Katy Perry releases “California Gurls”

After scoring four smash singles off her five-million-selling 2008 debut album One of the Boys, two-time Grammy-nominated singer and songwriter Katy Perry returns to set airwaves ablaze with a scorching brand-new single “California Gurls,” which ignited radio with a surprise release on May 7. The single is now available for sale digitally worldwide.

An irresistible, hook-filled clarion call to throw on Daisy Dukes and a bikini top, “California Gurls” will “melt your popsicle,” Katy assures us in this party anthem of the summer. The sizzling track — a fresh evolution of Perry’s witty, sassy sound — is the follow-up to her back-to-back-to-back No. 1 chart-toppers “I Kissed A Girl”, “Hot N Cold”, and “Waking Up In Vegas” from One of the Boys.

The Santa Barbara-born Perry was inspired to write “California Gurls” as she watched her friends go crazy at a party listening to Jay-Z’s salute to New York, “Empire State of Mind.” “Everybody was holding their drinks in the air and dancing, and I thought, ‘We’re not in New York, we’re in Los Angeles! What about California? What about all the homies, the gin and juice, the swaying palm trees, the sun-kissed skin 24-7,’” Perry recalls. “I decided that we needed to make a response. I want people to want to book a ticket to California the first time they hear it!” And because it’s practically un-American to release a song that mentions gin and juice without Snoop Dogg, Perry recruited the rap icon to contribute his inimitable vocals to “California Gurls.” “We thought it would sound so cool and give the song another dimension,” she says. “Snoop is as West Coast as it gets.”

“California Gurls” is just a taste of what’s to come when Katy unleashes her brand-new album Teenage Dream, which will be released by Capitol Records on August 24th in the U.S. and Canada; and August 30th in the rest of the world. The album is the follow-up to Perry’s blockbuster debut One of the Boys, which has been certified platinum in the U.S. and has sold five million copies worldwide. The album spawned four smash singles, including the back-to-back No. 1, Grammy-nominated chart-toppers “I Kissed A Girl” and “Hot N Cold” (both selling more than a combined eight million copies in the US), “Thinking of You” (No. 1 Airplay in five countries), and “Waking Up in Vegas” (2.3 million sold in the US and No. 1 Airplay in five countries). Perry has sold more than 22 million singles, digital tracks, and mobile products worldwide.

Katy’s success has led her to become one of the most talked-about new artists of the past two years. Since exploding onto the scene in 2008 with “Ur So Gay,” and touring the entire run of the Vans Warped tour, she has appeared on the covers of 12 national magazines (including Seventeen, Cosmopolitan, Glamour, Nylon, Complex, Paper, Lucky, Out, and Billboard) and countless international publications, launched a sold-out 50-city world headlining tour, appeared on several national morning and late-night talk shows (including The Today Show, American Idol, So You Think You Can Dance?, Ellen, The CBS Early Show, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, and Chelsea Lately in the US and Later with Jools Holland (UK), Taratata (France), the Echo Awards (Germany) and many others internationally), as well as NBC’s New Year’s Eve with Carson Daly. She has presented awards (and gotten slimed) at the Nickelodeon Kids Choice Awards, presented at the 2010 Grammy Awards (where “Hot N Cold” was nominated for “Best Female Pop Vocal Performance”), and performed at the Grammy Awards ceremony in 2009 when she was nominated in the same category for “I Kissed A Girl.” Most recently, Perry has appeared as a judge on the Fox juggernaut American Idol and been named one of People Magazine’s “Most Beautiful People” of 2010, one of Entertainment Weekly’s Entertainers of the Year, Esquire’s Women We Love and voted 2008 Best New Artist by readers of Rolling Stone. She has also hosted and performed – twice at the MTV EMA’s.