Katy Perry

Katheryn Elizabeth Hudson (born October 25, 1984), known professionally as Katy Perry, is an American singer, songwriter, and television judge. She is known for her influence on the pop sound and style of the 2010s. Pursuing a career in gospel music at 16, Perry released her commercially unsuccessful debut album, Katy Hudson (2001), under Red Hill Records. She moved to Los Angeles at 17 to venture into secular music, adopting the stage name “Katy Perry” from her mother’s maiden name. With producers Glen Ballard and Greg Wells, she recorded an unreleased album titled Fingerprints while signed to Java Records and then Columbia Records before being dropped. After this, she signed a recording contract with Capitol Records in April 2007.

Perry rose to fame with her second album and major label debut, One of the Boys (2008), a pop rock record containing her debut single “I Kissed a Girl” and follow-up single “Hot n Cold”, which respectively reached number one and three on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100. The disco-influenced pop album Teenage Dream (2010) spawned five U.S. number one singles—”California Gurls”, “Teenage Dream”, “Firework”, “E.T.”, and “Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.)”—becoming the first album by a solo female artist to do so. A reissue titled Teenage Dream: The Complete Confection (2012) subsequently had the U.S. number one single “Part of Me”. Her fourth album Prism (2013) has themes of self-empowerment and relationships. With the music videos for its U.S. number one singles “Roar” and “Dark Horse”, Perry became the first artist to have multiple videos reach one billion views on YouTube. Witness (2017) featured an electropop sound with themes of liberation and a political subtext, while Smile (2020) featured themes of motherhood and self-help. She later embarked on her first concert residency titled Play in Resorts World Las Vegas, selling out multiple shows and receiving critical acclaim.

Perry is one of the best-selling artists of all time, having sold over 143 million records worldwide. All of her studio albums released under Capitol have individually surpassed one billion streams on Spotify. She has nine U.S. number one singles, three U.S. number one albums and has received various accolades, including four Guinness World Records, five Billboard Music Awards, five American Music Awards, a Brit Award, and a Juno Award. Perry has been included in the annual Forbes lists of highest-earning women in music from 2011 to 2019. Her critically acclaimed Super Bowl halftime show performance is the most watched in history. Outside of music, she released an autobiographical documentary titled Katy Perry: Part of Me in 2012, and voiced Smurfette in The Smurfs film series. Perry began serving as a judge on American Idol, starting from its sixteenth season in 2018. She is also the most followed woman on Twitter, with over 100 million followers.

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