Alex Kazemi: What inspired “Teenage Dream?” While writing did you have any idea that it would become the album’s title track?
Bonnie Mckee: Katy and I have always had a mutual fascination with the adolescent state of mind. When we met six years ago we were both really into Lolita, and we both explored those themes on our first records. Her song “One of the Boys” touched on the early stages of discovering that boys can be more than just friends, and my song “Confessions of a Teenage Girl” was about realizing my power as a young sexual creature and using it to my advantage. So it was fitting that we would end up writing a song like this together. I had no idea it would go on to be the title of the album.
Bonnie: Katy and I wrote and rewrote this song 4 times. It started off being kind of a “forever young” idea. That was always the spirit of it. Katy started with a lyric about Peter Pan that was cool, but it just kept feeling too young, and we wanted it to have more edge, more sex. There was a version that included a line that said “and the next thing you know, you’re a mom in a minivan” that kept us laughing uncontrollably for an hour. We literally wrote it front to back three times and were rolling around on the studio floor delirious.
Finally, we thought we had cracked the code, we wrote something that was based on the metaphor of “trying me on”, comparing the feeling of wearing new clothes to sex, kind of a “Dress You Up in My Love” deal, and we thought we had it, but then Benny Blanco came in and was like “no.” Luke always makes us “Benny Proof” everything. He says that if Benny doesn’t get it, America won’t get it.
Katy and I looked at each other with dread, knowing we had to start all over again. He said, “something more like this” and played us The Teenagers “Homecoming”, but at that point we were both so over it we just called it a night. Katy had invited me to write with her in Santa Barbara with Doctor Luke and Max Martin the next week,
Welp there you have it folks. I hate it when people act like Bonnie is some contracted slave who writes everything herself, Katy is always in charge of writing and it's a collaborative project where they work together.
So I bit my tongue, and we went in and started on the verses. Katy already had some beautiful images mapped out- building forts out of tents, running away and never looking back, etc,
Looks like a certain someone had already done most of the legwork before Bonnie turned up
There was a version that included a line that said “and the next thing you know, you’re a mom in a minivan” that kept us laughing uncontrollably for an hour.
mom in a minivan is a much better album title than teenage dream
There was a version that included a line that said “and the next thing you know, you’re a mom in a minivan” that kept us laughing uncontrollably for an hour.
mom in a minivan is a much better album title than teenage dream
The song would be 7x plat by now if they'd kept that lyric.
There was a version that included a line that said “and the next thing you know, you’re a mom in a minivan” that kept us laughing uncontrollably for an hour.
mom in a minivan is a much better album title than teenage dream
Naming her album after her primary audience, what kind of saint?
