She’s not the type of person who believes that what doesn’t kill you always makes you stronger. The superstar certainly didn’t feel particularly powerful in the midst of her surprise divorce from ex-husband Russell Brand. Speaking candidly in a new interview with the U.K.’s Sunday Times, the “Walking on Air” singer, 28, reveals she took quite an emotional beating after her 2011 split from the British comedian.
“I was in bed for about two weeks,” Perry admits to the paper. “I was pretty f–ked, yes. It hurt a lot — I got a good knock.” (Brand blind sided his then wife with divorce papers in December 2011 after 14 months of marriage. They finalized their split in February 2012.)
The star — now dating fellow musician John Mayer — eventually channelled that pain into her new album, Prism. But it wasn’t easy.
“What I wanted to call this record at first was Adult Reality, because Teenage Dream was me so high on that cotton-candy cloud, and then it’s like I got punched in the face and kicked down the stairs a couple of times,” she tells the Sunday Times. “I had to face the reality that things are not always on cloud nine. ”
It was that revelation that inspired Perry to write “By the Grace of God,” in which she sings about “lying on the bathroom floor” and wanting to give up on life. “The song is very autobiographical,” she notes. “I was down and out, I’d lost hope, all of my confidence had been shattered.”
Recent Comments