Bonnie Leigh McKee (born January 20, 1984) is an American singer, songwriter, and actress. Her debut studio album, Trouble, was released in 2004 by Reprise Records. After the label dropped her, she took a musical hiatus and established herself as a professional songwriter. She has written 10 singles that have reached number one in either the United States or the United Kingdom, which have sold more than 30 million copies worldwide combined. In 2013, she made a return to music with the single "American Girl". In 2015, she independently released the EP Bombastic.
In 2024, after 11 years of anticipation by her fans expressed on social media and internet forums, she released a re-recorded version of what was meant to be her second LP, Hot City, originally supposed to be released through Epic Records in 2014, but ultimately cancelled by the label. Shortly after the cancellation of her album, a number of tracks meant for inclusion in its tracklist leaked on the internet. In the following years, they were cherished by her fans, prompting McKee to rerecord them in light of the Taylor Swift masters dispute. McKee released several tracks originally meant for her shelved 2014 album as singles from mid-2023 to early 2024, finally independently releasing the 16-track album on music streaming platforms.
McKee is particularly known for collaborating with singer Katy Perry. The duo wrote "California Gurls", "Teenage Dream", "Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.)", "Part of Me", "Wide Awake", and "Roar". McKee also co-wrote "Dynamite" by Taio Cruz, which became the second-best-selling song by a British artist in the digital era. McKee co-wrote other songs including "Hold It Against Me" by Britney Spears and "C'Mon" by Kesha. She additionally has written for Cher, Christina Aguilera, Kelly Clarkson, and Adam Lambert. McKee has also collaborated with Canadian a cappella singer Mike Tompkins.
McKee was born in Vacaville, California, and raised in Seattle. She studied classical piano and became a member of the Seattle Girls Choir Prime Voci at age 12; she toured with the choir throughout North America and Europe. She recorded two albums with the choir, titled Jackson Berkey Meets The Seattle Girls' Choir and Cantate 2000. She briefly attended The Bush School during her freshman year of high school, where she recorded a demo album with other student musicians as part of an experiential class project with The President's musician Dave Dederer, an alumnus and former English teacher at the school; unrelatedly, she was kicked out soon afterward. At age 12, McKee's mother gave a demonstration CD featuring her singing Bette Midler and Fiona Apple songs to a friend of hers who is the co-founder of the Sub Pop label, Jonathan Poneman. Poneman was intrigued by her songwriting talents. According to McKee, this was the moment when she realized she had to be "more than just a singer." She knew she had to be a songwriter as well.
2004–2005: Career beginnings and Trouble
McKee wrote songs and performed in the Seattle area when she was 15. Her demo tape which was raw got to Colin Filkow, an ex-Priority Records label executive. Filkow recognized that she was a rare talent and signed her to his management company, Platinum Partners Artist Management in Beverly Hills. He flew her to Los Angeles and welcomed her into his family; she was only 17 at the time. He inspired her to sing and write songs and to trust her instincts. Filkow took Bonnie's demo to dozens of labels, publishers, agents, and entertainment lawyers. After more than a year, Filkow signed Bonnie to Warner Bros. Records in one of the most lucrative signings ever for a new artist.
Her debut album Trouble was recorded across a period of two years by producers Bob Power and Rob Cavallo, and commercially released on September 28, 2004. Reprise Records was unsure on how to sell McKee, so the label settled a partnership with internet radio website LAUNCHcast, which would promote the lead single "Somebody". "Somebody" soon became one of the most played tracks on the website, and its popularity with young female audiences led to a strategy positioning McKee as a subversive alternative to the teen pop demographic. "Somebody" was performed on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, included in the motion picture Win a Date with Tad Hamilton!, and had a music video featured on MTV's Buzzworthy and VH1's You Oughta Know. Trouble received positive reviews in Blender, Nylon, The Los Angeles Times, and Teen People, but was commercially unsuccessful. McKee spoke about the album being unsuccessful, saying, "It was devastating when the album didn't happen," she said. "I realized there are so many steps from getting a deal to having a hit... and I didn't get there. It was a huge letdown." McKee began work on a second studio album which never came to existence. According to McKee, she "downward-spiraled" and began to abuse crystal meth, an addiction with which she struggled for several years. She was dropped from the label after defacing the CEO's car with lipstick during the middle of the night.
2006–2013: Songwriting and Epic records releases
Following her release from Reprise Records, McKee managed to get a job at Pulse Recordings' publishing arm, Check Your Pulse, through her boyfriend and longtime collaborator, Oliver "Oligee" Goldstein. She lived in poverty, without hot water, a cell phone, or a car while spending many hours in the recording studio, learning how to use Pro Tools and crafting new songs alongside Elliott Yamin and Leighton Meester. She also did some acting works related to music "to make sure I kept the allure of being an artist", playing Janis Joplin in American Dreams, a pianist in August Rush, and a busking guitarist in CSI: NY. Having already met music producer Dr. Luke through her longtime friend Katy Perry, who had done with Luke her second album One of the Boys. in 2009 McKee's manager Josh Abraham made a deal to sign McKee to Dr. Luke's production label Prescription Songs. About this time, Perry expressed interest in having "a co-writer I could volley with", adding that "Bonnie and I are on the same zeitgeist tip."
Perry and McKee (along with Max Martin and Benny Blanco) began writing songs, eventually producing the hits that would appear on Perry's third album, Teenage Dream. McKee co-wrote three singles from the album, "California Gurls", "Teenage Dream", and "Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.)", the last of which was inspired by McKee and Perry's misadventures in their teenage years. Each of the singles topped the Billboard Hot 100 chart, and they earned McKee several BMI Pop Awards in 2011 and 2012 for her role as a songwriter. McKee also co-wrote two more chart-toppers for Perry, "Part of Me" and "Roar" as well as four other songs which hit number one on either the Hot 100 or the UK Singles Chart, Britney Spears' "Hold It Against Me", Taio Cruz's "Dynamite", Rita Ora's "How We Do (Party)", and Cheryl's "I Don't Care". On June 22, 2017, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) announced that "Roar" had received an RIAA Diamond certification award for 10 million copies sold.
In 2012, McKee co-wrote two songs that appeared on Adam Lambert's album Trespassing, which debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 Album Chart. She appeared as a featured performer on "Thunder" from Rusko's album Songs, released on Mad Decent. During this time she signed a recording contract with Epic Records. She had garnered attention for her fashion sense, appearing on E!'s Fashion Police, and appearing on the pages of The New York Times, New York Post, and Schön! Magazine. In 2013, McKee was awarded three more BMI Pop awards for her songwriting work on Katy Perry's "Wide Awake" and "Part of Me", as well as Britney Spears's "Hold It Against Me".
McKee's first single under Epic Records was "American Girl", which was released on July 23, 2013. She posted a promotional video for "American Girl" on YouTube in June 2013 which garnered 2.3 million views. The official music video for the song was released on July 22, 2013. In October, McKee released a new song titled "Sleepwalker". McKee confirmed that the song was not a single, but rather an "inbetweengle", a portmanteau meaning "in between single", meant to tide fans over until her next official release. The music video premiered on October 17, 2013, and starred McKee and Kelsey Chow. McKee had spent several years under a joint deal between Epic and Kemosabe Records and had planned to release her second studio album in the summer of 2014. A second single titled "S.L.A.Y." was performed at multiple venues and while she was on tour with Karmin on their Pulses Tour, but was delayed many times and eventually not released, until being re-recorded ten years later. McKee left Epic and Kemosabe Records after feeling she had a lack of control over her career and the creative direction that she wanted to take.