Singer, songwriter and producer Linda Perry has been talking about one of her best-known songs. There are still many people who don’t know she wrote it.
We’re talking, of course, about “Beautiful,” made famous when recorded and released by Christina Aguilera in 2002.
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In a new interview with Pride Source, Perry reflects on her career. She broke through with mainstream success in 1993 as the singer with 4 Non Blondes and the global smash “What’s Up?”
However, the band split up in 1994. Perry, who is queer, says she struggled to receive the same level of support from her label at the time.
“I was in my 20s when I made a beautiful record called In Flight, and my label shelved it because it wasn’t 4 Non Blondes. They were trying to prove a point to me, and so it didn’t get out there in the world. I was devastated and so overwhelmed, and I felt everybody hated me. So I pulled myself out of the situation and asked, ‘OK, how else can I be in this business? I don’t want to be a target. I just want to make music, man.’ And ‘songwriter-producer’ fell organically in place.”
Since then, Perry has written hits for many artists, including “What You Waiting For?” by Gwen Stefani and “Get the Party Started” by Pink.
On the subject of self-empowerment anthem “Beautiful”, Perry said: “Christina did an incredible job on that song. I was impressed that she heard it because it was such a different song [compared] to anything that she was doing. I was a little shocked, like, ‘How does a girl [who did] ‘Genie in a Bottle’ hear this song for what it is?’ And she did and she owned it, and she nailed it. And for that, I have always had so much respect for her.”
Aguilera’s version of “Beautiful” hit No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100, and number one in several other countries, including the UK. It also won Aguilera a Grammy.
Many LGBTQ+ people embraced the track as an anthem of self-love, both for its lyrics and its iconic video. It included a same-sex couple and a gender nonconforming individual.
How the song came about
In May, Perry released her first solo album in almost two decades, Let It Die Here. At the time, she also spoke about writing “Beautiful.” Perry included her own version of the song on the album.
On the Go With Elmo Lovano podcast, Perry talked about creating the song and deciding to give it to Aguilera. She said she began writing the piano intro while living in San Francisco, before putting it aside. Perry returned to it later after relocating to Los Angeles.
“I started playing it, and then the song started developing … The words, everything just comes. When I write a song, everything shows up at the same time. It’s like, as if, I just mentally or creatively pushed play and the song is playing in an earbud, and I’m just copying.”
The lyrics suddenly came to her and things fell into place.
“I’m like ‘I am beautiful, no matter what…’ and then I just was like, ‘No, I am not beautiful!’
Perry shocked herself with the words that came out of her mouth. She said it jarred to sing the word “beautiful” about herself.
“I can’t say that. I think quite the opposite. I’m actually a weird, strange-looking human being, and I would never put myself in a beautiful category. I’m so hard on myself; I’m never good enough … and a statement like ‘I am beautiful’, I don’t know.”
For Perry, “beautiful” meant, “your brain is clear. Your heart is pure. There’s no damage. That’s what ‘beautiful’ represented to me at the time because I don’t think I’ve ever used the word before. Honestly, I don’t think I’ve even used that word in my vocabulary. So, when it showed up, it was like, ‘I can’t say that’. And then I walked away from the piano. I’m like, ‘No, I’m not doing that.’
“And then I was just like, ‘Linda, you always tell everybody, if a song is there, don’t edit. Just write.’ And so I went back to the piano, and I finished it.”
Perry says she knew the song could be her stepping stone back into the limelight as a solo artist. However, a few weeks later, she was asked to work with Christina Aguilera. The “Genie In A Bottle” starlet was looking for tracks for her sophomore album, Stripped.
“She [Aguilera] comes, you know, in and I have a rule that no managers, no entourage,” recalls Perry. “So, she shows up by herself. She gets dropped off by her security guy, and she’s, like, kind of in the house. And I could tell she was uncomfortable without her people.
“And she’s like, ‘Um, can you play me a song or something to break the ice? I love your voice.’ And so I’m like, ‘Okay’. So, I sat down, and I played ‘Beautiful’.”
Perry said she was aware of Aguilera moving closer to her as she sang the song.
“By the time I’m done with the song, she’s standing right here [she indicates next to her] … I’m shocked that she’s so close. And she’s like, ‘Can you demo that for me? And write down the lyrics.’ I’m like, ‘Why?’ And she’s like, ‘Because I want to do that song for my album.’
“And I’m thinking to myself, ‘You can’t sing a song saying I am beautiful ’cause you are beautiful and blah, blah, blah, blah. So I had a hard time. Because it was the opposite of everything the song actually is, right? The way I was thinking was completely opposite. My manager at the time says, ‘Well, why don’t you just hear her sing it and see what happens?’ I’m like, ‘Okay, I can do that’.”
Aguilera returned a week later and performed her vocal take of “Beautiful” for Perry.
“I got chills,” recalled Perry. “And I said, ‘Oh, it is her song. She’s just as insecure as I am. Like, I get it. And then it made sense. What the song was about was wanting to feel that I am beautiful. Stop telling yourself that you’re not. Don’t let other people tell you you’re not. We are. There’s a beautiful beauty in all of us, in some way or form, but we are bringing this down.”
Perry says that giving the song to Aguilera also made her realize that she needed to choose between being an artist and a songwriter/producer. Perry says that after hearing Aguilera’s amazing take on “Beautiful,” she felt the universe was telling her to pursue life as a producer.
The rest, as they say, is history.
Perry releases her own version of “Beautiful”
As for deciding to do her own version on her new album, Perry told Pride Source, “In no way am I reclaiming this to make it better or to go, ‘Now people can hear it the right way.’ She did it the right way. And now I’m just doing it the only way I know how, and that’s the Linda way. So ‘reclaim’ wouldn’t be the word I would use. I’m just covering a really great song, and I happened to have written it.”
Listen to Perry’s version below.
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