Katy Perry

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Katy Perry grew up in a household where the word "luck" was banned because it reminded her mother of Lucifer. Deviled eggs were called "angeled eggs". The cereal Lucky Charms was forbidden. And secular music was almost entirely off-limits. That is the origin story of one of the best-selling music artists of all time, a woman with estimated sales of over 151 million records worldwide. How does a child raised by Pentecostal pastors in Santa Barbara, California, become the first female artist to score five number-one singles from a single album? How does a gospel debut that sold an estimated 200 copies transform into a career worth an estimated net worth of $360 million? And what does it mean that the performer Vogue and Rolling Stone dubbed the "Queen of Camp" smuggled pop music home on CDs borrowed from her friends? The answers run from Nashville recording studios to the Super Bowl halftime stage, from a protracted legal battle over a former Los Angeles convent to a rocket ship launched into space.

• 2. Santa Barbara Roots

  ›

  Katheryn Elizabeth Hudson was born on the 25th of October 1984, in Santa Barbara, California, to Mary Christine and Maurice Keith Hudson, both Pentecostal pastors. Her mother was born a Perry, and that maiden name would later become the most recognized stage name in pop music. The family moved frequently from ages three to 11 as her parents established churches across the country, before eventually settling back in Santa Barbara. Money was scarce. The family sometimes used food stamps, and ate food from the food bank that also fed the congregation at her parents' church.

  Perry attended religious schools including Paradise Valley Christian School in Arizona and Santa Barbara Christian School in California. The household's strict rules extended well beyond forbidden cereals. Gospel music was the soundtrack of Perry's childhood, while popular music required subterfuge: she discovered it through CDs she smuggled home from friends. A friend's recording of "You Oughta Know" by Alanis Morissette landed as a revelation, influencing her early ideas about songwriting.

  Perry began singing by practicing with cassette tapes belonging to her older sister Angela, performing the songs in front of her parents until they allowed her the same vocal lessons Angela was taking. Training started at age nine, and by 13 she had received her first guitar as a birthday gift. She completed her General Educational Development requirements early at 15 and left Dos Pueblos High School to pursue music full time. Her brother David would later describe her adolescence as that of a "tomboy", a quality she eventually folded directly into her song "One of the Boys".

• 3. The Long Road to Capitol

  ›

  Rock artists Steve Thomas and Jennifer Knapp, based in Nashville, Tennessee, heard Perry sing and brought her there to sharpen her writing skills. She signed with Red Hill Records and released Katy Hudson on the 6th of March 2001, a contemporary Christian record. Critics gave it mixed notices and it sold an estimated 200 copies before the label ceased operations in December of that year.

  Perry then pivoted toward secular music and moved to Los Angeles at 17 to work with producer Glen Ballard, whose past work with Alanis Morissette drew her in. She briefly performed under the name Katheryn Perry in 2003 to avoid confusion with actress Kate Hudson, before settling on Katy Perry and using her mother's maiden name. In 2004 she signed to Ballard's label, Java Records, affiliated at the time with The Island Def Jam Music Group, but that deal collapsed when Java was dropped. She then signed to Columbia Records through A&R executive Tim Devine.

  At Columbia she worked with an array of songwriters including Desmond Child, Max Martin, and Dr. Luke, and finished material for an album titled Fingerprints by November 2006. Songs from those sessions that didn't make her eventual debut went to other artists: "I Do Not Hook Up" and "Long Shot" to Kelly Clarkson, "Rock God" to Selena Gomez and the Scene. Columbia dropped her in 2006 before Fingerprints was released. After a stint at an independent A&R company called Taxi Music, her demos reached Virgin Records chairman Jason Flom through publicity executive Angelica Cob-Baehler. Flom signed her to Capitol Records in April 2007, and the label arranged for her to work with Dr. Luke to develop what they called an "undeniable smash".

• 4. Teenage Dream's Historic Run

  ›

  "California Gurls" featuring Snoop Dogg was released on the 7th of May 2010, and reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in June. It was the opening move of what became a statistically unprecedented album campaign. Teenage Dream, released on the 24th of August 2010, debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 and has since sold over 12 million copies worldwide, making it Perry's highest-selling album.

