Katheryn Elizabeth Hudson or better known by her stage name Katy Perry, is an American singer-songwriter and musician. Perry was the second child of Christian pastor parents - Keith and Mary Hudson. Perry attended Christian schools and camps. During her childhood, she was allowed to listen to only gospel music. She sang in her parents’ church from the young age of nine and also learned how to dance in a recreation building in Santa Barbara.
Perry took her General Educational Development (GED) after her freshman year at Dos Pueblos High School and left school to pursue a music career. She enrolled in at the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara, at the age of nine, and studied Italian opera for a short time.
Perry was taught to play guitar and the art to craft songs by country music veterans in Nashville. Performing as Katy Hudson, she released a self-titled Gospel-rock album in 2001 under the Christian music label ‘Red Hill’, which bombed with the closure of its record label that year.
After signing on with ‘Capitol Music Group’ in 2007, she changed her surname from ‘Hudson’ to ‘Perry’ (her mother`s maiden name), and released her first Internet single, ‘Ur So Gay’, which garnered attention but did not became a chart buster.
She rose to fame when her second single ‘I Kissed a Girl’ released in 2008 and topped the international charts. Perry`s first mainstream album, ‘One of the Boys’, followed later that year and was eventually announced to be the thirty-third best selling album of 2008 worldwide. Perry was ranked the 97th Artist of the 2000–10 decade by Billboard.
Perry`s new album titled as ‘Teenage Dream’ was released on August 30, 2010 worldwide. She is also going to make her film debut with ‘The Smurfs’ (2011), as Smurfette, alongside Neil Patrick Harris, Jonathan Winters, Alan Cumming and George Lopez.