Katy Perry

Katy Perry (birth name Katheryn Elizabeth Hudson, born 25 October 1984) is an American singer, songwriter and television personality, born in Santa Barbara, California. She is primarily associated with pop music and became one of the most commercially successful international artists of the late 2000s and 2010s. Perry is notable for a sequence of high-charting singles and for setting major chart records during the Teenage Dream era.

Perry was raised in California and initially pursued music through a Christian background. She released the gospel album Katy Hudson (2001) as a teenager, before moving to Los Angeles to work in mainstream pop. After several early recording and label changes, she signed with Capitol Records and achieved her breakthrough with One of the Boys (2008). The album produced major hits including “I Kissed a Girl” and “Hot n Cold”, establishing her as a global pop artist.

Her peak commercial period centred on Teenage Dream (2010), which produced a run of international singles including “California Gurls”, “Teenage Dream”, “Firework”, “E.T.” and “Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.)”. In the United States, the album’s singles achieved record-level chart performance, including five number-one singles from the same studio album, a feat previously matched by only one other artist. Perry followed with Prism (2013), which included the widely successful singles “Roar” and “Dark Horse”, and she performed the Super Bowl halftime show in 2015, one of the most-watched television music performances of the decade.

In later years, Perry continued to release studio albums including Witness (2017) and Smile (2020), alongside extensive touring and high-profile media work. She served as a judge on American Idol from 2018 until 2024. Perry also undertook a long-running Las Vegas concert residency, Play, staged at Resorts World Theatre from late 2021 to late 2023. In 2024 she released the album 143 and subsequently announced touring plans for 2025.

Perry is widely cited as one of the best-selling music artists of the modern era, with reported global record sales exceeding 150 million. She has received major awards and nominations across the American and international music industries, and her early 2010s singles remain among the most recognisable pop releases of the period. Her catalogue continues to have sustained streaming and radio presence internationally.