With over 143 million album sales and 6 billion streams, Katy Perry is one of the world's most recognisable pop stars. A couple of years before I Kissed A Girl and Hot N Cold made her a superstar, Perry was a relatively little-known Christian pop artist working under her real name Katy Hudson.
During that era, Perry was presented with an opportunity to work with other acts as a way to build her profile. One of those acts was San Diego-based giants of the nu-metal scene, P.O.D, who invited Perry to record backing vocals on their track Goodbye For Now which would go on to appear on their 2006 record Testify. The union of Christan nu-metal and Christian pop starlet worked a treat, with Perry's (at that stage underappreciated) powerhouse vocals providing the perfect accompaniment to P.O.D. frontman Sonny Sandoval's melodies.
The track went on to be chosen as the album's lead single, meaning that P.O.D, still riding high on the crest of their breakout hits Alive, Youth of the Nation and Boom were invited to perform the song live on the TV show CD: USA. Hoping to give the best performance they could, they invited Perry to join them for the performance, Perry graciously accepted and unbeknownst to them, CD: USA viewers got their first look at an artist who would go on to dominate the pop charts for over a decade.
Watch the performance for yourself below.
Still active and playing to a legion of dedicated fans, P.O.D have continued to prosper, releasing their tenth studio album Circles in 2018. During the press campaign for Circles, Sandoval reflected on the group's unlikely brush with a popstar on the brink of stardom stating to the San Diego-Union Tribune "I don’t know Katy Perry the diva, I know Katy Perry the tomboy who came in acting like one of us, picking her nose and being goofy, having dinner with us and we’d sit around like a family. That’s the kid I know. And she went on to become Katy Perry, which is crazy. But when you’re around 26 years you see it all.”
