Katy Perry

American singer-songwriter who has nine U.S. Billboard Hot 100 number one singles and has received various awards, including four Guinness World Records, five Billboard Music Awards, five American Music Awards, a Brit Award, and a Juno Award. She has been included in the annual Forbes lists of highest-earning women in music from 2011–2019. Her estimated net worth as of 2016 is USD$125 million. She is one of the world's best-selling music artists, having sold over 18 million albums and 125 million singles worldwide.

Her parents, Pentecostal pastors Maurice Keith Hudson and Mary Christine Perry, are born again Christians, each having turned to God after a "wild youth". From ages 3 to 11, Katy Hudson often moved across the country as her parents set up churches before settling again in Santa Barbara. She had limited exposure to secular music during her childhood and pursued a career in gospel music as a teenager. She signed with Red Hill Records, and released her debut studio album, Katy Hudson, under her birth name in 2001. She moved to Los Angeles the following year to venture into secular music. After adopting the stage name Katy Perry and being dropped by The Island Def Jam Music Group and Columbia Records, she signed a deal with Capitol Records in April 2007.

Perry rose to fame in 2008 with the release of the singles "I Kissed a Girl" – which had attention-grabbing and somewhat controversial lyrics – and "Hot n Cold" from her second album, a pop rock record, One of the Boys. Her third album, Teenage Dream (2010), ventured into disco, and contained the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart-topping singles "California Gurls", "Teenage Dream", "Firework", "E.T.", and "Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.)" as well as the number-three single "The One That Got Away". The album became the first by a female artist to produce five number-one Billboard Hot 100 songs, and the second overall after Michael Jackson's album Bad (1987).