‘I have over 100 hats,” says Linda Perry, who’s immediately carrying a fetching western quantity with a bandana skimming her cheek tattoos within the model of Captain Jack Sparrow. “I don’t actually like hair. I had dreads for a very long time, then a mohawk. Now I’m similar to, ‘Fuck it. I’m not even gonna try to have a coiffure. This is my coiffure.’”

However the hats on her head should not the one ones Perry wears. In addition to being the author and producer behind a number of the most definitive pop songs of the 2000s – having penned tracks for the likes of Christina Aguilera, Pink, Gwen Stefani, Courtney Love, Alicia Keys and Adele – she can also be an artist supervisor, label head, movie soundtracker and queer icon. For a time throughout the brand new millennium, it was Perry who singers turned to after they needed a spiky musical makeover. Lots of her early forays into hit-making leaned into rebellious rabble-rousing, with rising stars spouting such pouty traces as “kissing my ass” and “silly ho”. Most memorable had been Pink’s Get the Celebration Began, Stefani’s solo comeback What You Ready For? and Love’s Mono.

Maybe they gravitated not simply to Perry’s hooks however to her sense of freedom amid a inflexible label machine that was manufacturing new artists by the second. By the brand new millennium, she’d already been in 4 Non Blondes, the all-out lesbian US rock band for whom she wrote the 1993 megahit What’s Up. Regardless of their success, they had been vehemently anti-commercial and appeared forward of their time, however Perry dismisses any such notion now. “I don’t assume there’s something radical or progressive about my band,” she says. “We offered 7m information.”

Nonetheless – through the Aids disaster and the rampant homophobia that got here with it, in addition to flaring tensions over abortion rights within the wake of the conservative Reagan period – Perry performed a guitar on which she had taped the phrases “dyke” and “alternative”. She says the producers of David Letterman’s chatshow as soon as advised her to take away them. “I knew it could make individuals really feel uncomfortable,” she says. “I imagine in being queer and I imagine in us having alternative as a result of at the moment – one other time, within the 90s – we had been combating for abortion rights. In order that was my assertion: dyke and selection.” Moreover, she says later, “I don’t give a fuck what individuals assume.”

Perry, 57, is on a video name from her studio in Sherman Oaks, Los Angeles. It’s noticeably light-filled, which helps her to maintain common hours so she will spend time with Rhodes, her son with ex-wife and actor Sara Gilbert. Limitless gleaming guitars encircle a recording sales space with big antlers hanging above it. Black and white photographs of musical legends line the partitions, not a gold disc in sight. It’s right here, on this rock’n’roll oasis, that Dolly Parton turned up at some point to report. Perry was producing the soundtrack for the Netflix movie Dumplin’ and ambitiously rearranged a few of Parton’s basic songs, in addition to writing originals with the nation legend – work that earned Perry her fifth Grammy nomination.

“She known as me a bizarre gal,” says Perry fondly. “After which she mentioned she’s interested in bizarre individuals. I took it as a giant praise.” Parton had “by no means labored with a girl earlier than, author or producer” and so they turned “artistic soulmates” who shared a hard-working ethic. “She sang one thing like seven songs in at some point and nailed them.”

Perry says she has to work with artists she likes. She has previously been vital of singers resembling Katy Perry, of whose music she mentioned: “She’s not reinventing the wheel, she’s not giving substance.” To this producer, substance is of the utmost significance. There was one other time “with a distinguished artist,” she says, “and I didn’t like her in any respect. Every thing that got here out of her mouth was … she was plagiarising some tune, , even considered one of my very own and I’m like, ‘When you’re wanting to tear individuals off, you got here to the mistaken particular person.’ So I excused her from the studio.”

Perry will this week be introduced with an Inspiration Award from the Music Producers Guild. Again in 2017, an estimated 6% of the UK organisation’s membership, and two awards nominees, had been girls. Now that share has greater than doubled, and nominations have reached 13, however the numbers are nonetheless manifestly disproportionate. In America, Perry is a part of EqualizeHer, an initiative to even out gender disparity throughout the US music trade, which has equally grim statistics. “There’s not very many ladies do what I do,” says Perry. Within the US, she provides, “2% of producers are girls”.

She needed to battle to get behind the blending desk. In the course of the making of 4 Non Blondes’ one and solely album, 1992’s Larger, Higher, Sooner, Extra!, she disagreed with producer David Tickle’s overblown path. So she began choosing up recording ideas from the in-house engineer after hours. Ultimately, it was her model of What’s Up that made the ultimate minimize – however she wasn’t allowed a manufacturing credit score. When Perry give up 4 Non Blondes to go solo, she labored with Invoice Bottrell on her debut, 1996’s In Flight. He shared extra secrets and techniques of the studio. However whereas her label was eager to form her into one other Sheryl Crow, Perry needed to jot down her reply to Darkish Aspect of the Moon. With out the label’s help, it sank.

