The album has its fair share of belters, including the Cathy Dennis composition Hot and Cold, which is a great track to file alongside Kelly Clarkson's Since U Been Gone and Pink's U + Ur Hand. It's a recurring theme on Perry's debut album One of the Boys - Google the title track's lyrics for more of Perry's ideas on gender roles. When I first wrote about Perry back in April I wondered whether Ur So Gay, the US buzz single, would be played on UK radio after the Chris Moyles homophobia row, but in truth the debate around UR So Gay and I Kissed a Girl, which offer intriguing perspectives on masculinity and femininity respectively, should be less about sexuality and more focussed on gender politics. Peter Tatchell's waded in, of course, and there's an argument, echoing the Fairytale Of New York debate last Christmas, that whether one is "singing in character" or not, it is perhaps not entirely healthy to send a message around the world that it is alright to use gay terminology as an insult. The song begins "I hope you hang yourself with your H&M scarf, while jacking off listening to Mozart, you bitch and moan about LA, wishing you were in the rain reading Hemingway", and continues in this vein. But Katy has also attracted a fair amount of debate thanks to I Kissed a Girl and another song, UR So Gay, which attacks a straight man and explains that his problem is that he has too much in common with gay men (for this to work you have to share Perry's world view that gay men are all exactly the same). Perry's a fascinating modern pop artist and the mechanics of her launch - on both sides of the Atlantic - have been clever and, despite the heavy handed sloganeering of her debut hit, quite subtle. Good lord, this is racy stuff which will totally unintentionally steam up the glasses of Daily Mail readers at breakfast tables across the land. "The taste of her cherry chap stick, I kissed a girl just to try it, I hope my boyfriend don't mind it, it felt so wrong, it felt so right." "I kissed a girl and I liked it," Perry declares.
Part of the reason it's heading to the chart pinnacle is that it's quite good, and part of the reason is that it agrees with the Zoo, Nuts and Babestation belief that women, whether straight or gay, all actually like lezzing off with each other.