Linda Perry, known for being the songwriter and producer of pop hits such as ‘Beautiful’ by Christina Aguilera or ‘Get the Party Started’ by P!nk, and previously vocalist and songwriter of the 90s hit ‘What’s Up?’ of 4 Non Blondes, has returned to the fore with the release of a new solo album, ‘Let It Die Here’. The album mainly includes original songs written for the occasion, although it also includes a new recording of ‘Beautiful’, a song that Perry has recently performed live, despite stating in interviews that he initially had no intention of even recording it.
While promoting ‘Let It Die Here’, Perry spoke at length about the creation of ‘Beautiful’ and explained why he decided to revisit the song so many years later. According to him, he proposed to Cat Power to produce this new version to provide a different perspective. Chan Marshall accepted the proposal, but finally both could not meet due to scheduling problems.
‘Beautiful’, considered Christina Aguilera’s biggest hit and one of the LGBTQ+ pop anthems of the 21st century, also has the particularity that the published vocal take is exactly the same as that of the demo, something unusual in commercial pop productions. Perry claims that the final recording contains only “16 musical tracks,” while many pop productions of the early 2000s were constructed with hundreds of layers.
In fact, Perry remembers that he had to convince Aguilera to keep the original vocal take on the demo, since the singer wanted to record a more elaborate version, with more flourishes and a more powerful performance. Aguilera even started that new take, but ended up realizing that she was “ruining” the song, which ended up proving Perry right and reinforcing her judgment as a producer.
In interviews, Perry also remembers how the song came to be. She explains that she originally thought about performing it herself and that she wrote the first piano chords years before finishing it. However, when she got the idea back and got to the line “I am beautiful no matter what they say,” she felt like she couldn’t sing it convincingly because she didn’t see herself as a “beautiful” person.
Later, Christina Aguilera agreed to record it for her album, although Perry still thought that perhaps the song didn’t fit her precisely because she was “too pretty.” Everything changed during the first recording session, when Aguilera asked a friend not to look at her while she sang because she was embarrassed. At that moment, Perry understood that, despite her public image, Aguilera also had insecurities and understood that the song was for her.
The phrase that Aguilera whispered before starting to record, “don’t look at me”, was kept in the final version and can still be heard in the first seconds of ‘Beautiful’.
Despite her intuition as a producer, Perry assures that she had to defend her vision against producer Ron Fair, who could not conceive of publishing a song practically taken from the demo and with so few tracks. Perry remembers that she met Fair at the Grammy Awards, where ‘Beautiful’ was up for several nominations, including Song of the Year.
Aguilera then performed the song live accompanied by an orchestra and, according to Perry, Fair had the audacity to tell her that that performance finally reflected what ‘Beautiful’ should have sounded like from the beginning, despite the fact that by then it was already a huge international success. “I think his ego didn’t allow him to understand what he was telling me,” Perry says.
