21 August 2008
There’s something irresistibly exuberant and positive about a young woman singing “I kissed a girl and I liked it!” as the chorus of a smash-hit number one single. Also, experimentation and fluidity are natural and valuable parts of any person’s sexuality. How unfortunate, then, that here it’s all immediately qualified, even undermined, by lines like “hope my boyfriend don’t mind it” and “It felt so wrong / It felt so right”. And that Katy Perry’s previous promotional single was called ‘UR So Gay’, which still got included in her debut album. And that her subsequent career features moments where taste seems optional (e.g. the video for ‘Part Of Me’ effectively being a US Marines recruitment ad). So, while many people certainly find the chorus hook of ‘I Kissed A Girl’ empowering, which is fair enough, in the context of 2008 we’re still in prime ’00s pop-cultural crassness, where the image of two women kissing more often gets commodified and caricatured as mainstream male-gaze taboo and titillation.
Along with that mahoosive chorus, courtesy of top-drawer contributors like Cathy Dennis and Max Martin, the track’s glam rock stomp also appeals to me. Still, though, can I leave behind the bits I don’t like and cherry-pick the bits I do – or in the ‘I Kissed A Girl’ idiolect, the “it felt so wrong” and “it felt so right”? Ultimately, in this case—where the whole feels like something from an American Pie movie—I find I can’t.
