Katy Perry used to picket Madonna concerts

Katy Perry only knew who Madonna was growing up because she used to picket the Vogue singer's concerts with her family.

The 32-year-old had a sheltered lifestyle growing up the kid of evangelical Christian pastors in Santa Barbara, California and was shielded from most aspects of popular modern culture.

In a new interview with Vogue magazine, she reveals she only knew Christian singers and would go to concerts of controversial artists Madonna and Marilyn Manson to encourage their fans to practice the faith.

“(Christian singer) Amy Grant was our Madonna," she said. "We knew about Madonna and Marilyn Manson in my family because we picketed their concerts.”

She added she went to Manson's concert to hand out pamphlets titled How to Find God but she went inside and was surprised she found it “really interesting and weird - I got it."

Katy called her strict upbringing “a bubble beyond the bubble" and described the routine, explaining, "My house was church on Sunday morning, church on Sunday night, church on Wednesday evening; you don’t celebrate Halloween; Jesus gives you your Christmas presents... That was my whole childhood and youth and early teens. I still have conditioned layers dropping off of me by the day.”

The 32-year-old also revealed during her childhood she wasn't allowed to interact with gay people and experienced misogyny and sexism, two issues she thought about when Hillary Clinton, who she campaigned for, lost the presidential election to Donald Trump.

"I was really disheartened for a while; it just brought up a lot of trauma for me. Misogyny and sexism were in my childhood: I have an issue with suppressive males and not being seen as equal," she said. "I felt like a little kid again being faced with a scary, controlling guy. I wouldn’t really stand for it in my work life, because I have had so much of that in my personal life."

However, she thinks the result has woken people up and encouraged them to be more socially active, adding she thinks teenage girls will save the world.