Katy Perry christian past
Katy Perry wants to be a pop star, but on her own terms, which include exercising a sense of humor that has little to do with her Christian upbringing or the Jesus tattoo on her wrist.
“I like to keep things lighthearted,” she said in a recent telephone interview. “My dad has a great sense of humor, but not as dark or sarcastic as mine. Growing up in the life I grew up in, there was a lot to laugh about. Sometimes things get really serious, but I’m not a very serious person unless it’s not appropriate not to be.”
That life she grew up in was courtesy of her parents, who became born-again Christians after living the kind of life a lot of people their age lived growing up in the 1960s. Her father was an acquaintance of Timothy Leary, she has said, and probably wouldn’t have survived the lifestyle he’d jumped into if he hadn’t found God.
Perry (whose real name is Katy Hudson) started her singing career within her parents’ ministry. When she was 17, she put out a Christian album that did nothing commercially. After that, she was signed and dumped by two major labels. Many of them couldn’t appreciate her personality, which is equal parts witty sass, juvenile irreverence, foulmouthed confidence and self-effacing humor.
In concert, according to an article in Blender, when she’s singing her megahit “I Kissed a Girl,” she likes to take a pretend phone call from her mother and say into the microphone: “It’s true. I kissed a girl. But that’s all. It’s not like I felt her (breast). But I wanted to!”
During an interview before this year’s Grammy Awards show, she told an interviewer that a comment about becoming celibate was completely in jest: “Celibacy? I don’t even know if that starts with a ‘c’ or an ‘s.’ ”
Or take that Grammy Award show, where she was transported to the stage by a twirling banana so she could sing “I Kissed a Girl.” In her fashion and accessories, Perry has shown a fetish for fruit (especially watermelon), but she picked the banana explicitly for one reason: “It so phallic.
“They’d asked me months before to do the show, so I came to them and said, ‘What about this idea: I descend from the ceiling in a banana?’ They said, ‘Yes, we could do that!’ and I said, ‘Oh, really?’ So they went for it.”
A banana as metaphor for genitalia is low-grade kitsch, especially with Paul McCartney in the audience (“I asked for a photo with him. He did say yes, which was really nice of him.”).
A better signifier of her desire to be another breed of pop star: Perry jumped aboard a leg of last summer’s Warped Tour, which turned into one long boys’ night out. It helped that her boyfriend at the time, Travis McCoy of Gym Class Heroes, was on the tour, also, but even that didn’t alleviate some of the more rugged conditions.
“Warped was like boot camp, very, ‘Go, go, go!’ ” she said. “No set times, no sound-check, 30 minutes on stage and then get the hell off. It’s in the middle of summer, really hot and sweaty conditions.
“I was totally OK with it, but it wasn’t an easy place for a girl. It was all dudes. There was only one other girl on the bus with like eight or 10 guys. It was the hardest tour I’ll ever have to do. There were no freebies. It didn’t matter whose song was hitting at that moment, you had to stand in line for catering.
“But it prepared me for an anything-goes situation. Like sometimes it rained and we had to play acoustic. … I think it took me to the next level. The live show now is more rock. A few people bet I wouldn’t survive. They figured I’d bow out or miss some shows. But I didn’t bow out or miss any shows. So a big high-five for that.”
Asked to name a few comedians whom she admires or who may have influenced her sense of humor, she said: “Andy Samberg is funny. I also think Margaret Cho is funny. My favorite is the gal in ‘Saturday Night Live’, um … Catherin (she means either Kristen Wiig or Casey Wilson).
“I also love Amy Sedaris. She’s hilarious. ‘Strangers With Candy’ is the best. I love those women that aren’t afraid to cross the line and make fun of themselves and look hideous doing it. Yeah, they make people feel uncomfortable a little bit, but they speak the truth or the version of the truth we all hate to face but is what it is.”
Katy Perry comments on Chris Brown (not)
One topic Katy Perry won’t make any light of is the trouble between singers Chris Brown and Rihanna. Asked whether she was surprised by the prevailing silence about Brown and his girlfriend, especially among her female peers, Perry said:
“You know it’s difficult because our lives are in the spotlight but I don’t think — I think that worldwide commentary — if people understand how it’s hard to be so public when something doesn’t go as planned.
“I really don’t like to comment on other people’s lives. It always comes back to get you every once in a while. Sometimes the people can take it the wrong way. But violence is never the answer, never the answer period, ever, no matter what the situation.
“The thing is we don’t really know the story, so it’s really — it’s really hard to comment. I should not be commenting on it because it’s not my life.”
katy live
Showtime is 7:30 p.m. Monday at the Beaumont Club. The show is sold out, according to Ticketmaster. The face value was $18.
Credit:
Katy Perry christian past Deluxe Celebrities