Today I Learned: Katy Perry Was A Christian Rocker Before She Kissed A Girl And Liked It

From kissing girls (and liking it) and getting into copyright lawsuits to being a judge on American Idol and feuding with Taylor Swift for various reasons, Katy Perry has had a hell of a career.

But well before the super stardom stuff happened, Katy Perry was known as Katy Hudson and she was heavily into the Christian rock scene rather than the radio friendly unit shifter pop fare she’s known for these days.

The year was 2001 and Katy Hudson was touring the country with her acoustic guitar, pigtails and her set of Christian tunes.

While this may seem like a surprise to some given how she eventually started lying around in cotton candy clouds while half-naked, it was actually a natural progression for Katy as she was raised in a a very Christian home by her pastor parents. Hell, they even banned her from listening to all secular music when she was growing up and all she had was gospel music, so it would’ve been weird had she not gone into Christian music.

Katy started writing songs for her debut album, Katy Hudson, at 15 and it was released in 2001 when she was 17 under the Red Hill record label. However, the album ultimately flopped like a seal as Red Hill went bankrupt and couldn’t promote it, and the result was less than 200 copies sold.

That being said, Katy remains proud of her debut album, calling it “[Her] world. All those songs [she] wrote were very important to [her] at the time. [she] wrote about everything [she] knew then.“

And honestly, the songs are fine. I mean, they’re no ‘Firework’ or ‘California Gurls’ but they’re listenable.

Seeing as how her first foray into the music biz yielded an album of Christian rock songs no one listened to and a whole heap of faith issues, Katy decided to go in the opposite direction for her follow up.

She changed her name from “Katy Hudson” to “Katy Perry”, signed a new deal with a label that wasn’t going to go belly up, worked with various producers who helped her write mainstream songs that didn’t worship Jesus and changed up her look completely.

By 2007, the pieces were in place and once Katy kissed a girl (and liked it), well, the rest is history.