Katy Perry Cover Girl of Billboard Magazine

"Thinking of You" hitmaker Katy Perry donned in a floral dress with flowers enveloping her,  graces the cover of Billboard’s latest issue.

Here’s what she has to share:

On her first single off her new record: “I’m not saying, ‘Oh, my God! ‘California Gurls’ is a f—ing genius opus!’ I just know what kind of card this summer needs, and that’s the one I’m playing.”

On not having to resort to scandalous stunts to get attention: “I’m not coming out trying to prove anything to anyone, like, ‘Oh, I’m in assless chaps!’ or ‘I can’t be tamed! I’ve already been through that phase. I started at 23, you know?”

On the inspiration for “Fireworks”: “Basically I have this very morbid idea…when I pass, I want to be put into a firework and shot across the sky over the Santa Barbara Ocean as my last hurrah. I want to be a firework, both living and dead. My boyfriend showed me a paragraph out of Jack Kerouac’s book On the Road, about people that are buzzing and fizzing and full of life and never say a commonplace thing. They shoot across the sky like a firework and make people go, ‘Ahhh.’ I guess that making people go ‘ahhh’ is kind of like my motto.”