LOS ANGELES — Before the clock struck midnight on Jan. 1, 2000, Katheryn Hudson and her family gathered in their home, readying for the apocalypse. Her parents, both Pentecostal ministers, had already stocked the garage with canned food. And so, on the eve of Y2K, they turned down the blinds and instructed their three children to join them in prayer.
Armageddon, of course, never arrived. But if it had, the 15-year-old who is now known to the world as Katy Perry, would have been ready.
“I was kind of born into chaos,” she says. “So I thrive in it.”
At 35, Perry still does not scare easily. Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, she has continued to work while pregnant, taking what she describes as “calculated risks.” At an oft-sanitized warehouse in Burbank, she has filmed music videos and other promotional material for her forthcoming album, “Smile,” with a 10-person crew that is continuously tested for COVID-19. And though her due date is rapidly approaching, she is not fearful about giving birth to her first child. She simply does not entertain that energy, she says. “The pain will pass. It’s temporary.”
This is also the message of “Smile,” her fifth studio album for Capitol Records. Written over the past 21/2 years, the songs tell the story of a difficult period in Perry’s life, during which she reckoned with both her romantic life and her place in the music industry. She broke up with and then got back together with actor Orlando Bloom, her now fiance with whom she will soon welcome a daughter. And she struggled after “Witness,” her 2017 album, failed to resonate with fans in the way her prior music had. It was the first of her albums to not produce a No. 1 Billboard Hot 100 single, of which she has had nine since 2008.