Biography | Katy Perry — The Staples Center Performance That Carried Her First No. 1 to the Grammys

Most accounts of Katy Perry’s arrival begin with a chart statistic, but her move from radio breakthrough to an industry stage became visible inside Staples Center on 8 February 2009. That night, the Los Angeles arena hosted the 51st Grammy Awards, where Perry performed I Kissed a Girl during the televised ceremony. The performance placed a newly prominent singer in the same broadcast as established acts including U2, Paul McCartney, Stevie Wonder and Radiohead, turning a successful single into a public test of scale. CBS and the Associated Press reported the performance from the arena, while the Recording Academy’s official history identifies the song as Perry’s first Grammy nomination, in the category then called Best Female Pop Vocal Performance. I Kissed a Girl had already become her first number-one single in the United States, so the Grammy appearance did not create the breakthrough as much as confirm that the breakthrough had reached the center of the recording business. Perry did not win the category, which went to Adele for Chasing Pavements, but the distinction matters because the ceremony marked the start of a long Grammy history without requiring a later award to make the moment significant. The staging was deliberately oversized, with Perry entering through a fruit-themed production built around a giant banana, a visual decision that made the performance legible even to viewers who had only recently learned her name. The building at this pin was called Staples Center throughout the 2009 ceremony and was renamed Crypto.com Arena in December 2021, so present-day visitors will encounter different signage on the same arena. The coordinate points to the public arena building at 1111 South Figueroa Street, not to an invented position on the indoor stage. The photograph was made in July 2012 while the Staples Center name was still displayed, and it serves as later architectural context rather than an image of Perry’s 2009 performance. This moment belongs on Perry’s map because it captures the narrow interval when a provocative pop hit stopped looking like a single-season novelty and began functioning as the opening chapter of a durable public career. Photo: Prayitno, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons; photographed 7 July 2012.