American singer Katheryn Elizabeth Hudson, known as Katy Perry, is a songwriter, and actress. Perry is known for fun-based sense of personal fashion and an idiosyncratic that includes bright colors and food-based themes. Perry’s concert performances include elaborate staging and costumes.
Early Life and Career
Katy was born in Santa Barbara, California. As a teenager, she pursued a career in gospel music after singing in church during her childhood. Katy has German, Irish, English, and Portuguese ancestry. She is film director Frank Perry’s niece. From ages 3 to 11, Perry usually moved across country. She attended religious schools and camps, after growing up, during her elementary years, including Paradise Valley and Santa Barbara Christian School. Her family struggled financially. She found popular music via CDs she sneaked from her friends.
Parents
Katy is daughter of Pentecostal pastors Mary Christine and Maurice Keith Hudson, who were born Christians, each turned to God after wild youth.
Siblings
Katy’s younger brother David is a singer. Her older sister is Angela. Following her sister Angela, Katy started singing by rehearsing with her sister’s cassette tapes.
Career
In 2001, Perry signed with Red Hill Records and launched under her birth name her debut studio album Katy Hudson, which was unsuccessful. The following year, she moved to Los Angeles to venture into secular music when Red Hill stopped operations. After getting the stage name Katy Perry and being dropped by Columbia Records, in April 2007, she signed a voice recording contract with Capitol Records.
Perry gained huge fame after the year 2008 with the launch of the singles I Kissed a Girl – which for its homosexual themes initially sparked a lot of controversy– and from her second album hot n cold, a pop rock record named one of the Boys.
Teenage Dream (2010), her third album, ventured into disco, and included the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart-topping singles Teenage Dream, Firework, E.T., California Gurls, and Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.) and The One That Got Away.
The album was first by female artist to give 5 number-one Billboard Hot 100 songs, and 2nd after Michael Jackson’s album Bad.
She re-launched Teenage Dream: The Complete Confection, in March 2012, which released songs Part of Me and Wide Awake.
In 2013, her fourth album, Prism, was launched, influenced by pop and dance.
With multiple videos she became the first artist to reach 1 billion views with videos for songs like Roar and Dark Horse.
Her songwriting is performed in combination with others, Dr. Luke and Max Martin, and in songs like Firework and Roar she stressed themes of self-esteem and self-empowerment.
Perry has received several awards, along with four Guinness World Records, and has been included list of Top-Earning Women in Music in the Forbes (2011–15).
Throughout her career, she is the best-selling musical artists, having sold 100 million records.
Katy has made celebrity endorsements and launched the perfumes Meow, Killer Queen, Purr, and Mad Potion. She launched an autobiographical documentary in July 2012, titled Katy Perry: Part of Me, about her life as a touring artist.