There has been quite a bit of controversy surrounding Katy Perry, everything from her appearance at the Met Ball to shaving her head points to the fact that Katy is having a mental breakdown after wheeling and dealing with the music industry. Most of Katy’s fans know that both of her parents are preachers and she began her career as Katy Hudson with a gospel album.
We have seen stars like Britney Spears show all the signs that Katy Perry is showing. Unfortunately, Britney Spears like many others turned back to the industry and rededicated herself.
There is no question that something is going wrong with Katy as we have seen her literally serve herself on a platter while singing her song “Bon Appetite” which references cannibalism. Katy has admitted that she turns to New Age practice and even Eastern Mysticism, even once admitting that she sold her soul to the devil to obtain success in the music industry.
In promotion of her album Witness, Katy had a 24 hour YouTube event. One part of the event she featured a therapy session where she and a therapist talked candidly about Katy and her split personality with her young self Katheryn. Katy expressed her desire to return to Katheryn, her eleven-year-old Christian identity. Throughout her music Katy has shown Katheryn as a pure, innocent fighter, referencing her as her “heart.”
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The therapist begins the session saying, “So we’re going to call you Katheryn for a while right? Katy’s going to take a rest.”
“Oh thank you so much, I just, that’s what I’m trying to do is be seen as Katherine Hudson sometimes, well a lot of times.”
“When does Katheryn get to come out and play?” he asks.
“When I can just rest and fall and surrender, that’s when Katherine gets to come out.”
The therapist notes that the body language changes when Katy Perry sits forward and Katheryn Hudson sits back.
When speaking on her upbringing, the therapist analyzes and says, “I’m hearing that that was an adaptive personality, you know you had to adapt to your environment, and you had an instinctual truth, and that caused a spiritual alienation that you had to go against your own calling or your own individual soul.”
Katy jumps in, “My soul yeah, but I loved all of it but I always just felt like I was called for more, and it was out there, and I didn’t know how to get it, so I guess I started singing.”
Several Katy fans have translated the backmasking her songs, one of those being “Wide Awake.” Some of the backmasked lyrics say, “I’ll be a widow, I have no soul. I have no future, he’ll lose the war with God.” Backmasking is a technique in which a sound or message is recorded backward onto a track that is meant to be played forward. Christian DJ Michael Mills argued in 1981 that “the subconscious mind is being successfully affected by the repetition of beat and lyrics—being affected through a subliminal message.”
Soon after Katy Perry became famous, she did an interview in which she explained her path to stardom going from a gospel singer at 15 that didn’t work out to pop music after she “sold her soul to the devil.”
It’s sad that Katy seems so regretful of her decision to go into pop music, leaving behind her innocence, or in her own words, her soul. She conveys that message clearly in her music and the public therapy.
The music video for Wide Awake has a similar theme of Katy who is broken and bruised by the music industry and Katheryn, the little girl who comes to save her. In one scene Katheryn pushes Katy in a wheelchair down a hospital hallway. As Katy’s trembling hand holds onto the forbidden fruit that she took a bite of, Katheryn is stopped by two bodyguards that have horns like bulls. She stomps her feet and blows them away allowing her and Katy to escape into a garden. This video shows the two sides of the pop star discussed.
Like Katy, Britney Spears had a huge falling out with the music industry where she also showed different personalities. Her breakdown began after she was seen having her head shaved. Katy commented on Spears two times at the 2017 Grammys saying,
“It’s the last color in the spectrum that I can do, I’ve done all of them, and the only thing left to do is shave my head which I’m really saving for a public breakdown. I’m down for that.”
In another interview she was speaking to Ryan Seacrest when he mentioned that there was a “pause in [her] music.”
She responded: “Yeah, that’s called taking care of your mental health.”
Her Youtube therapy session may well have been her public breakdown. Through tears, she explains why she shaved her head.
