The Next Big Thing! Katy Perry

“I’m completely outrageous and I’ll do anything for attention!” No, not the words of Paris Hilton, but the claim of a pastor’s daughter.

“Music wasn’t allowed in the house because it’s the devil’s work,” says Katy Perry, a vocalist with the production team The Matrix. “And if I brought home friends, my mom wanted to know if they were Christians.” Here, she laughs wildly as if someone, somewhere, just cracked a joke. “That’s my parents. They’re crazy! They’re nuts!”

Perry, now 19, was born in Santa Barbara, and like Beyoncé, got her first taste of performance singing in church. Unlike Beyoncé, she spent her adolescence not being “your typical Christian,” she says with a wicked laugh. “I’ve done a lot of bad things. Use your imagination.”

After years singing locally, she came to the attention of The Matrix — the brain trust behind Avril Lavigne and Ricky Martin — who were assembling a group that now features Perry and the British-born singer AKA. Their debut is a radio-friendly pop collection with Perry cast as a sunnier Avril.

“At first, I thought, ‘Crap! There goes my credibility!’ They’ve worked with some brilliant people, but also people who are hardly artists at all,” she says. “But if people buy the record, that’s all the credibility I need.”

She’s working on her solo debut (due 2005) with Morissette producer Glen Ballard. “My album will be more rock, which is probably why my parents think I’m going to hell!”

A total unknown working with the biggest names, Perry must have talent to burn. “No, I’ve just got really big boobs,” she says. “And my sweater gets tighter every week…”

OUT SOON THE MATRIXCOLUMBIA