  "Firework" reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 on the 8th of December 2010. "E.T." featuring Kanye West followed as the fourth single and topped the chart for five non-consecutive weeks, making Teenage Dream the ninth album in history to produce four number-one singles. When "Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.)" topped the chart on August 17, Perry became the first female artist to achieve five number-one Billboard Hot 100 songs from a single album, and the second artist to accomplish the feat at all, after Michael Jackson with Bad. She received an honorary American Music Award for this in November 2011.

  The chart run didn't stop there. On September 7, Perry set a record by becoming the first artist to spend 69 consecutive weeks in the top ten of the Hot 100. The sixth single, "The One That Got Away", made Teenage Dream the third album to produce six top-five songs on the Billboard Hot 100, joining George Michael's Faith and Janet Jackson's Rhythm Nation 1814. The reissue Teenage Dream: The Complete Confection, released on the 23rd of March 2012, produced the additional number-one single "Part of Me". On the 5th of January 2012, Perry was named the sixth best-selling digital artist in the United States, with sales of 37.6 million units according to Nielsen SoundScan.

  The California Dreams Tour, which ran from February 2011 to January 2012 in support of the album, grossed $59.5 million globally and won her the award for Best Live Act at the 2011 MTV Europe Music Awards. Halsey later called Teenage Dream "the perfect pop album", and Ariana Grande described "The One That Got Away" as "one of the biggest and most perfectly written pop songs ever".

• 5. Super Bowl and Prism's Peak

  ›

  Prism arrived on the 18th of October 2013, debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, and has sold over eight million copies worldwide. Its lead single "Roar" topped the Billboard Hot 100, followed by "Dark Horse" with Juicy J, which became Perry's ninth U.S. number-one single.

  On the 23rd of November 2014, the National Football League announced that Perry would perform at the Super Bowl XLIX halftime show on the 1st of February 2015, with Lenny Kravitz and Missy Elliott as special guests. Two days after the performance, Guinness announced it had drawn 118.5 million viewers in the United States, making it the most watched and highest rated show in Super Bowl history. The viewership exceeded the game itself, which drew 114.4 million viewers.

  The Prismatic World Tour, which ran from May 2014 to October 2015, sold almost 2 million tickets and grossed $204.3 million worldwide, winning Perry the award for "Top Package" at the 2014 Billboard Touring Awards. On the 26th of June 2014, the Recording Industry Association of America declared her the Top Certified Digital Artist Ever, with certified sales of 72 million digital singles in the United States. That same year, a portrait of Perry by painter Mark Ryden was featured in his "The Gay 90s" exhibition at the Kohn Gallery in Los Angeles, and a portrait by artist Will Cotton was included in the United States National Portrait Gallery.

• 6. Camp, Influence, and Artistry

  ›

  Perry cites her sister Angela as the single greatest influence on her artistic life. At 17, a friend played her a recording of "Killer Queen" by Queen, and frontman Freddie Mercury became, in her words, her biggest influence. She described the "combination of his sarcastic approach to writing lyrics and his 'I don't give a fuck' attitude" as a formative model. She later named her third fragrance Killer Queen in homage.

  The Beach Boys' album Pet Sounds shaped Perry's melodic instincts so thoroughly that she stated: "Pet Sounds is one of my favorite records and it influenced pretty much all of my songwriting. All of the melody choices that I make are because of Pet Sounds." She placed Alanis Morissette's 1995 album Jagged Little Pill in equally high esteem, calling it in 2012 "the most perfect female record ever made." Her concert film autobiography Katy Perry: Part of Me was directly influenced by Madonna: Truth or Dare, and she has described admiring Madonna's capacity for reinvention.

  Perry has a contralto vocal range. Critics split on her voice: one reviewer for The Guardian called it "powerful" and "hard-edged", while another for Rolling Stone described her Teenage Dream vocals as "processed staccato blips". Perry herself has described her approach to songwriting as built on vulnerability. She told Marie Claire: "I feel like my secret magic trick that separates me from a lot of my peers is the bravery to be vulnerable and truthful and honest."

