Komby in 14 Steps: Step 9: Like Katy, roaring through the personal storm

There are storms you do not see coming, not the market's, not the giants' nor the "too much" rejections, but the ones inside, the ones that settle without warning on a morning when you are still standing and that, the same evening, leave you without an answer to the simplest question: why get up tomorrow?

Like Katy is neither a marketing nod to a pop star nor a tribute to a career, charts or stage lights; it is a track anchored in what Katheryn Hudson (the woman, not the brand) went through personally, and what I recognised in her even though I remain a stranger to her. Points that converge, without the money, without the celebrity, with the same stubborn evidence: status doesn't spare anyone from an inner storm.

Katy Perry's personal story

I researched her intimate trials (not tours, not sales records, not the pro) the woman who said out loud what many keep locked in, whose story struck me because it resembles, on precise points, mine, without any of the compensations the world thinks are enough.

In 2012, after her divorce from Russell Brand (a brief marriage, a brutal breakup, accounts that the end even came by message) she fell into deep depression, saying she no longer wanted to get out of bed, writing By the Grace of God about that moment when you look in the mirror and decide to stay (I looked in the mirror and decided to stay) because love, or the end of love, nearly took her another way.

She spoke of suicidal thoughts, the feeling of not being "enough", a fall too steep to get up as before, and a few years later, around 2017–2018, after a separation from Orlando Bloom, she described a low again: sadness, breakdown, dark thoughts, the feeling of being attacked from inside without being able to snap out of it.

She spoke of a forced mental and spiritual journey (therapy, tools, inner work) not to save a career, but to stay alive, and more recently still, their confirmed separation in 2025 reminded the same thing: even with the light, even with the means, even with a daughter to raise, personal breakup remains a wave of NO that runs through you.

She said of one year that it was both the worst and the best, because pain and rebuilding coexist, and nobody, not even a star, gets around that.

What I love in her story is that it mirrors mine on converging points, even though I remain a stranger next to her: divorce, the feeling of no longer being "enough", nights when you don't want to get up, the decision to stay, to roar, not to let pain take you out of the ring, storms that return even when you thought you had paid your dues.

Above all that lesson she embodies despite herself: status doesn't immunise. You can have the world at your feet and face the same storm as a stranger in a studio in London with a credit score rebuilt at two hundred pounds.

The trial: my storm, its points of convergence

After The Takeover, something gave way in me. The product held. The clients held. I had to hold too. Doubts, heavy mornings, that distance from yourself as if you were watching your life from outside. Same family of inner fight as hers, different scale.

My divorce, around 2016 (twelve years, two children, proceedings, forced freedom that Higher documents) left a pain that doesn't disappear because you code or serve clients. For her, Brand, then other breakups. For me, the blade, the court, the brutal "I". Same rain in the head.

She had to decide to stay (at the mirror, in the song, in life). Me too, another way: not letting the storm dictate the end of the story. She roared publicly. I composed Like Katy in a studio, unknown, to empty the same material.

Solo founders post wins and hide the nights. She said out loud that even at the top, you can want to disappear. Me, I have a quasi-autobiographical album and this conviction: the storm exists on both sides, and so does the fight.

There were days when I didn't open Slack or the studio, when I only walked in the London rain. For her: bed, mirror, decision to stay. For me: street, silence, then the mic. Same gesture. Different setting.

In the rain

You carry on because you must (clients, children, deadlines) and because you chose to stay in the ring.

One Tuesday, rain outside, rain inside, sitting in front of the mic, mute. That day I understood: the storm doesn't pass if you hide it. You have to roar, for yourself.

When she says she no longer wanted to get out of bed, or looked in the mirror to decide to stay, I hear someone who touched the same low point. The scale of gaze changes. The intensity of the fight doesn't.

Why this title

The title borrows from that convergence: Roar, By the Grace of God, the interviews where she names depression after breakups. I recognise. I translate my lived experience next to hers.

Composing was clearing my head: the memory of divorce, the solitude after The Takeover. Sharing was saying that holding the ring sometimes means roaring before you move forward again.

Her story told me: you're not ridiculous for hurting. Your storm is real without being famous. The answer is to stay and roar.

On days when rain returned, I turned the volume up, then stepped back into the arena. Like Katy closes the sequence: visibility, then storm. You can be watched and hit by the same wave in the same month.

Letting it land

Like Katy names why this title: her personal trials, and the convergence with mine. On France Je Te Quitte, other storms; Higher carries the breakup, I Left My Fears Behind the fresh start; here, the rain that follows. For professional stubbornness: how I got the idea to create Digital CHR.

Shopkeepers and the service sector go through their storms too. Make It Easy is also not adding rain. Komby kept going while I learnt to roar: like Katy, without her celebrity.

---

Alexandre Auger, CEO of Komby

*Step 9/14. Previous: The Takeover (08). Next: Study Case (10)*