An Australian article talks about how Freddie and Queen inspired singer Katy Perry. She was particularly influenced by the song "Killer Queen."
KATY Perry had to jump through plenty of hoops to become a pop star.
Now 24, the photogenic Californian was just 17 when she released an album of Christian rock. It flopped spectacularly.
Raised on gospel music by her pastor parents, she was undeterred, and then an introduction by a friend to Freddie Mercury's career delivered a musical epiphany of sorts.
''I heard Killer Queen and couldn't believe somebody could sing about a woman in such a fun, flamboyant and inspiring way,'' she said yesterday. ''It opened a whole different world.''
Perry (real name Katheryn Hudson) is in Melbourne for her second Australian tour. Her debut pop album, One Of The Boys, has been in the ARIA charts for 12 months and has spawned four huge hit singles.
Her breakthrough single I Kissed A Girl, a No. 1 hit in Australia and the US, has been variously described as ''inescapable, grating and ingenious''.
As for criticism that Girl deliberately played up a ''faux-mosexual'' slant, Perry shrugs incongruously.
''People will say the most insane things about you,'' she said. ''At first you care, but after a while you don't. I'm doing something right. Every show is sold out and I'm selling lots of records.''
Musically, she sits somewhere between a quirky Alanis Morissette and Avril Lavigne with a penchant for wearing dresses made of fruit.
''I felt there was a void I could fill,'' she said. ''The world needs somebody kooky, with a dark sense of humour, who tells it like it is, but is relatable. I wanted to be that girl.''
The making of Boys spanned five years and three ex-boyfriends. ''They know who they are,'' she said. ''Some of them are unhappy about it. That's the small print in dating me.''
As a new-millenium pop star, Perry has obsessively blogged about her Australian tour, including jogging in Melbourne and Pink's Rod Laver Arena residency.
''It's an unfiltered way to communicate my perspective and messed-up sense of humour,'' she said.
Next month, she begins work on a new album that she describes as mixing pop acts the Bangles, the Cardigans and Ace of Base.
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