Every since “I Kissed A Girl” and “Hot N Cold,” Katy Perry has been a major player in the pop music realm and an iconic part of the music industry in general!
I don’t know where I’d be if “California Girls” never existed, tbh.
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But there is a lot more to Katy Perry than just pop music, hilarious Met Gala looks, and American Idol !
1. She comes from a very religious family.
Katy grew up with strict, Pentecostal Christian parents. She wasn’t allowed to so much as watch The Smurfs or read any of the Harry Potter books. She eventually broke free of her parents and rebelled in the one way she knew how: through music.
She wrote and released “I Kissed A Girl” and her parents were not impressed.
Her parents described the lyrics of “I Kissed A Girl” to be “shameful and disgraceful.”
“I hate the song. It clearly promotes homosexuality and its message is shameful and disgusting,” Katy’s mom allegedly told Daily Mail .
“Katy knows how I feel.”
“We are a very outspoken family and she knows how disappointed her father and I are.”
She concluded, “I can’t even listen to that song. The first time I heard it I was in total shock. When it comes on the radio I bow my head and pray.”
2. Katy Perry is not her real name.
Her full legal name is actually Katheryn Elizabeth Hudson.
She revealed that she changed her last name to her mother’s maiden name, “Perry,” so that people wouldn’t confuse her with Kate Hudson .
3. She prefers to be called an “inspiration” rather than a “role model.”
Considering all the work that comes with being a role model, I don’t blame her.
“I’d like to change the phrase ‘role model’ to ‘inspiration.’ ‘Role model’ puts you on a pedestal that no one can really live up to,” she told Billboard .
“For me, aspiring to be an artist at a young age, I didn’t think about being a role model,” she added.
“But I definitely thought about being an inspiration. So I hope that I am an inspiration, especially with my work ethic and my ability to overcome obstacles .”
4. If she had never become famous, she still thinks she would have found a way to work in music.
“I don’t think I would have ever left music. Music is my sixth sense. But maybe I would have let go of the game of it all, trying to participate and win,” she told Billboard .
“Maybe I’d have gone into the woods and had babies, wearing no shoes and playing on my guitar.”
“But I think I’ll still actually do that,” she joked. “I’m very excited to get to that part of my life.”
5. Amid her pregnancy, she admitted that she doesn’t feel very maternal.
“I’m not very maternal. I am, in a way, but when it comes to crying, sadness and like that kind of stuff, I’m like: ‘I don’t know what to do,'” she said in an interview with TODAY .
6. She loves to meditate.
In an interview with Refinery29 , she revealed that she has recently been on a mental health journey — even battling depression at times.
But meditation has been something that has helped her through the tough times.
7. She took her temporary breakup with Orlando Bloom in 2017 especially hard.
“I had given so much out. It literally broke me in half. I think I had broken up with my boyfriend, who’s now my baby-daddy-to-be, and then I was excited about flying high off the next record. And the record didn’t get me high anymore. The validation didn’t get me high. So I just crashed,” she told Glamour .
Thankfully, they got back together and seem happier now more than ever!
8. The road to getting signed to a record label was a long, windy one.
After moving from Santa Barbara to Los Angeles to pursue music, she was signed and dropped from several labels before finally landing her dream contract with Capitol Records .
9. She wasn’t allowed to celebrate Halloween as a child.
This probably explains why she pours so much of herself into her Halloween costumes as an adult!
She explained to ABC News that, in her household, the only holidays that were celebrated were religious ones, meaning that Halloween was off the table.
10. She was disheartened by the 2016 election results in the US.
“It just brought up a lot of trauma for me. Misogyny and sexism were in my childhood: I have an issue with suppressive males and not being seen as equal,” she told Vogue .
“I felt like a little kid again being faced with a scary, controlling guy. I wouldn’t really stand for it in my work life, because I have had so much of that in my personal life.”
She called the election results “an awakening that was necessary because I think we were in a false utopia.”
11. She taught herself how to play guitar when she was a teenager.
“That led to me being 14 or 15, when I started going to Nashville to record some gospel songs, and to be around amazing country-music vets and learn how to craft a song and play guitar,” she told MTV .
“I’d actually have to Superglue the tips of my fingers because they hurt so much from playing guitar all day, you know?” she added.
“And from that, I made the best record I could make as a gospel singer at 15.”
12. Sia helped Katy through one of the hardest times of her life.
Speaking with The L.A. Times , Sia explained how she helped Katy through a mental health crisis.
The pair met back in 2014 and have been good friends ever since.
It wasn’t until 2017, however, that Sia became a true companion to Katy while the pop star was suffering a particularly bad year.
As aforementioned, 2017 saw Katy’s album, “Witness,” not receive the success she had hoped for, in addition to a breakup with now future-hubby, Orlando Bloom.
“She had a real breakdown,” Sia told the publication.
“She’s on stage with 10 candied lollipops and clowns and dancers, selling the dream, the joy, the happiness — and that’s really hard sometimes when you’re not feeling it yourself,” Sia explained.
She went on to say that she didn’t realize Katy was “so reliant on that validation for her psychological well-being,” but that “getting number ones does nothing for your inside.”
13. Katy found out her first husband wanted a divorce right before she went onstage.
One of the most emotional and powerful scenes in Katy’s Perry’s Part of Me documentary was when she received a text from he who shall not be named Russell Brand asking for a divorce right before she went on stage.
The scene breaks my heart every time but is a great reminder of how strong Katy is!
Later that night when she preformed one of the BEST songs off her Teenage Dream album, “The One That Got Away,” the energy was so electric.
14. She teased her daughter’s name, “Daisy,” long before she was born!
Katy released the song “Daisies” a few months before giving birth, wore dresses covered in daisies throughout her pregnancy and, heck, even her engagement ring from Orlando Bloom was a daisy!
