She flew on a futuristic butterfly, performed aerial acrobatics, climbed onto a hanging sphere, sang upside down, jumped, and ran across a stage filled with lasers and holograms... With Katy Perry, one thing is certain: fun. Her concert at Palau Sant Jordi - with all 18,000 tickets sold out - was like a science fiction video game: Katy as a cyborg-heroine in armor worthy of Wonder Woman was advancing levels while rescuing her past hits, the ones that made her one of the commercial pop stars of the 2010s. And the ones all fans wanted to hear: I Kissed a Girl, Teenage Dream, California Gurls...
Because that's what the millennial generation audience came for: to play, to reconnect with the soundtrack of their 20s, marked by the playful, hedonistic, and unpretentious songs of the Californian, who just turned 41 ("I'm a Scorpio!", she claimed in the middle of Dark Horse). Katy is like that fun friend from high school, the one who stirs things up at parties even though she doesn't remember anything the next day (Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.)), the one who kisses another girl for the first time and, oh surprise, likes it; the one for the road trip with friends along the West Coast (California Gurls); the one who comforts you when your boyfriend leaves you (Part of Me); the one who is always there to cheer you up and make you smile (Firework); the queen of crazy parties (Ur So Gay); the one who lands at the airport in the early morning wearing sunglasses, a white bathrobe, and flip-flops (that's how she appeared at El Prat)...
And how much fun you have when you reunite with that friend. Although, as with school friends, maturity doesn't always bring depth, and those supposedly serious and committed songs, like the feminist manifesto Woman's World (guys, be thankful for living in a world of women, it tells us), sound bland. What we expect from Katy Perry is exactly what she did in the summer of 2024 at La Terrrazza: she showed up by surprise at the gay party Churros con Chocolate, during Pride, to hand out shots, dance the Macarena, and shoot water guns. Bravo, Katy. And she remembered it like this: "The last time I came to Barcelona, I filmed a music video and went to a gay club." She refers to the video for I'm His, He's Mine, one of the tracks from her latest album '143' where she samples the 90s hit Crystal Waters Gypsy Woman (She's Homeless), that iconic humming of "la da dee la da da". Live, it gains intensity although, let's admit it, it sounds weak despite the 90s vibe.
Mid-concert, Katy did an almost stand-up comedy interlude. She brought up several fans, like 12-year-old Pol or a blue shark (underneath was Diana from Bolivia). She asked them to teach her some words in Catalan, earning the loudest applause of the night. She ended up singing 'Testimo, t'estimo, t'estimo'.
She saved her brand-new song Bandaids for almost the end, released on November 6, a ballad of pain over a love that ended ("We were perfect until we weren't anymore") and sounds like the requiem for her relationship with Orlando Bloom.
After seven years away from stadium mega-tours (during which she married Bloom, had a daughter, and separated), Katy Perry is basking in the masses at each stop of her most ambitious tour, with massive soldouts and over 80 concerts worldwide. The party continues in Madrid on Tuesday, with another post-adolescent throwback. Who wouldn't want to reunite with the cool high school friend?