Katy Perry Shares the Real Reason Behind Choosing a Quirky Stage Name and Ditching Her Real Name

Time and again, Katy Perry has revealed details about her troubled childhood: she belonged to a strict devotional family, and both her parents were born-again Pentecostal pastors. The Dark Horse hitmaker grew up as Katheryn Elizabeth Hudson with a spiritual upbringing; her parents wanted her to become a gospel singer, but fate had other plans. In an exclusive 2017 interview with the Guardian on the brink of releasing her fifth album - Witness, Perry revealed the reason why she changed her birth name into a 'quirky stage moniker,' "I created this wonderful character called Katy Perry that I very much am and can step into all the time, but I created that character out of protection."

Elaborating further, the Harleys in Hawaii songstress said, "A lot of people are living in fear from something that happened in their childhood or some form of PTSD they picked up along the way. I was scared that if you saw me, Katheryn Hudson, the girl wearing the Bioré strip on my nose, you’d be like, ‘That’s not glamorous’. It was me going, ‘Ok, I’ve been upset my whole childhood, so I’m going to show the world I am something, that I am going to do something, and that I am enough’. I didn’t want to be Katheryn Hudson. I hated that; it was too scary for me, so I decided to be someone else."

She also adds in the same breath that the moniker gave her tremendous success but did not turn her into a "people-pleaser." "I’m not going to please everyone, and I’m not trying to. If you run around pleasing everyone, you’re done. If you stand for nothing, then you’re done. I think it’s actually quite selfish: if you’re all about ‘the people’ but you don’t want to help ‘the people’, because you don’t want to say things when things get tough, then what are you about? Protecting your brand? Making sure you don’t lose zeros in your bank account?"

Destiny brought her to Los Angeles at the mere age of 17 to pursue a music career. In 2001, the Hot N Cold singer independently released her first gospel CD, which sold over 200 copies. "People saw me as damaged goods," she had said of that time. By 2006, Perry was working independently and singing at open-air gigs across LA. A year later, her songs ended up with the head of Capitol Records, who instantly signed her. That was the moment Perry swapped Hudson for her mother’s maiden name, 'Katy Perry'. The lucky moniker enabled her to become a multi-platinum-selling, award-winning global music artist.

Her moniker is a larger-than-life character Perry has constructed, similar to Betty Boop and an LA party girl with a heart. It seemed like the ideal embodiment of every young girl's pop fantasies. With her tenacious, never-give-up-on-yourself past, Perry explains that her stage name remains a part of her childhood "creative imagination".