The summer of 2010 was undoubtedly the summer of Katy Perry’s “California Gurls.” Fifteen years later, listeners must be craving some of that sunshine, as “California Gurls” has officially joined the Spotify Billions Club after reaching a billion streams on the platform.
“California Gurls” was released on May 7th, 2010 as the first single off of Perry’s record-breaking second album Teenage Dream. Perry had the idea for a song that would act as the West Coast version of Jay-Z’s “Empire State of Mind.” During her 2010 Rolling Stone cover shoot, she explained, “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.”
Perry and her producers took inspiration from Prince, house music, and disco among other influences when composing the song. Fellow California-native Snoop Dogg was asked to collaborate on the track after Perry decided on him through browsing the ‘West Coast artists’ page on Wikipedia.
On June 14th, the music video for “California Gurls” was released, full of now-iconic imagery. Directed by Matthew Cullen, the video shows California portrayed as a Candyland-inspired board game. The game’s mission is for Perry to free the ‘Queens of Candyfornia’ being held captive by the evil king ‘Sugar Daddy,’ played by Snoop. In the final battle, Perry defeats Snoop’s gummy bear army with whipped cream guns attached to her breasts.
The song originally debuted at number two on the Billboard Hot 100, but climbed to the number one spot four weeks later. It was Perry’s second number one hit and Snoop Dogg’s third. The track was certified Diamond by the RIAA in 2023, making Perry the first female artist to hold four Diamond-status singles.
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