Katy Perry’s “California Gurls” (the ‘u’ a very obscure reference to Big Star’s “September Gurls”) is not a cover of the Beach Boys’ semi-eponymous hit, although Snoop Dogg does reference the song towards the end (“I wish they could all be California girls”-an allegedly improvised line which later lead to the Beach Boys’ threatening to sue). Perry’s “Gurls” was meant as a response to Jay-Z and Alicia Key’s “Empire State of Mind”:
“It’s so great that ‘Empire State of Mind’ is huge and that everybody has the New York song, but what the fuck? What about LA? What about California? And it’s been a minute since we’ve had a California song and especially from a girl’s perspective…”
-Katy Perry in Rolling Stone, possibly inadvertently displaying the sentiment that California is Los Angeles.
Although the California girls in Perry’s video are extraordinarily diverse (they’re dubbed the “Queens of Candyfornia in the video), the song unfortunately continues to further the ideal California girl as a sexual object through lyrics such as “Daisy Dukes/Bikinis on top”; “We’ll melt your popsicle” (???). However, I feel like I really do have to commend Katy for her destruction the Sugar Daddy (Snoop Dogg dressed as a pimp) ‘s gummy bear army with a clever whipped cream bra.
