One of the many irritating things about Katy Perry’s sure-to-be-ubiquitous summer slice of pop “California Gurls” is that borderline-egregious spelling of “girls.” Well, it turns out that rather than simply a play to appeal to the Hot Topic masses, the decision to spell the word that way was in fact an homage to… Big Star’s 1974 single “September Gurls.”
Perry told EW that her manager Bradford is a “huge Big Star fan” and, in light of the recent death of the band’s Alex Chilton, Bradford asked Perry if she would trade out the “i” for a “u.” And if doing her friend a favor also happened to make for a title more palatable to the Twitter generation, all the better: “I don’t know the whole catalog of Big Star, but I did it because Bradford is one of my best friends and I thought it was cool,” Perry said, “and you know, the kids like those variations.”
Katy Perry says ‘California Gurls” title is indeed a Big Star reference: Whoa! [Music Mix/EW]
