PHILADELPHIA – If you’ve been online lately, you’ve seen the criticism. Katy Perry is a spoiled brat. She is too thin and can’t dance. Katy Perry brought a setlist to space and her “143” album is a flop.
Can we maybe enlist the “Leave Britney alone!” guy at this point and swap in Perry’s name?
Seriously, why all the hate? What has Perry done to provoke so much agitation and scorn?
So her “Woman’s World” video didn’t land with the irony she intended. So she had dinner with the former Canadian prime minister following her breakup with Orlando Bloom. So she toes the line between bold and bizarre.
If Perry were the monster so many internet trolls profess her to be, she probably wouldn’t be selling out arenas – such as Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia Aug. 9 – on her Lifetimes Tour.
And guess what? It’s a fun, vibrant show filled with flying apparatus, dancers, oversized flowers, sleek video panels, an AI Perry and plenty of her goofy charm that borders on silly. Are those legit reasons for character assassination?
Perry has been loping around the world on this tour for four months. Her Philadelphia stop was the 33rd city on the Lifetimes Tour, with 39 to go before wrapping in Abu Dhabi at the end of the year.
It’s her first tour since 2018, but it’s not as if she’s been sitting around flicking petals off daisies in the meantime. Perry bopped through 80 shows in a nearly two-year residency in Las Vegas that ended in 2022. That production, appropriately dubbed Play, featured a rocking horse, dancing tubes of toothpaste and a mammoth toilet bowl.
So now she’s getting dogged for having a lightsaber duel and hanging upside down inside a metal sphere while singing “I Kissed a Girl”?
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Perry’s tour hasn’t been without its own obstacles. She has sung, smiled and hit her marks on stage while her insides were likely crumbling from her split with Bloom, her fiance of six years and father of her daughter, Daisy. In San Francisco, the butterfly she rides above the crowd during “Roar” took an unexpected and scary dip with Perry in tow.
Call her whatever you want, but the “show must go on” ethos is strong in this one.
Perry has never been a powerhouse singer like Lady Gaga or Kelly Clarkson, nor does she possess seemingly effortless dance moves like Beyoncé. But she’s a strong vocalist with a knack for writing anthems that reinforce emotional fortitude. “Roar” and “Firework,” yes. But also “Wide Awake,” coated with a pulsing rhythm from her four-piece band and “Teary Eyes,” from 2020’s “Smile” album.
“Don’t be afraid of your tears – they’re trying to heal you!” she yelled after the song, her message amplified by her metal-plated outfit.
Perry is also fearless. She floats above the stage – which boasts winding catwalks in the shape of an infinity symbol – during “Nirvana,” weaves with her dance troupe on metal jungle gyms throughout “Teenage Dream” and starts the show being pulled upward in the center of a space age platform for “Artificial.”
But along with the sensory assault, Perry’s willingness to expose her emotions and her self-deprication are her superpowers.
“I’m going to get vulnerable and sing about my first divorce,” she said before “Not Like the Movies.”
After reminding the crowd that since her last tour she became a mother, Perry quipped, “Those (out there) 8-years-old and younger … I am not Dua Lipa. I am Dua Lipa’s aunt, Katy Perry.”
Curiously, Perry’s fan base is predominately tween, the same demographic that flocked to her shows donning kitty ears 20 years ago.
Midway through her two-hour concert Saturday, Perry continued her bit of calling a few fans on stage to add some percussion to “The One That Got Away.” Two of her choices were preteen girls clearly enthralled to be in her warm presence. Exuding big sister vibes, Perry asked about their backgrounds and their career goals, even doing splits on stage next to one, an aspiring gymnast.
She doesn’t have to engage at this level, her Disney princess eyes wide as she listened to these kids. Nor does she have to grab a fan’s phone during the fizzy two-fer of “Hot N Cold” and “Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.)” and scamper around the stage to take priceless video for them.
But she does it because, even at 40, she’s connecting with fans of all different backgrounds.
Is it arrested development? Perhaps. Or maybe she’s just a girl who wants to have fun.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Katy Perry silences the haters with sleek Lifetimes tour concert
