Ke$ha's cameo
Not to be confused with I Kissed a Girl (disambiguation).
| "I Kissed a Girl" | |||||||||||||||||
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 I Kissed A Girl | |||||||||||||||||
| Single by Katy Perry | |||||||||||||||||
| from the album One of the Boys | |||||||||||||||||
| Released | April 28, 2008 | ||||||||||||||||
| Format | Digital download, CD | ||||||||||||||||
| Recorded | Dr. Luke's Studios
(New York City, NY) Legacy Recording Studio(New York City, NY) Conway Recording Studio (Hollywood, CA) | ||||||||||||||||
| Genre | Electro rock | ||||||||||||||||
| Length | 3:00 | ||||||||||||||||
| Label | Capitol | ||||||||||||||||
| Writer(s) | Katy Perry, Lukasz Gottwald, Max Martin, Cathy Dennis | ||||||||||||||||
| Producer | Dr. Luke, Benny Blanco | ||||||||||||||||
| Katy Perry singles chronology | |||||||||||||||||
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"I Kissed a Girl" is a song performed by American recording artist Katy Perry for her debut album One of the Boys (2008). It was released as the album's first single on April 28, 2008 through Capitol Records. It was written by Perry, Lukasz Gottwald, Max Martin and Cathy Dennis, with production helmed by Gottwald under his production name Dr. Luke. Perry says the song is "about the magical beauty of a woman".
The song is an electro-rock number that runs through a throbbing beat and contains influences of New Wave.
"I Kissed a Girl" received mixed reception for music critics upon reviewing the parent album, praising its sound and structure while highly criticizing its lyrical content. The song drew controversy for its irreverent lyrics and was notably criticized by numerous critics and singers. The song experienced commercial success domestically as well as internationally. It topped the Billboard Hot 100 chart for seven consecutive weeks, became the 1,000th number-one song of the rock era. The single has sold over 4,155,000 digital copies in the US alone. "I Kissed a Girl" is one of six Perry songs to top 4 million paid downloads in the US, the others being "Hot n Cold", "California Gurls", "Firework", "E.T." and "Teenage Dream".[2] It has reached the summit of the charts in nearly twenty countries, including Australia, Canada, Ireland and the United Kingdom while peaking within the top five in other European countries like Belgium, Finland and France. The song was one of the best selling singles worldwide, selling 8 million copies, became the 21st song with the most paid downloads in history.
The accompanying music video for the song was released on May 16, 2008. The video, directed by Kinga Burza, features Perry in a setting inspired by burlesque and Moulin Rouge styles. It features an appearance from then-unknown American electropop singer Kesha. The song is recognized as the 10th best selling single in the 21st century.[3] "I Kissed a Girl" was performed and a nominee at the 51st Grammy Awards (Grammy Award for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance). It was also nominated for Favorite Song at the 2009 Kids' Choice Awards.
Kesha appeared in the video for her friend, pop singer Katy Perry's single "I Kissed a Girl".
Background[]
According to Perry, I Kissed a Girl "was born as an idea in her head". She says: "The chorus actually popped into my head when I woke up. It was one of those moments where you hear artists talking about songs they get in dreams or in the middle of the night. I was like 'wow, what an interesting subject matter to kind of pop into the head' and I didn't do anything with it for about a year-and-a-half. Then all of a sudden at the very, very end of making my album, I literally had two days left in the recording studio with my producer, Dr Luke. We just said, 'we're gonna finish it - it's so catchy because it won't get out of our heads.'"
We brought it to the record label and they didn't even wanna put it on the record and we were like 'You're crazy, you need to put this on the record, you need to put it out as the first single". Capitol A&R, Chris Anokute, told HitQuarters that the song and its controversial theme met with strong resistance at the label, "People said, 'This is never going to get played on the radio. How do we sell this? How’s this going to be played in the Bible belt?'"
Anokute said that they needed the support of one of the label's radio promoters to convince people to believe in the record otherwise Perry would have likely been dropped again. Capitol's SVP of Promotions Dennis Reese saw the vision and helped push the single on national radio. The first station to pick it up and take a chance was 107.5 The River in Nashville. After playing it for three days they were inundated with enthusiastic calls.
Critical Reception[]
"I Kissed a Girl" has generally polarized music critics. Blogcritics Magazine called it "an instantly catchy number", and About.com said, "fueled by an instrumental wallop provided courtesy of producer Dr. Luke, 'I Kissed a Girl' is the perfect breakthrough". However, Rolling Stone magazine, while giving her album 2/5 stars, described the song as a "New Wave-y club single", saying the supposedly rebellious "attention-grabbing" lyrics are "a vanilla recounting of her chick-on-chick exploits" and that this "acting out" is "just to get a dude's attention". This song was number 20 on Rolling Stone's list of the 100 Best Songs of 2008. Allmusic praises "the stomping Gary Glitter beat" before criticizing the producers for turning it "into a leaden stumble and burying Perry's voice underneath Pro Tools overdubs so it all winds up as a faceless wash of sound designed to be placed in TV shows, movie trailers, and malls".
Sal Cinquemani of Slant magazine wrote, Perry's "lead single 'I Kissed a Girl' features a throbbing beat and an infectious, bi-curious hook, but its self-satisfied, in-your-face posturing rings phony in comparison to the expertly constructed ambiguities of 'Justify My Love' or practically anything in the first decade of Ani DiFranco's catalog; it's like a tween version of DiFranco's tortured bisexual confession 'Light of Some Kind'". Hiponline.com wrote that the song is "not nearly as interesting or exciting as you’d expect. It’s not even half as good as Jill Sobule’s song 'I Kissed a Girl'". Glitterati Gossip agrees Sobule's song "was ten times better, because there was actual emotional content to her lyrics".
Music Video[]
A music video for the song was released on May 16, 2008 on Perry's personal website and on MySpace. The video was directed by Kinga Burza and features a Moulin Rouge and burlesque-type setting with scenes of Perry, along with many other flamboyantly-dressed women dancing to the song. Towards the end of the video, she wakes up next to a male companion called Derek DJ Skeet Skeet. Despite the song's title, there is no depiction of same-sex kissing. Perry features her real life friend and DJ, Mia Moretti, Markus Molinari's cat Bella and a then unknown Kesha in the music video.
The video made its television debut on June 12, 2008 on TRL with the visit and interview by Perry in set show. On June 24, 2008 it became #1 on TRL. The video obtained high airplay on this music video channel, as well as on VH1. It debuted at #20 on VH1's VH1 Top 20 Video Countdown on June 28, 2008. On June 30, 2008 the video was premiered on MTV Latin America. On July 6, 2008, it rose to #4 on VH1's VH1 Top 20 Video Countdown. The video received five nominations for the 2008 MTV Video Music Awards, including Best Female Video and Best New Artist. The video has had over 42 million views on YouTube and an additional 67 million pre-vevo views.
Katy Perry - I Kissed A Girl