Katy Perry was born Katheryn Elizabeth Hudson on October 25, 1984, in Santa Barbara, California, to Keith and Mary Hudson, both Pentecostal pastors. She grew up immersed in gospel music, was largely barred from listening to secular radio as a child, and began singing in her parents’ church congregation by age nine. She received her first guitar at 13 and left high school early, earning a GED, before traveling to Nashville as a teenager to pursue a recording career, according to Wikipedia.

Under her birth name, Katy Hudson released a self-titled Christian rock album on March 6, 2001, through the independent label Red Hill Records, produced with Christian music veterans Tommy Coomes and Eric Copeland. The album sold poorly, moving only a few hundred copies before Red Hill folded, and Hudson supported it by opening for Christian artist Phil Joel on tour. She subsequently relocated to Los Angeles, cycled through several major-label deals that stalled or collapsed, and eventually adopted the stage name Katy Perry, using her mother’s maiden name to avoid confusion with actress Kate Hudson, according to E! News.

Perry’s commercial breakthrough came with “I Kissed a Girl,” released April 28, 2008, as the lead single from her Capitol Records debut “One of the Boys.” The song became her first number-one hit on the Billboard Hot 100 and topped the charts in roughly 20 other countries, eventually selling more than 11 million copies worldwide, according to Official Charts. The single’s success established Perry as a global pop presence after nearly a decade of false starts in the industry.

Perry’s second studio album, “Teenage Dream” (2010), produced five number-one Billboard Hot 100 singles, “California Gurls,” the title track, “Firework,” “E.T.” and “Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.),” tying a record set by Michael Jackson’s “Bad” in the late 1980s and making Perry the first woman and only the second artist ever to achieve it, according to Billboard. “Teenage Dream” went on to be certified Diamond by the RIAA, and Perry now has six individually Diamond-certified songs, more than any other female artist in RIAA history.

Perry joined “American Idol” as a judge for its 2018 relaunch on ABC and remained through the 2024 season, reportedly earning 25 million dollars a season, the highest salary of any judge in the show’s history across both its Fox and ABC eras, according to IMDb, citing earlier reporting from Page Six. Despite her commercial dominance, Perry has been nominated for 13 Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year for “Teenage Dream” and Record of the Year for “Firework,” without ever winning, tying her with Diana Ross among artists with the most nominations and no wins, according to E! News.

Perry became a global brand ambassador for CoverGirl in 2013, a partnership timed to her “Prism” album release that produced the personally curated Katy Kat Collection of cosmetics, according to The Hollywood Reporter. More recently, in April 2026 Perry fronted a Balenciaga campaign for the brand’s Radar and Triple S.2 sneakers, part of an “On Repeat” push into performance-adjacent fashion, according to FashionNetwork. Earlier in her career she also held endorsement deals with Proactiv, Popchips, Adidas, Claire’s and Walmart.

In January 2022, Perry co-founded De Soi, a line of non-alcoholic, botanical-infused sparkling aperitifs, with master distiller Morgan McLachlan; the pair conceived the brand while both were pregnant and later secured 4 million dollars in seed funding, according to Forbes. Separately, Perry launched the footwear label Katy Perry Collections in 2017 through a licensing partnership with Global Brands Group; after that partner filed for bankruptcy in 2021, Perry reacquired the brand outright and relaunched it in 2022, expanding into wholesale distribution at retailers including Nordstrom and Macy’s, according to WWD.

In 2015, Perry agreed to pay 14.5 million dollars for a former convent in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles, owned by the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, but the sale became the subject of years of litigation after a rival buyer, restaurateur Dana Hollister, attempted to record a separate deed for the property with two elderly nuns who the archdiocese said lacked authority to sell. A jury ultimately sided with Perry and the archdiocese in 2017, awarding them 10 million dollars in punitive damages, and Perry completed her purchase of the property, according to Billboard.