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house one day. “We’re trying on
all our outfits, like girls do, and
out of nowhere I heard the lyrics
to
Killer Queen
. Time stood still.
The music was totally different
from anything I’d heard. The
heavens opened and saved me.
From then on, Queen have been
my biggest influence.”
In high school, depending on
where you stood, she was either
mixing with the wrong crowd
or already standing out from the
crowd. Katy described herself as
“a hop-around. I hung out with
the rockabilly crew, the guys who
were trying to be rappers, the
funny kids.”
Having been exposed to
Freddie Mercury and company,
she now wanted to know
everything about pop and
smuggled a Nirvana album
into her house. Successful
female singers Joan Jett and
Pat Benatar were also early
role models, while a series of
summer camps she went to
– one surf camp in particular –
started to make her examine
beliefs she had previously
obeyed unquestioningly.
When she met a guy she liked,
for instance, she asked herself
questions about why she should
“save herself” for marriage. “I was
like, I don’t know if I can hold
that promise because this guy
at camp is really cute,” she later
recalled. “Sex wasn’t talked about
in my home, but I was a very
curious young girl.”
Questions were asked when
her mother discovered a thong
in her underwear drawer, but the
genie was out of the bottle. Katy
Hudson was no longer walking
around with her eyes closed; for
better or for worse, she was a
young woman with all the usual
hopes, wishes, and desires
that follow.
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