Katy does the as above so below symbol with her hands and says, “I’m really strong as Katy Perry, but sometimes I’m not as strong as Katheryn Hudson. People talk about my hair right? And they don’t like it, or they wish that it was longer. I so badly want to be Katheryn Hudson that I don’t even want to look like Katy Perry sometimes. And that is a little bit of why I cut my hair is because I really want to be my authentic self.”
Katy switches personalities after speaking about cutting off her hair, blaming herself for the occurrences in her life, turning from tears to laughter saying, “I did it, I made the choice right?”
“I’m human, and I’m living under this crazy microscope, and I made that choice.”
The therapist says, “well let’s throw a word out, there’s a dichotomy between Katy and Katheryn.”
“Sure because look at Katy Perry, she’s so glamorous. She’s rich; she’s luxurious, successful. And Katheryn Hudson, I didn’t have any money, I didn’t have any influence, I didn’t have anything. So it’s a bit hard to go back there.”
“Can we say for your fans that you are presenting that you have the formula?” he says nodding and trying to invoke pride in her Katy side.
“Yeah for sure, that’s the whole point of this whole thing is that if people can see that at the end of the day I’m just like them, then they can dream just as big.” Katheryn sits back and looks distraught or ashamed.
“I’ve been writing songs about this, I wrote this one song for this record called mind maze how you know, sometimes it’s hard to navigate this world, and I wonder if I just press the reset button and surrender to love and surrender to loving myself that I would still be able to have all the things that I dream I could have as Katherine Hudson, and I knew it would be a delicate balance it even talks about that in the lyrics. Spinning all these plates is a delicate balance because it’s a thousand.”
Later on in the therapy session, the therapist notes, “you just don’t give Katheryn a lot of attention.”
To which Katy responds with a creepy laugh and smile and says, “Well that’s changing doctor.”
I was telling everyone last night in the live stream that I just learned how to hug, cause I always thought that it was like too intimate, like a sexual thing, someone’s going to feel my boobs. And I didn’t realize that that’s not everyones intention, it’s just a hug. It’s just to connect. So I just learned that.”
The therapist asks how old Katheryn is because he thinks she stopped growing at a certain age. Katy says Katherine’s 11.
“There are little tools, and I found meditation and yoga and therapy to be these tools. And honestly, I’m in therapy with my family and it’s amazing. It’s so beautiful because my family gets to talk and be a family and I get to hear my father speak who I love so much, and I get to hear my mother speak who I love so much.” She breaks down in tears. “I didn’t really hear them, and I’m trying to listen for them more and hold a space and have compassion for them and love them in an authentic way because it wasn’t always easy because we have very different viewpoints but now we can agree to disagree and loving space.”
“I do believe in something much bigger than me and I call that god for me and I get to live this wonderful life and I work very hard at it and I’ve been given this gift. I know that god has his hand on me and I know sometimes I go through things and I think they’re just too intense I can’t handle them, and then he swoops in and shows me that it’s his grace that brings me through it.”
I used to sing this song in church called come as you are by Krista Lewis who I love. And I feel like sometimes it’s like the church does more judging than loving and that’s why it does’t feel safe for me sometimes. If I was to come as I am how would I be accepted? Because, this is who I am or this is who I’m developing into…Less judgment more compassion. More come as you are”
The therapist then asks, “So does God judge us? He lets us live, he she or whatever, lets us live to make our mistakes, and let’s us cut our hair off and put wigs on and whatever we wanna do, and we still live and we still have a chance.”
“He gives us free will. I believe in the law of cause and effect. So I know that every action has a reaction. And I believe in positive and negative and yin and yang and all those things.”
“I don’t think there’s a right and a wrong” the therapist chimes in.
“Who’s to say? I mean you could have come from a world where that’s right for you. That was your culture that was like how you were raised. There are some basics. Those are like the ten commandments.”
The therapist ends the session by having Katy draw a tarot card out of a basket. He references them as “angel cards” saying that Katy lives in that arena anyway as a “goddess.”
Katy pulls the freedom card and begins to cry again as the therapist says, “Is that appropriate? Freedom to be who you are.”
