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 number-one hit singles in a row ("California Gurls", "Teenage Dream", "Firework", "E.T.", and "Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.)"). 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.Releases:
The song could be about an insecure girl who's either attempting suicide or "killing off" her relationship and doesn't hope for the guy to remember her for fear of guilt.
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.
Averted at first, since she started off as a Christian "Rock" singer. Also, she still considers herself to be a Christian, and even has a "Jesus" tattoo on her left wrist.
Continuity Nod: Her music video for "Wide Awake" starts off at the end to "California Gurls". After the music video ends, she goes onstage at a concert to preform "Teenage Dream".
And less obvious ones: the strawberry is about One Of The Boys (the album)/the Hello Katy Tour. Last Friday Night, Part Of Me, E.T and most obviously Firework are also referred to.
Covered in Gunge: This happened to her at the 2010 Kids' Choice Awards.
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.
Funny Background Event: Many of her videos feature some. "California Gurls" has a sign edited to say Sundae Boulevard instead of Sunset.
Gag Boobs: Where to start? In her various videos, her breasts have shot out fireworks, whipped cream and glitter. She's worn bras made out of candy, dice, pokeballs and practically everything imaginable. They're practically comedy props by now.
And, don't forget her guest shot on SNL, when the Elmo T-shirt she wore had some Really Big Eyes.
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.
Also in "Wide Awake": "I wish I knew then, what I know now."
Important Haircut In the Part of Me video, after she breaks up with her cheating boyfriend, she cuts her hair short and joins the Marines.
Intercourse with You: In her song "Dressin' Up" from the Teenage Dream re-release. "Hummingbird Heartbeat", "E T".
Kaleidoscope Hair: Katy is constantly changing her hair color. It's gone from blond to black to red to blond to pink to blue to purple, and more recently back to black. That's not counting purple, pink, blue and now orange wigs.
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.
Male Gaze: Her Victoria's Secret performance featured a LOT of cleavage shots.
Meaningful Echo: "Wide Awake" refers to a lot of "Teenage Dream"'s lines in a depressing way but not verbatim. "You make me feel like I'm living a teenage dream" vs "Everything you see/Ain't always what it seems/I'm wide awake/yeah I was dreaming for so long" and "My missing puzzle piece/I'm complete" vs "I picked up every piece", "need nothing to complete myself".
Mondegreen: The official lyrics in "Firework" was stated as gonna leave them go in awe, instead of gonna leave the falling down, which was stated in lyric websites.
Mood Whiplash: On the Teenage Dream album, "Firework" is immediately followed by "Peacock".
Which itself is followed immediately by "Circle the Drain".
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.
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. This is her only song from Teenage Dream not to go to #1, making it the #1 that got away.
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.
Prince Charming: Katy meets such a character at the end of the "Wide Awake" music video... and punches him in the face.
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 boyfriend, 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.
Shout Out: In her earlier photoshoots, she looked like Bettie Page.
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.
Wild Teen Party: Occurs in the video for "Last Friday Night".
A Wild Rapper Appears: A few of her songs on 'Teenage Dream'. "California Gurls" featured Snoop Dogg, "E.T." featured Kanye West, whilst the radio versions of "Last Friday Night" and "The One That Got Away" featured Missy Elliott and B.o.B respectively.
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