Katy Perry won’t slow down for anyone, said Mickey Rapkin in Elle. While the pop singer was on tour last year, her marriage to British comedian Russell Brand started to fall apart. But she refused to let the heartbreak affect her live show. “There were times where I would be bent over crying before I went onstage,” says Perry, 27. “But I’d suck it up [because] my pain is my pain. I had 120 people on tour with me, and I needed to keep everybody moving forward.” The singer has always shown a single-minded focus when it comes to her career. The daughter of poor Christian ministers in Santa Barbara, Calif., she decided at age 9 that music would be her path out of poverty. “We didn’t have any money. Have you ever heard of the food bank? That’s where we got all our food.” At 15, Perry moved to Nashville by herself to pursue her dream, and two years later was signed to a major record label. Tabloid columnists have speculated that her workaholic lifestyle—she oversees everything from concert costumes to song lyrics—caused her marriage to collapse. But Perry has no regrets. “I love what I do, and when I don’t, I’ll make a change.”
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