it!

Is it locked up or are you—?
I'm sure it's very deep into the ground. It's very pop, though. It's like dance, fun, like, it's pop.

So very different from what you're…
It's just that it's not me. It's just what I was kind of trying out—dipping my feet into the water type of situation that backfired. But it helped me! It helped me so much. I mean, the Matrix—they're like super mainstream, and I'm not like super mainstream whenever I write, I'm a little left, so they were able to bring me to kind of a more centered "this is pop radio—this is how you can write a pop song". I was like, "I wanna write songs like Jeff Buckley!"

Right. So they kind of helped you learn how to write more pop as opposed to something that was in a different direction.
Yeah. I guess I went through the "school of rock" for sure. I worked with the best producers in the music industry—for my genre, definitely. I'm the luckiest girl in the world. As far as making this record I really felt like I could just do whatever I want to do. But there have been a lot of tears in the midst of all that; it hasn't all been like peachy keen. I was broke for a long time. Really. Fucking. Broke. Like couldn't-pay-my-rent broke.

So now that you have your solo project how'd you come about developing that?
Well, I'd always had my solo project. That was always my main intent. It was just—I kind of like decided to try other things in the middle of it. And those things didn't work, so I decided to go back to my solo project which is ultimately what I've always wanted to do. So it's always just been about me and the guitar and writing songs—whether they are just acoustic songs or whether they develop into really big pop songs, it's always just been about making that solo appearance.

Do you just sit down to write your lyrics? Because you have all these memorable phrases: "I can belch the alphabet—"
"—Just double-dog dare me!" Yep!

—And other phrases like that which stand out.
Well, there's so many different ways that I go about it. Like someone will say that and I'll mentally make a note of someone saying, "Oh, I double-dog dare you," you know what I'm saying? Or in passing or in people's conversations I hear someone say—like today I heard someone talk about their internet relationship and I'm like— [snaps fingers] "Great! There's a song! I can write a song in my sleep just right now knowing what to write about the internet relationship!" And god knows that will probably be on my second record! [laughs] But just things that spark my brain and also situations in my life—a lot of my songs if not all of them are really specific to me. They're not just, you know, "Let's write a song about whatever." They're practically the "Dear Diary" of Katy Perry. Probably if you wanted to I could give you a specific person about a song, you know, I'm not supposed to necessarily, but there is a specificness to a lot of the songs. And they're all stories. I feel like pop music loses that. You hear songs and you're like, "Okay, that's kind of catchy, but what the fuck is it about?" It's like— "What are you talking about? You're making no sense! You're just filling in your words!"

Well, sometimes that works. Like, to use a famous example, "I am the Walrus". Sometimes it works.
Yeah, exactly.

But then a lot of times it doesn't.
Well we all know that they were all just fucked up on drugs. That's why it works for sure. But when you're like a sober pop star and you're singing about shit that doesn't make sense I'm like, "You have no reason, bro! You're not seeing mushrooms in the sky! I mean come on!" So I hope all that is eliminated very soon. I'm sure it will be.

Yeah. Well, there's been a big trend lately in that a lot of singer-songwriters are coming forward who write songs sort of about other characters.
Yeah. For sure. I love those records about one theme. I forget what they're called—like the Killers just did it. Like you write a record about one theme, like a guy in a—a concept record! My brain is on a permanent fart. Yeah, concept records are really cool. It's definitely something that you do if you're more abstract and indie. Even if it's your fourth or fifth record or whatever.

Yeah. The Bird and the Bee did an EP for Valentine's Day called One Too Many Hearts.
Yeah. I love the Bird and the Bee!

I interviewed them by email recently.
Oh—that's cool! Yeah, they're great. I saw them play. They're so good.

[her band suddenly comes by us, making tons of noise.]

[laughs] Okay, let's talk about… your band!
I love them. They're brand new. They are very fun and they've got a great sense of humor, and we all get along fabulously and I've already started farting in front of them. They are not excited about that. Right, Adam?
ADAM: What's that?
Me farting in front of you.
ADAM: I love it.
Well. Nice way to keep a job!

How did you meet them?
I knew a few of them already. Matt Beckley who's also my musical director is my lead guitarist; he's also a music producer as well, and he helped produce with some of the guys that I worked with. So I met him and he brought me the drummer and then we auditioned the other two bandmates—I just kind of fell on them by the grace of god for sure.