  Her public image leans deliberately theatrical. Vogue dubbed her the "Queen of Camp", while Glamour called her the "queen of quirk". She described her own fashion sensibility in 2009 as "a bit of a concoction of different things" and noted she enjoyed humor in her clothing. At the 2017 launch of Katy Perry Collections, her shoe line, she traced her style origins to thrift-store shopping in Los Angeles, recalling a pair of flats designed to look like Dalmatian dogs: "They were such a conversation piece. That's what is so great about fashion... It's a form of communication."

• 7. Activism and the Convent Battle

  ›

  Perry received the Trevor Hero Award from The Trevor Project in December 2012 for activism on behalf of LGBT youth. She was officially named a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador on the 3rd of December 2013, "with a special focus on engaging young people in the agency's work to improve the lives of the world's most vulnerable children and adolescents." In 2013 she joined UNICEF in Madagascar to assist children with education and nutrition, and in May 2016 she worked with the organization in Vietnam to improve child care quality.

  In June 2014, Perry teamed with Staples Inc. for a project called "Make Roar Happen", which donated $1 million to DonorsChoose, an organization funding classroom resources in public schools. During her California Dreams Tour, she raised over $175,000 for the Tickets-For-Charity fundraiser, split between the Children's Health Fund, Generosity Water, and The Humane Society of the United States. Proceeds from her single "Part of Me" were donated to MusiCares, which assists musicians in need.

  A parallel story unfolded off-stage in Los Angeles, where Perry attempted to purchase a former convent in the Los Feliz neighborhood beginning in 2015. She offered the Archdiocese of Los Angeles $14.5 million in cash for the eight-acre property. Two elderly nuns, Sister Rita Callanan and Sister Catherine Rose Holzman, opposed the archdiocese's sale and attempted to sell the property instead to developer Dana Hollister for $15.5 million. The archdiocese sued, arguing the nuns lacked authority and that any sale over $7.5 million required Vatican approval. In 2016, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge ruled the sale to Hollister invalid. A jury in 2017 found Hollister had intentionally interfered with Perry's deal and awarded $5 million in compensatory damages, later supplemented by an additional $10 million in punitive damages. Sister Holzman died in court in 2018.

• 8. Later Career and Into Space

  ›

  Witness, released on the 9th of June 2017, debuted at number one in the United States. To accompany it, Perry broadcast a live-stream on YouTube for four days titled Katy Perry Live: Witness World Wide, which generated over 49 million views from 190 countries. She described Witness as a "360-degree liberation" record. The Witness: The Tour ran from September 2017 through August 2018.

  Smile, her sixth album, was released on the 28th of August 2020. Two days before its release, Perry gave birth to a daughter named Daisy Dove Bloom with partner Orlando Bloom, to whom she had become engaged on the 14th of February 2019. She performed "Firework" at the Celebrating America concert on the 20th of January 2021, during the inauguration of Joe Biden. Her Las Vegas concert residency, Play at Resorts World Las Vegas, opened on the 29th of December 2021, inspired during COVID-19 lockdowns by films including Honey, I Shrunk the Kids and Pee-wee's Big Adventure. It ran until the 4th of November 2023, and grossed $46.4 million. In September 2021, the Santa Barbara Independent reported that her contract for the residency was worth $168 million.

  In September 2023, Perry sold her music rights to Litmus Music for an estimated $225 million. Her seventh album, 143, was released on the 20th of September 2024, and was met with widespread critical disapproval, in part because of her decision to work again with Dr. Luke following singer Kesha's sexual assault allegations against him. Perry received the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award at the 2024 MTV Video Music Awards on September 11.

  On the 14th of April 2025, Perry flew into space aboard Blue Origin NS-31, the eleventh crewed flight under the New Shepard program. She was joined by Amanda Nguyen, Aisha Bowe, Kerianne Flynn, Gayle King, and Lauren Sanchez. The flight was the first all-female space flight since 1963. Later that year, her fifth concert tour, The Lifetimes Tour, concluded its 91 shows with a gross of more than $134 million. On the 28th of April 2026, she announced the concert film The Lifetimes Tour - Live from Paris, set to premiere at the 2026 Tribeca Film Festival on June 8.