IF THE travails of the record business were bruises, Katy Perry would be all dolled up in black and blue, rather than the look-at-me neon prints that have made her an "It" girl with the folks who know Johnny Cupcakes from Johnny Rotten.
"Musical chairs is what the industry should be called," she says. "But now that I've grown up in it, I realize there are things beyond my control. All those years it wasn't about my music."
Whatever it was about, her career's circuitous route has brought the Santa Barbara-reared singer-songwriter to this week: At 23, with four record labels already on her resume, Perry finally unveils her debut album, "One of the Boys," and then sets off on another circuitous route -- especially for a pop ingenue -- as a co-headliner on the 46-date Vans Warped Tour.
Sending Perry out astride Warped's medley of proto-punk, hard-core and emo acts is either a bold strategy or an invitation to culture clash. Sure, the music on her slickly produced album has moxie, but can she weather a tour known as "punk rock summer camp"?
"I'm eager to prove to people that even though I am a pop artist and on a major label, I'm legit," she says, pointing out that No Doubt and Gwen Stefani took the Warped route a musical generation ago. "I play my guitar, and the band rocks, and I want to earn the respect of everybody out there."
"She's gonna find out real fast," says Kevin Lyman, the tour's founder and producer, explaining that Warped's design -- with sets alternating on adjacent stages -- will position Perry's performances right next door to the Smartpunk.com-sponsored bands. "I think that after three or four days [of the tour], everybody's going to be talking about her."
Many already are, and not just fashionistas who spend oh-so-long agonizing over their next pair of Ray-Bans or recognize her from magazine covers or acting cameos (last week: "The Young and the Restless"). "One of the Boys" offers quite a musical wardrobe: muscular rock mixed with dance-pop and balladry, themes of female empowerment couched in witty repartee, self-realization revealed with an almost pat vulnerability -- channeling the likes of Stefani, Alanis Morissette, Avril Lavigne and Lily Allen, seemingly all at once.
Of the text-message-friendly title of her first single, last year's metrosexual-slamming "Ur So Gay," Perry says with a wry smile: "I know my 14-year-old demographic." And although the second single, the current hit "I Kissed a Girl," seems to aim even lower -- Jill Sobule said a lot more in her 1995 song of the same title -- there are moments on "One of the Boys" when Perry aspires to singer-songwriter sophistication.
