It's been awhile since I've been to a concert of any sort, so I was extremely excited when my mother even hinted at the possibility of going to this concert while I was home after horrible, unexpected surgery (but we won't talk about that).
I have been a Katy Perry fan for years, ever since "UR So Gay" came out. I thought that she was a truly unique artist and that more people should have listened to her. Then "I Kissed a Girl" was released as a single and she became an instant pop star. I saw her at Warped Tour in 2008 on the Hurley (maybe the Hurley.com) stage and thought that she should have had the main stage because there were waaaaaaay too many people crowded around there. Anyway, I had to leave after one and a half songs ("Fingerprints" and part of "One of the Boys," in case you were wondering) because 1) one of the people I was there with didn't care for Katy Perry and 2) she was signing autographs after her set and I wanted to get in line to meet her. I ended up giving her a broken tiara and a bracelet I made out of safety pins, beads, and elastic cord. She signed the middle page of my "One of the Boys" booklet and I had a friend take pictures of me talking to her. She hugged me, too.
So now we skip ahead to 2011, specifically July 7th, 2011, the day I went to see Katy Perry on her California Dreams tour. I went with my best friend and my cousin, and gosh darn it, we had fun! The show was at Summerfest in Milwaukee, so we weren't bored before the show started. There were a bunch of little shops set up and there were people performing their own music on other stages that were all around.
The show started at 7:30. The first act on stage was Marina and the Diamonds. Now, I had listened to about 30 seconds of this band on YouTube and I didn't care for them. However, they were absolutely incredible on stage. I take back any negative thing I said about them. They were actually really good. They played this one song called "Living Dead" and it's been stuck in my head ever since I heard it.
After Marina and the Diamonds, DJ Skeet Skeet came on. It was about 8:30, I think. Normally, I'd be opposed to just some random guy playing remixes for 30 minutes or so, but he was full of energy and made me want to dance. He played a remix of "Rolling in the Deep" by Adele and it was truly amazing. I kept telling my friend that we should hire him for our crappy school dances. Nevermind how much that would cost, it would be awesome!
Around 9:00, the lights went out. The place was packed. Hundreds of us fans were screaming. As the pink curtain rose, we see that the stage is adorned with two giant cupcakes, two candy mountain-like things, a staircase in the middle with candy-cane rails and big lollipops on the top. There were three screens above the stage. On the screens is where it all starts.
The video starts in black and white, with Katy working for a mean, evil butcher, who, according to the narrator, is "far from sweet." He calls Katy "cupcake," and tells her to cut a slice of meat that's in front of her. With a terrified frown, she starts to cut it, but is clearly repulsed by the blood coming from the meat. The butcher yells at her for cutting the fat off and tells her to go home. Katy rushes out of there.
She hits the streets and finds a cupcake shop. She looks through the window and sees the Baker's Boy working and she clearly has a crush on him. She goes in and introduces herself and looks at the cupcakes. However, Katy is poor and doesn't have much money on her. She finds the cheapest cupcake she can find and purchases it.
She is shown in her bedroom, sharing the cupcake with her cat, Kitty Purry. She wishes that her life was different and falls asleep. She wakes up after a nightmare about the evil butcher and sees her cat leaving through the doggy-door. She goes after Kitty and is taken into a colorful, Candy Land place. This is where the show begins.
A steady beat arises with the back-up singers harmonizing together. Then, Katy rises from the staircase, wearing a white dress with spinning peppermints and starts playing "Teenage Dream." She performs "Hummingbird Heartbeat" and "Waking Up in Vegas" next. During "Waking Up in Vegas," she introduces us to her friend, the slot machine, and is accompanied by an Elvis impersonator and dancing show girls.
Another video is played while Katy rushes for a quick costume change. The video shows Katy taking a shortcut that leads her into a candy cane forest where she meets two trouble-making mimes.
Katy comes back on stage in a purple princess-like dress and is wearing a tiara. The mimes join her on stage while she performs "UR So Gay" and the mimes taunt her with a giant brownie. At the end of the song (right before she would say "penis"), she asks for a bite of the brownie. She then starts to feel rather funky because that brownie, well, it wasn't an ordinary brownie. She then does an on-stage costume change, trading her skirt for a peacock tail and plays, you guessed it, "Peacock." After that, she changes into a sexy, long green dress with a feathered boa, brings a guy on stage and kisses him. However, the guy at our show didn't really want to leave the stage. He followed Katy around, forcing her to lie and say that her husband was coming. Honestly, I would have loved to Russell Brand come out on stage and be like, "WHAT IS GOING ON HERE?" but we all knew that she was just kidding. She starts to sing "I Kissed a Girl."
