KATY Perry admits she was pretty much at rock bottom when she started to write her new album, Prism.
The American pop star, who turned 29 on Friday, was still reeling from the breakdown of her year-long marriage to British comedian Russell Brand and was in a very dark place indeed. The first song she came up with was the stark, spare By the Grace of God, which contains the lines "I looked in the mirror and decided to stay, wasn't going let love take me out that way," which she admits stemmed from suicidal thoughts.
"I guess that statement of having to hit bottom before you can go back up is very true," she muses over the phone from New York, sandwiched between whirlwind trips to London and Sydney.
"I had sweaty palms presenting the lyrics. To this day I still feel very vulnerable about revealing that snapshot in my life but the feedback I have gotten from it is more valuable than my own insecurities. It makes people feel like they are not so alone in their situation or if they felt very low and like they had negative thoughts come into their mind that they don't feel crazy because they think 'Oh my God, someone else has that feeling too and I can hear it in their song'."
Katy Perry wows fans in a recent performance outside the Sydney Opera House. Source: AP
"I let love in and that influenced my life," she says. "I did a lot of work on myself. That was the first and foremost thing - I went inside myself and did some patchwork stuff that really needed to happen before I found my happiness again."
Katy Perry says she hit an all-time low after ex-husband Russell Brand dumped her by text message. Source: AP
"There are many routes you can go through in dealing with emotions," she says. "They can overtake you sometimes but I feel very blessed to have the gift of being able to channel it through songwriting. Rather than being destructive I get to be creative and once I let it come out of me it's almost as though I can move forward from that."
Katy Perry for Sunday papers only Picture: Supplied
Moving forward was the key. Once she had turned her life around she was adamant that Prism would not be a bitter, vengeful break-up album brimming with barbs at the ex who infamously broke up with her by text message. While she seemingly references the incident in the song Ghost, which opens with the lines "you sent a text, it was like the wind changed your mind", Perry is adamant that the song is not about her split - and that dwelling in the past would put undue emphasis on a brief and ultimately painful chapter in her life she is clearly keen to move on from.
Katy Perry describes new love John Mayer as "an incredible human being and one of the most intelligent, diverse artists I have ever known." Source: Supplied
"That's the funny thing - it's not about that chapter in my life," she says of Ghost. "People think that certain songs are about certain people and there is only one song about that time in my life and that song is By the Grace of God. All the rest of them are very present. I thought I was going to make a record about that dark period in my life but I didn't because I was so positively influenced.
"Also if I made a record about it, it would be giving too much credit to that time in my life which is completely in the past and something that I look at as a lesson. But if I made a whole record about it, it would be like 'well she's not over it'. And that would be kind of strange."
Perry is loath to go into too much detail about her lyrics - just as she generally avoids mentioning Brand and Mayer by name - she'd much rather fans came up with their own interpretation, even if she understands they will draw conclusions from what they think they know about her. Reading the first reviews of Prism in recent weeks has left her rather bemused by some of the connections critics and fans have made, but she's not about to step in to set the record straight.
"People have their ideas of what songs are about and 90 per cent of the time they are completely wrong," she says. "But it's not my job to go in and say 'well you are wrong, you're right or this is what it's about'. I am giving my statement in the words of my songs so I don't need to expand any more on that. I want the songs to be adopted so that people can use them as their own soundtrack too. My hope is that people who aren't songwriters or musicians or artists feel that I could be their voice."
While guarded on the subject of Mayer, who co-wrote the bonus track Spiritual after she guested on his recent album, she's clearly smitten with - and slightly in awe of - her new love.
"He is an incredible human being and one of the most intelligent, diverse artists I have ever known," she says. "I have said it before but when he passes I would like to take his brain and have it studied for science because I think he has so many more neural passageways open than anyone else I know."
Mayer, she says, is partly the inspiration for the new single, Unconditionally, as was a trip she made to Madagascar with UNICEF that made a profound impression on her and helped realign her world view. An avid supporter of gay rights - she tangled with then opposition leader Tony Abbott over the issue in a radio interview earlier this year - Perry is proud to use her celebrity for causes from third world relief, to female empowerment and breast cancer sufferers.
"Unconditionally is a universal love song that is not just specific to romantic love," she says. "When you love someone unconditionally you have a lot of acceptance and you look beyond their flaws and their insecurities and you love them wholeheartedly. It's a very spiritual kind of love.
"I was in Africa on a UNICEF trip to Madagascar and it was an incredible sight to see all these people who really didn't have anything - social status or material possessions - but they had such an incredible joy and love and respect for each other that transcended 'stuff'. I feel like our world and our society is really based on 'stuff' and social status. So going there to this little area helped me reprioritise the way I think, the way I treat people - it did a number on my mind but also on my heart. It was a representation of this unconditional love."
Prism is out now.
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30 Oct, 2013
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Source: http://news.com.au.feedsportal.com/c/34564/f/632590/s/331416f0/sc/38/l/0L0Snews0N0Bau0Centertainment0Cmusic0Cbig0Eread0Elovedup0Ekaty0Eperry0Elets0Ego0Eof0Edemons0Eon0Enew0Ealbum0Eprism0Cstory0Ee6frfn0A90E1226749725280A0Dfrom0Fpublic0Irss/story01.htm
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