![]() And who doesn’t love a good comeback story?Īs Perry sings on the Witness track Pendulum that should’ve been the album’s second single after Chained To The Rhythm, “life’s a pendulum, it all comes back around”. The good news is, any long career of any note will have highs and lows. Whether it’s a couple of poorly chosen recent singles, immovable set-lists or concerts with more emphasis on bombastic staging and special effects than on the music, Perry is at a crossroads. While she’s still fun in a live setting (“bonkers” fun), it is fair to say she has bigger concerns than merely touring at the same time as Pink. However, there is an undeniable drop in popularity for Perry, something I try to explain in the review.Ĭards on the table, I’m an unabashed fan of the hook-laden pop that Perry has done better than virtually any of her peers for the past decade. Yes, the now just wrapped Witness tour sold half of what the Prismatic tour of 2014/2015 did, but we’re still talking roughly one million tickets worldwide. If we wind the clock back about three years, it was Katy Perry who was the bigger international drawcard, but as my review for the NZ Herald says, Perry finds herself at a curious career juncture.Īs you can read, I disagree with some of the more harsh Australian critics who predict Perry is in some sort of career free fall. She knows her audience is the latter, and as she did for Mayte, she granted their wishes too.With all the excitement of Pink’s just finished, record-breaking run of seven sold out New Zealand concerts (six in Auckland and one in Dunedin), it’s easy to forget that another female superstar of the same generation was also in town at almost the exact same time. Perry appears to know there's a difference between audiences that go to concerts for catharsis and those that want their favorite stars to perpetuate whimsical fantasy. The girl's red sequins shone as brightly as the Swarovski crystals on Perry's dress, and Perry, taking on the affect of Glinda the Good Witch, asked the girl to make a wish on a shooting-star prop. In one of the better parts of the night, Perry brought a 7-year-old named Mayte onstage. The moment seemed ripe for a segment of John Oliver's recurring bit "How Is This Still a Thing?" But what do reviews matter when you’ve already made millions off songs like Firework, Dark Horse, and I Kissed A Girl. With an average Metascore of 53, it’s safe to say that mega pop star, Katy Perry, has never enjoyed the best of reviews. ![]() In light of the criticism Perry rightly faced for "playing gay" on her first album, it's grating that she's still doing this. Review Summary: Katy Perrys Witness sparkles like a bedazzled turd. Has anyone ever kissed a girl?" she asked. "I know there are a lot of fine ladies in Miami. Perry's mother pandered to the crowd, saying Miami is "the center of girl power" because it was founded by a woman, and shared other Miami Wikipedia facts before Perry continued the show with a song she says her devout mom hates: "I Kissed a Girl." There was a surprising amount of bi-baiting on her part before the song. It was heartwarming but went on too long. Photo by Michele Eve Sandberg She punched up the tempo on slower songs such as "Teenage Dream," refashioned "Part of Me" with an 8-bit Pac-Man intro, and called her mom on a larger-than-life, old-school red telephone during a show break. ![]() ![]() Perry may sing about " livin' our lives through a lens" of rose-colored glasses, but her show doesn't tell fans to take them off instead, she makes them 3D. It wasn't a terribly different message from John Lennon's " keep you doped with religion and sex and TV," but Lennon fled from pop artificiality once he figured out he was just another one of society's diversions. " Are we tone-deaf?/Keep sweepin' it under the mat/Thought we could do better than that/I hope we can," she sang while massive stilt-controlled puppets with TV faces took the stage. It's about stepping out of comfort bubbles of distraction to confront society's ills head-on. Perry played the Witness lead-off single "Chained to the Rhythm" early in the set the song doubles as the album's mission statement. Katy Perry returned to the American Airlines Arena last night for her Witness World Tour, and though she opened 2017 saying this album cycle would mark a more socially conscious departure for the former pinup pop tart, Perry spent more time creating her own world inside the walls of the AAA than she did addressing the one outside it. One of the standouts is what one could argue is a jumpsuit, though it barely covers her body The blue latex. Who needs "purposeful pop" when you have Left Shark? Katy’s really leaning into latex looks for this tour.
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