The curious U-turn of Katy Perry: how a Christian rockstar turned pop provocateur

Katy Perry was born in Santa Barbara, California, to Pentecostal pastors Mary and Maurice Hudson – both born again Christians. “My childhood was just the Jesus train. It wasn’t expansive and it wasn’t curious, it was just Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday evening; Jesusjesusjesusjesusjesusjesusjesus,” she told The Guardian ahead of her seventh studio album, Smile, released today. “From birth, it was pure bible thumping.” In the past, Perry has said her parents were so serious about their Christianity that in their household, devilled eggs were referred to as “angeled eggs”.

When Tommy Collier first met Katy Perry in Nashville in 2000, he thought the future superstar was “a diamond in the rough”. Collier was working as an in-house songwriter for a music publishing company which had several “imprint labels” including Red Hill Records, which focused on Christian rock music for the youth market. The label had recently signed Perry – who was just 15 at the time, and still going by her birth name Katy Hudson – and paired her with Collier to work on material for her debut album.

But according to Collier, Mary Hudson's faith didn't stand in the way of her ambition for her musically talented daughter. “They may get mad if I say this, but one time I went into a meeting and Katy's mom was saying to one of the A&R guys: 'Why isn't Katy on Jay Leno?' You know, she was really pushing it." She also trusted her daughter to go on a small tour “pretty much without a chaperone” when she returned home to Perry’s brother, sister and father in California.

Still going by her birth name, Perry’s self-titled debut album Katy Hudson was released by Red Hill Records in March 2001. Collier co-wrote and produced two songs, Piercing and Search Me, both rocky and marked by a swooping vocal style that Perry would smooth off later in her career. Though she was recording for a Christian rock label, the album isn't as deeply religious as you might expect. In her official biography from the time, Perry cited jazz singer Diana Krall and alternative artist Fiona Apple as influences. Critics have compared her early music to Alanis Morissette's angst-fuelled Jagged Little Pill album, whose producer, Glen Ballard, Perry went on to work with.

“Even though her parents were pastors and she came from that very Christian background, when we were writing songs, I never felt like Katy was trying to make a real preachy record,” Collier says. “It's not real blatant. There's definitely a message in there and some images of God – the song Search Me is her talking about her relationship with God. But I just thought it was a spiritual record, rather than a real preachy Christian rock record.”

Though Perry promoted the album with a 46-date tour, it wasn't a hit and reportedly sold only 200 copies. “There were some internal problems at that label and Katy kind of got pushed to the side,” Collier says. “I remember coming into the office one day and she was depressed and upset about everything. And I said to her: 'Keep your chin up, it's gonna get better. There's a lot more labels and a lot more music to be made.' I was so glad to see her get out of that deal and go on to really climb the ladder.”

She heeded Collier's advice and having rebranded herself Katy Perry, signed a record deal with Glen Ballard's Java Records in 2004. Though Ballard teamed her with top pop songwriters including Max Martin and Kara Dioguardi – I Do Not Hook Up, a song Perry wrote during this period, later became a hit for Kelly Clarkson – she was dropped in 2006 before she could release an album.

Though Collier insists he always had a “strong feeling” that Perry would become a “significant artist”, others at Red Hill Records team “weren’t quite so convinced”. “A few people made the comment that she was a little too green and her vocal wasn’t developed enough,” he recalls.

Global success wouldn't follow until she signed a new deal with Capitol Records the following year. Recalling Perry's formative years in a 2013 interview, Courtney Love said: “I liked Katy when she was in a black shag [haircut] and the shy girl on Glen Ballard's arm at events. She was damaged goods by the time she got to Capitol. She really worked for it.”

Perry's breakthrough eventually came in 2008 with the bombastic electropop song I Kissed a Girl, a global number one which she's since admitted she partly regrets. “Bisexuality wasn't as talked about back then, or any type of fluidity. If I had to write that song again, I probably would make an edit on it,” she told Glamour in 2018. “Lyrically, it has a couple of stereotypes in it. Your mind changes so much in 10 years, and you grow so much. What's true for you can evolve.”

Though it was a long way from her Christian rock roots, Collier says he wasn't entirely surprised when he heard I Kissed a Girl on the radio in 2008.  “I'd heard some of the rock stuff she'd done with Glen Ballard, so I was already prepared for her to be a little more edgy lyrically,” he says. “At the time, everybody was pretty much saying, 'Well, I guess Katy's a lesbian now’ and stuff like that. And I was like, 'You know, I don't think so.' I knew she was just pushing envelopes with that song and come on: it did exactly what it needed to do for her.”

Now, Perry is one of the world's most successful music artists. In 2015, she was named "America's top pop export" by business magazine Forbes after earning $135 million in just one year. She's sent nine songs to the top of the US singles chart – including the inescapable pop bangers Teenage Dream, Firework and Roar – and scored 15 top ten hits in the UK. Though Perry’s recent singles haven’t been quite so successful, her new album Smile is among the year’s most anticipated.

Despite giving up Christianity at the start of her career, Perry has since rekindled her faith. In fact, after attending the week-long Hoffman Program for personal growth following the flop of her album Witness in 2017 and experiencing situational depression, she said she had “never felt closer to God", and that the programme was like “10 years of therapy in one week.”

Later that year, Perry went to Rome with her mother, searching for a “deep soul overhaul”, as she told Vogue. Watching her mother go to mass was an emotional moment. “She hadn't sung those songs in 40 years and watching her made me cry. It's so beautiful and humbling to re-center in a place where it's not about anything else but reconnecting with the divine,” said Perry.

They also met Pope Francis. “I'm such a big fan of Pope Francis. It's a combination of compassion, humility, sternness and refusal. He is rebel – a rebel for Jesus,” Perry said. “He is bringing the Church back to humility and connecting with people. He's very humble and not frivolous.”

Perry's mother now  leads a prophetic ministry in California with her husband Keith, and, has said Perry, never stopped praying for her daughter. “My mom has prayed for me my entire life, hoping I'd come back to God. I never left Him, I was just a little bit secular, I was more materialistic and more career-driven. But now that I'm in my 30s, it's more about spirituality and heart wholeness.”

Though Perry and Collier are no longer in touch, he says touchingly that he has “nothing but good things to say about Katy”. He also points out that when their song Search Me was used in her 2012 documentary film Katy Perry: Part of Me, she made sure to credit him properly, “and that definitely shows her decency”. As Perry begins a new chapter as a mother, Collier has a prediction as to what the next phase of her career might look like. “I've always figured she'll get into acting at some point – don’t you think she'd make a real great actress?”