"When I'm Gone," Katy Perry's collaboration with Alesso, is shaping up to be her biggest hit in a while. Alesso says the song started with him, but it took them well over a year to not only get the song just right, but to be sure Katy was ready to record after welcoming her daughter, Daisy Dove.
"Me and a couple of other writers already had this song kind of done," Alesso tells ABC Audio. "And my manager knows [Katy's] manager and I said, 'Do you think she could listen to it? What can we do here?' And she heard it and and she loved it."
But as Alesso notes, getting Katy on board with the song was only the first step.
Alesso explains, "We kind of started there and then it took…more than a year to kind of like finalize it, because she just had the baby and she needed some time off."
"We rewrote it as well," he adds. "We added a lot of stuff and tailored it for her. So it was a process. But I don't mind that at all. I'm just happy that we didn't have to push it to a later release date!"
"When I'm Gone" finally dropped on the same day that Katy launched her Las Vegas residency show Play, and it's part of the show's set list.
"It lined up perfectly for her with her residency," Alesso notes. "For me, I'm just happy it came out. And it works well with my shows in Vegas as well, so it all came perfectly together, really."
A few weeks ago, Alesso joined Katy onstage on Saturday Night Live to perform "When I'm Gone." The two have yet to perform it together in Las Vegas.
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