So to jump back to before the boys came by—
Oh yes?

I was going to ask what some of your other musical influences are.
Right. I listen to Jeff Buckley; I listen to—I mean it's so widespread. I really like Death Cab—even to people like Sara Bareilles. I love all music. I love Robyn, the new artist that once had a career like ten years ago. Estelle, from the UK—oh, I like Ghostland Observatory. I like Muse, Bjork, all kinds of people. But I love pop stuff. I like shit. I like some of Beyonce's stuff. I like Keyshia Cole, Mary J.—my musical taste is so wide.

What do you think of Lily Allen?
What do I think of Lily Allen? Um… I bought her record last year. I thought it was good. I wish she'd focus on music a little bit more but I'm sure she'll come around.

I only ask that because I read an article recently, I forget where, which suggested that you might be America's answer to Lily Allen.
Well, Lily Allen was supposed to be the answer to America! But I don't know if it transferred so much as far as the music goes. I know the celebrity did. But, you know, we have black hair and I wear black eyeliner sometimes so sometimes it's hard for people to see past that. But she kind of has this like reggae singy/rhymey rap thingy that she does, which is super cool, but I'm definitely more louder bolder Kelly Clarkson-type vocals with a Pat Benatar, Joan Jett-type rock kind of feel. And that's what the music industry's missing. I know we have Hayley Williams from Paramore, who's fantastic. She can sing her ass off. But as far as that, we're missing the Cyndi Laupers and Joan Jetts and Pat Benatars of right now. So hopefully we can all come together and find those people.

Well, the Cyndi Laupers from back then—Cyndi Lauper's still around. Debbie Harry's still around. But there's no one coming in to—
There's no one young that's really doing it. Um… there's a couple people. I mean, I like the Sounds a lot; she's an amazing person to watch. I like CSS. But they're really under the radar still, you know, to the massive mainstream world. New York and L.A. they've got covered but in Wisconsin nobody's heard of them.

That happens a lot. People get attention in L.A. and New York and then miss the flyover states.
Well, a lot of—yeah. Yeah. It's just how the trends go. There's not as much… I feel like there's not as much going on in the middle of America as there is on the coast. The big cities overpower the small little towns.

Right. And there are cities in the Midwest but the biggest ones are on the coasts. And that's where you can find tiny bands that don’t even have MySpaces yet forming.
Well, I love that. They're not all jaded and they're not all Hollywood and they don't have the "I don't want to sell out" stick up their ass that some of the bands I know in New York have—they're all so scared to sell out that they forget that music is—if people like their music that's a bad thing because it means they're selling out, you know? "[gasp] Too many fans! Too many fans!"
ADAM: It's a concept record.
What?
ADAM: You were asking before about—or did you get it already?
Yeah, I've got it, thanks. I'll never forget it. I'll get it tattooed.

[laughs] Probably my favorite concept record is the Who's Tommy.
Oh yeah! That's awesome! The Who are great. Who Are You… Um. What else?

Out of curiosity I would like to ask what else you've been doing on the tour bus.
Well, I'm a big fan of Lost and The Office and… um… really crappy shows like Keeping Up with the Kardashians—

You watch that?
I barely watch it! I watch it when I'm high… and it's hilarious… [laughs] No, I don't get high, but I do watch that show sometimes. Like when I'm really bored. It's just funny to see how people live in such an are-you-kidding-me sort of world… but whatever. It's such sucky TV. I don't even have a TV at home and I don't watch it because I'm one of those people who has to start a show at the beginning episode and then watch it all throughout where I get so freaked out like I missed something.

Well, on some shows it doesn't matter. On like Monk or Psych it doesn't matter. But on Gossip Girl—
Gossip Girl!

You're not going to have any idea what's going on!
OMG. TTYL. BRB. LMNO… Yeah.

So what is your favorite song to perform?
Um… my favorite song to perform right now is "I Kissed a Girl"—just because there's a musical break in the bridge where I can kind of just dance around and just do whatever. And it's kind of a dark, very rock side of me, which—I come off very bubble gum and pink and lavender and blue and like yellow and pastel. I look straight out of an Easter basket usually!

There you have it. To find out more Miz Katy Perry (or write a research paper on her, if you are so inclined) check out MySpace or her website.