KATY PERRY became the butt of her friends' jokes when albums she boasted about failed to materialise.
The I Kissed A Girl singer's debut was released earlier this summer (08) several years and three labels after she first recorded many of the tracks.
She says, "I've been on three major labels, signed and dropped, signed and dropped. There were times I lost hope in ever believing anything that any record label person ever told me." And the last time the album failed to get released, Perry almost gave up borrowing money from her parents and singing back-up vocals for Miley Cyrus just to make ends meet.
She tells EW.com, "It turned into a situation, where, for years, I was telling my friends that I was going to have a record out... and then it wouldn't happen.
"They stopped believing in me. I was pretty much a joke." Eventually Perry scored a new record deal with Capitol, and her hit new LP, One Of The Boys, was released this year.
She admits she refused to believe the album was going to hit shelves until it actually came out: "Maybe a week before my record was coming out, I kind of went into that state of shock, like, 'Oh, my God, they totally called my bluff! It's coming!'"