Back in June 2008, when I first started blogging about Christian music here at Beliefnet, I did a post about Katy Perry and how she’d once released a Christian album under the name Katy Hudson.
It was one of those stories that I thought was interesting and hoped would spur some discussion about Christian music, since the blog was new and we were trying to develop a readership.
Oh, it spurred discussion, all right. Readers speculated about her life, her upbringing, her sexuality, and the comments were all over the board.
I did a few follow up posts and eventually was able to sit in on a phone conference with Katy Perry, where her answers to the writers who were able to ask questions shed some light on my readers’ comments and speculation.
And with that, I hoped that we had put the Katy Perry story to rest.

Yet here we are, more than two years later, and those posts about Katy Perry are the most read posts on this blog, week after week after week after week.
I don’t understand why.
There are other pop artists with ties to Christian music. Natasha Bedingfield, for instance, once was part of Hillsong in England. Heidi Montag considered dabbling in Christian music, Miley Cyrus graced the cover of Brio magazine and season 8 of American Idol had a Christian music theme, with a top 10 loaded with Christian musicians. “Glee”‘s Kristen Chenowith (“Pushing Daisies”, “Wicked”) has a background in Christian music. And let’s not forget the Jonas Brothers.
When I wrote about these artists a lot of people commented, but the interest quickly faded away for the next celeb story du jour.
And yet the Katy Perry story hangs on, week after week.
So tell me – why is Katy Perry’s story so important to you? Why is it so important for readers to speculate on her faith, her family, her upbringing? I’m just curious, since it doesn’t seem to be the case with the other artists I mentioned.