Katy Perry (nee Katheryn Elizabeth Hudson, born 1984) is an American pop singer and songwriter. She was born in California to Christian pastor parents and grew up listening to only gospel music. At the age of 17, she released a Christian pop album, which was unsuccessful. Later, she retooled her image to a much more sexual one, and achieved mainstream success in 2008, when her song "I Kissed a Girl" (from the album One of the Boys) topped international charts. She achieved further success with her third album, Teenage Dream, which spawned five singles ("California Gurls", "Teenage Dream", "Firework", "E.T.", and "Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.)") that become number-one hits. She married English comedian Russell Brand in 2010, but they divorced in early 2012.She looks like Bettie Page and loves to use fruit in her photoshoots. Owns a cat named Kitty Purry.Not to be confused with Zooey Deschanel.Discography:
Also, her in the behind the scenes of "Last Friday Night". (Along with almost every other star in it.)
Aesop Amnesia: In-universe, in "Last Friday Night".—>Yeah I think we broke the law/Always say we're gonna stop-op/Whoa-oh-oah/This Friday night/Do it all again.
Analogy Backfire: Todd in the Shadows pointed out that the message of "Firework" is a bit undercut by the fact that fireworks are so ephemeral.
Ascended Extra: The Kathy Beth Terry character first appeared at the 2010 Teen Choice Awards, which Katy hosted.
Auto Erotica: Mentioned in "The One that Got Away":
Summer after high school when we first met/We make out in your Mustang to Radiohead...
Bait-and-Switch Lesbians: Katy Perry had a sizable lesbian fan base after the release of "I Kissed a Girl" until they actually listened to the lyrics and realized that the song was about a heterosexual girl's drunken experiments. And, for the more usual use of the trope...in the music video, she never does.
Billing Displacement: In the Last Friday Night video Darren Criss has a ten-second cameo and gets a starring credit, Richie Nuzzolese who plays one of the main love interests is listed as an extra.
Darker and Edgier: "Circle the Drain" sounds much darker than her typical upbeat pop music. Also, "E.T" could fall under this.
Does Not Like Men: Some people accused her of being a misandrist after her first album, which contains such pleasantries as "Yeah you... PMS... like a bitch... I would know!" being said to a guy ("Hot 'n' Cold"), a song about how gay a guy is ("Ur So Gay", obviously; emasculating him for being a vegetarian, even), and an Archie Comics-esque song about how a guy must always foot the bill ("If You Can Afford Me"). Katy appears to have averted this trope, though.
Early-Bird Cameo: Kathy Beth Terry, her nerdy alter-ego from "Last Friday Night", first appeared at the 2010 Teen Choice Awards.
Epic Fail: She mentions this trope by name in "Last Friday Night".
Hypocritical Humor: The first song she released, "Ur So Gay", emasculates a man for acting stereotypically gay. She followed it up with "I Kissed A Girl", a song about lesbian experimentation.
Life Imitates Art: Katy may or may not have written "The One That Got Away" before her relationship with (and subsequent marriage to) Russell Brand, but it became eerily appropriate that he filed for their divorce during the song's run as a single. He became the one that got away.
Loudness War: Both albums have an average dynamic range of 5 db. That's louder than Megadeth.
Lyric Swap: When performing Part Of Me, she sings "You let me drown" instead of "you let me down".
Also the line "We drove to Cali" in Teenage Dream changes according to where she performs.
Name's the Same: Her birth name is Katy Hudson, which she used on her first album. She changed it to Perry in order to avoid confusion with actress Kate Hudson. Now she's married to Russell Brand, which would ordinarily make her Katy Brand - but since there's already a comedienne and actress of that name, it's unlikely she'll change her stage name to her married one.
And all but certain she won't, now that she and Russell Brand are divorced.
Nerds Are Sexy: In the video for "Last Friday Night," she plays a Type 2 Hollywood Nerd who gets a makeover. However even post-makeover, she retains her braces and her nerdy mannerisms, resulting in this trope.
One of the Boys: The name of her debut (pop) album and its title track. The song is about a tomboybecoming agirly girl as she enters puberty and no longer wants to be "one of the boys".
The One That Got Away: Has a song by this name about this in which she laments about a former lover.
A showgirl outfit she wears in "Waking Up In Vegas".
And a peacock tail for... "Peacock".
Preacher's Kid: Katy's parents are pastors at a church in Santa Barbara, and they refused to let her listen to "secular" music as she was growing up. This may explain her more recent output.
Played straight in "Last Friday Night". She and some other people are seen playing Just Dance on a Wii.
Pun-Based Title: Teenage Dream: The Complete Confection, which a play on words of "Complete Collection". It makes sense in context, taking the candy motif of the album into consideration.
Real Life Chose The Single: "Part of Me" was originally written back in 2010 during the Teenage Dream sessions, but left off the album for unknown reasons. Upon Katy's divorce from Russell Brand in 2012, the song was repurposed as the lead single of Teenage Dream's re-release, with slightly altered lyrics to reflect their separation.
Rearrange the Song: "The One That Got Away" was released both as synth-pop and as an acoustic song featuring guitar, piano, and upright bass.
Semper Fi: In the music video for "Part of Me", after Katy breaks up with her cheating boyfriends, she joins the Marines and regains her confidence.
Sesame Street Cred: She was quite proud of this appearance with Elmo. Sesame Street producers, however, decided not to air the segment after some parents complained about her cleavage. This was, of course, brought up on Saturday Night Live, where Perry appeared in a talk show sketch as a teenage volunteer librarian wearing a low-cut Elmo T-shirt and complaining that the parents and the other librarians don't want her to read to kids because of her cleavage-bearing clothes (with the two talk show hosts [played by Amy Poehler and Maya Rudolph] telling her that she shouldn't be ashamed about her body and that there are worse things kids witness in their formative years than a woman's cleavage). Her appearance on The Simpsons episode, "The Fight Before Christmas" also mirrors this unaired Sesame Street sketch (only Katy's dress was more skintight than cleavage-bearing, though it did get away with a oral sex joke at the end with Moe kissing Perry's "belly button").
She Cleans Up Nicely: In "Last Friday Night," complete with her descending the stairs in slo-mo and garnering a gobsmacked expression from the Jerk Jock.
Shiny Midnight Black: Her hair used to be dyed this shade, even though she is naturally blonde. This may be on purpose to resemble Bettie Page, as suggested in the trope below.
That particular Beach Boys shoutout was taken as so specific that the Beach boys asked for a writing credit on the song.
The title of the song was originally spelled "California Girls", but Katy's manager asked her to change it to "Gurls" as a reference to Big Star's "September Gurls" after Alex Chilton died — apparently, he's a huge Big Star fan.
If one listens closely to the music in the background of "E.T."'s chorus, the sound of an AC-130's 105mm cannon can be discerned.
Stage Name: She was born as Katheryn Elizabeth Hudson. Perry is her mother's maiden name.
And one named Krusty (Katy+Russell/Rusty), with her ex-husband Russell Brand
What Do You Mean, It's Not Symbolic?: At the 2012 Grammys she performed E.T. (a song about her love story with Russell Brand) the power went out mid-song and she then started singing "Part of Me", a song about her break-up with Travie Mc Coy reworked to fit her divorce with Brand.
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