Another video comes up, showing that the mimes' brownie has transformed Katy into a catwoman after she thinks she found her cat and grabs a tail, only to have the tail wrap around her and then being transformed. This was a plan executed by the evil butcher.
Two steaks are put on stage while the video is on. Katy comes out in a tight, black outfit with cat ears and sings "Circle the Drain" while battling her dancers, who are dressed as butchers. She then goes into "E.T." with laser beams across the stage and lyrics on the screens. Next is "Who Am I Living For?" During this song, her dancers strap her down with elastic strings and Katy is defeated. Her two back-up singers save her, though, and they put a white gown covered with gold sparkles and she sings "Pearl" with two aerialists. It's quite beautiful. I almost cried. Hell, Katy shed a tear when she started singing, "Yeah, I used to be a shell. Yeah, I let him rule my world..."
Another video is played, showing two lovers in the candy land. Katy looks at them, wishing she had a love like that. Katy comes back on stage, sitting on a swing, while singing "Not Like the Movies." Katy is lifted high above the stage while kissing cartoons are played on the back drop behind her. Now THIS was definitely my favorite performance. "Not Like the Movies" is one of my favorite songs and it was just so incredibly beautiful and amazing that I did, in fact, shed a little tear.
Katy comes down and has a little section called "Katy's Karaoke." An acoustic guitar is played while Katy tells us about her Wisconsin experience. She talked about eating her first cheese curd, telling us that "it's like cheese... in a ball..." and wonders if she should try the fried cheese curds. Then she says that she shouldn't because she's getting over food poisoning and that it's been so bad that she's been "stuck in the bathroom because it's been coming out of both ends." She shrugs and says, "I'm just trying to be real with you guys. Don't act like you've never been there!" Anyway, back to the karaoke, she sings "Only Girl (In the World)" by her best friend, Rihanna, then sings "Big Pimpin'" by Jay-Z. Now, I'm not sure which of the next two songs came first, but she tells us how sometimes she gets depressed and this one song can lift her spirits no matter what. She even says she wants this song to be played at her funeral, which she hopes is not that night. She then starts to sing, "Yesterday was Thursday, Thursday. Today it is Friday, Friday. We, we so excited..." Yes, she sang Rebecca Black's "Friday." I started giggling because I told my friend that it would be awesome if Katy did sing that song. She then asks the security guard if he ever likes to "whip his hair back and forth." This leads into "Whip My Hair" by Will Smith's daughter, Willow. This concludes Katy's Karaoke.
Another video is played while Katy changes. In the video, Katy finally finds Kitty Purry, who is holding an invitation to the Big Bakers City Ball from the Baker's Boy. She doesn't know what to wear and somewhere (not sure where) she reads that she must "wear the wig that's blue."
Katy comes on stage wearing her blue wig and sings "Hot N Cold." Now this performance is absolutely mind-blowing because she changes into seven different outfits on stage. Everyone should definitely look for this on YouTube because it's pretty freaking awesome. She bursts into "Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.)" after. Pictures of fans are shown on the screens. She goes backstage for a quick costume change and comes back wearing basically a white, one-piece bathing suit covered in blue, pink, and possibly yellow, sparkly ball halves that are supposed to look like those candy dots that come on paper, if anyone knows what I'm talking about. Someone dressed up as Kitty Purry joins Katy on stage and they invite a bunch of fans on stage during a cover of Whitney Houston's "I Wanna Dance With Somebody." Towards the end of it, Katy dances with this little girl and gives her a kiss. It was ADORABLE! "Firework" is the next song and Katy asks us, the fans, to help her sing it because she claims that it's her favorite song. When she sings "Boom, boom, boom! Even brighter than the moon, moon, moon..." fireworks go off, as expected.
Before the encore, the last video is played. It is revealed that this whole candy land adventure was all a dream. The Baker's Boy comes into Katy's room, dressed in a gingerbread man costume, and starts to dance.
Katy returns to the stage once more, wearing a silver bra that is shaped like Hershey's Kisses, and busts into "California Gurls." This was one of the most memorable performances of the night. She had a line of gingerbread men dancing behind her and a whipped cream bazooka and she sprayed whipped cream all over the crowd. Then the confetti canons went off and it was a beautiful sight.
I was in a daze as I left the venue. I stared at my light-up stick that once had cotton candy on it and the confetti that I had picked up from the ground and I couldn't help but smile to myself. That show made me so freaking happy and it made me wish that there really was a candy land that I could go off to.
Oh, and then the next day, I was on Facebook, and Katy had canceled her shows for that night in Chicago and for the next night in St. Paul due to food poisoning and severe dehydration. Gosh, we were lucky she didn't cancel on us!
Overall, this was a fantastic, fun-filled, energetic show. It almost made me feel like I was watching some sort of broadway musical and I'd definitely go see another show just to live it all over again.
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