She spent a number of extra years in San Francisco, the place 4 Non Blondes had met and she or he had moved to, aged 21, from Massachusetts. Recording native bands totally free helped her hone her approach. Then she relocated to LA and, for the hell of it, stocked up on digital gear to make the form of pop she was listening to on the radio. She started amassing lyrical cliches and shortly had a demo for Get the Celebration Began. Madonna turned it down. However per week later, Perry bought a name from a younger singer known as Pink, an Aerosmith devoted whose group had been making an attempt to prime her for R&B.

Perry had thought of relaunching her personal solo profession. However when she met Pink, she knew she needed to put it on maintain. She advised her aghast supervisor: “Hear, I bought a sense.” And it paid off. Pink took Get the Celebration Began to No 4 in America, whereas Perry went on to co-write a big a part of Pink’s second album, Missundaztood. Then she gave considered one of her meant comeback songs to Christina Aguilera and confirmed off a special, deeper facet. Versus the ad-lib olympics Aguilera was identified for, Perry puzzled: “What does that voice do when it’s coming from pure emotion?”

Lovely, Aguilera’s 2002 single, was the reply, putting in its simplicity and the poignancy of its message, with a vulnerability that Perry felt was distinctive for the period. “It stood out as a result of it was a time when pop was ridiculously over-produced,” says Perry. Wasn’t Pink irritated she’d given it to Aguilera? “It wasn’t for her,” she shoots again. “I don’t simply give songs to individuals. They should earn them.”

Throughout this era, Perry was prolific, working with Kelly Osbourne, Lisa Marie Presley, Ashlee Simpson, Alicia Keys and – on her debut album – Solange Knowles. Perry additionally had a novel chook’s eye view of the music trade: a uncommon girl within the studio at a time when numerous performers, from Britney Spears to Kesha, had been mercilessly scrutinised or taken benefit of. Perry has mentioned she by no means skilled sexual harassment herself, however she heard tales from different girls. Did she really feel an obligation of care?

“All I can do is be highly effective and powerful,” she says. “I attempt to educate individuals. Christina, Gwen – I inform them what microphone they’re singing into. I give them the settings. I simply attempt to ensure all people feels empowered, and that I’m being a accountable producer by making individuals really feel secure after they come to my studio. Throughout that point I labored with lots of girls who had by no means labored with a girl earlier than. It gave them a way of ease, understanding I wasn’t going to be hitting on them.”

She continues: “Up to now, girls have taken that bait to get to the place they need to go, as a result of that’s the situations they had been introduced into – ‘If you wish to be well-known, honey, you’re gonna should suck off some dick.’ In 2002, in the event that they’d had 10 Lindas, we’d be speaking a special story.”

Extra not too long ago, Perry has moved in the direction of movie and TV – writing theme music with Bono for Sean Penn’s documentary Citizen Penn. And she or he wrote and carried out her first solo observe in years for 2021’s Gen-X doc Child 90. “In scoring,” she says, “you don’t should make hits for the radio and also you don’t should comply with that many guidelines.” She is disenchanted with the best way pop songs are constructed today. “Numerous music is simply put collectively. They’ve bought their ProTools, the man who does the beats, the topline author, the pal that is available in to assist with melody. There’s a circus of individuals writing a tune.”

Anybody, she says, it doesn’t matter what their contribution, could be credited as a songwriter. “Even for those who had been stoned out of your thoughts, had nothing to do with the observe, however got here out of your excessive with, ‘Possibly it is best to say, uh, “Feels so good to be right here now.”’ After which they write that in – that man is now a songwriter.” She strikes over to her piano and glides over the keys. “Not often is somebody sitting down right here and going, ‘I’m gonna write a tune immediately.’ There’s no high quality. No, scratch that. There’s lots of high quality, however it’s more durable to recognise it.”

Sometimes, although, Perry will nonetheless be struck by a voice and can cease at nothing to report it, such because the one she as soon as detected within the background of a video name. “I heard Kate Hudson singing and I used to be like, ‘Holy shit!’ I bought her quantity and cold-called her and I’m like, ‘I’ve a tune for you.’” Perry satisfied the actor to sing it then began “pestering her” to make an album. “When she was prepared, we wrote 25 songs. It’s a incredible old-school report you’d anticipate the woman from Nearly Well-known to do.”

It’s a bit like how Perry felt about Pink: dedication ignited. “I’m anyone who goes with my intestine on all issues,” she says. “And I by no means take a look at something as a failure. Every thing is an expertise, every thing is a danger. Whenever you need issues, you’ll do no matter you may to get there. You’ll discover a manner.”

Effectively, hats off to that.