We all know that Katy Perry had a strange upbringing, making a fairly quick transformation from teenage gospel singer to sexpot pop star. And we’ve been kind of fascinated by her public struggles with her fundamentalist Christian parents who, despite their own wild ’60s behavior, have publicly spoken out against her music (apparently, “I Kissed a Girl” didn’t go over well among the evangelist set). So, just how weird was Perry’s youth? A few pull-quotes from her Rolling Stone cover interview (for which she posed wearing a tasteful bra-and-panty set, in case you’re wondering) piqued our interest, so we went in search of more info.
“Speaking in tongues is as normal to me as ‘Pass the salt…’ It’s a secret, direct prayer language to God.” — Perry in the latest issue of Rolling Stone
“I wasn’t able to say I was lucky because my mother would rather us say that we were blessed, and she also didn’t like that lucky sounded like Lucifer… I wasn’t allowed to eat Lucky Charms, but I think that was the sugar. I think my mom lied to me about that one.” — Perry in the new Rolling Stone
Katy Hudson’s 2001 gospel album
“My religious upbringing was comically strict — even the Dirt Devil vacuum cleaner was banned. In our house, no one was allowed to refer to deviled eggs. We had to call them angelic eggs. We were never allowed to swear. I’d get into trouble just for saying ‘Hell no’. If you dropped a hammer on your toe in our house you had to say something like ‘Jiminy Christmas’. The only music we were allowed to listen to was gospel. No wonder I rebelled.” — Perry, 2009
“They’re a different breed of Christians … It’s modern, it’s not like … you know, sometimes people envision my parents wearing the priest outfit, and I’m like, No, actually, my dad has four tattoos. I mean, they all happen to say Jesus, but he’s kind of like a modern rock-and-roll pastor himself.” — Perry, 2009
An early headshot
“You know, there was a movie or a documentary called ‘Jesus Camp III.’ And I watched it and I was like, ‘Oh my Gosh. I didn’t know they had behind-the-scenes footage of my childhood.” — Perry to CBS News, 2009
“When I started out in my gospel music my perspective then was a bit enclosed and very strict, and everything I had in my life at that time was very church-related. I didn’t know there was another world that existed beyond that. So when I left home and saw all of that, it was like, ‘Omigosh, I fell down the rabbit hole and there’s this whole Alice in Wonderland right there!'” — Perry in The Scotsman , 2009
Family photo, via CBS
“We spoke in tongues. We knew there was this one way, and all the other ways were wrong.” In Perry’s house, deviled eggs were called angeled eggs. “I didn’t know enough to ask my mom, ‘How come we call them that? Everybody else calls them something else.’” — Blender , 2008
“I was raised in a very pseudo-strict religious household where the only thing on the menu was [gospel standards like] ‘Oh Happy Day,’ ‘His Eye Is on the Sparrow’ and ‘Amazing Grace’ — all eight verses of it… So the New Kids on the Block are new to me now; they’re not a comeback. I’m like, ‘Oh, this is a cool song!'” — Perry to MTV, 2008
via CBS
”The only things I was allowed to listen to were the Sister Act 1 and 2 soundtracks.” — Perry in Entertainment Weekly , 2008
“Music wasn’t allowed in the house because it’s the devil’s work… And if I brought home friends, my mom wanted to know if they were Christians… That’s my parents. They’re crazy! They’re nuts!” — Perry in Blender , 2004