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PARIS : Katy Perry made the world sit up and listen for "kissing a girl", in her 2008 debut smash hit single, and her third and latest album "Teenage Dream", hitting stores this month, again reveals her sassy side.
The pop star's very first record, a Christian-gospel inspired album released under her real name Katy Hudson, went unnoticed on its 2001 release.
But with the creation of pin-up persona Katy Perry the 25-year-old's career took off. Her second album, "One of the Boys," has sold over five million copies worldwide in two years.
It outlined the megastar's sexy new style, embodied by the single "I Kissed a Girl", and "Teenage Dream" continues to tread this path.
In "Peacock," the singer ambiguously stresses the second syllable, though in understated fashion in contrast to pop rival Lady Gaga's more aggressively sexual style.
"I consider 'Teenage Dream' to be the logical continuation of my first album. I don't think people want me to be anyone other than myself," Perry, the daughter of two pastors, said.
The album sleeve captures the performer's provocative but seldom vulgar image, picturing a nude Perry lying on a cloud of cotton candy.
Her fantasy world circled the globe in this summer's radio and music video channel favourite single, "California Gurls," whose video features cookies and uncouth gummy bears living in harmony with American gangster rapper Snoop Dogg.
This colourful world was created, by the singer's own admission, as a response to Jay-Z and Alicia Keys more sombre ode to New York, "Empire State of Mind," and its black and white video.
"I love the vibe that Santa Barbara gives off and I wanted to really tap into the purity of my childhood," the singer said of her decision to record the album in her California home town.
Opening with the title track, a love song celebrating the memory of adolescent stirrings, the album then goes on to explore the spectrum of teenage emotions, sometimes melancholic as in "The One That Got Away", and sometimes manic as in "Hummingbird Heart".
Perry's voice is occasionally lost in music in the first lighter section of the album. But in the second half the vocals shine through during the slower tempo tracks and when accompanied by piano on "Pearl" and "Not Like the Movies."
"This record is at least as important, if not more, than the first because it will really show whether my success was due to luck, which I absolutely do not believe," she said.
Reviews so far show it set to be another best-seller for the young US star.
- AFP/il
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