Live review: Katy Perry takes over Staples Center

Live review: Katy Perry takes over Staples Center

November 23rd, 2011, 1:00 pm posted by

When adults even those who should know better defend Katy Perry, they usually point out that she can really sing and actually writes (or co-writes) much of her material. Thats true, but really beside the point. Its a bit like admiring the guy who robbed you because he fashioned his own knife and threatened you in iambic pentameter. What does it matter who sings or writes the songs when theyre as mechanically cynical as Ms. Perrys?

Her Teenage Daydream Tour, which wraps up this week with two packed shows at Staples Center (including a free concert tonight), presents itself as a brightly-colored fantasia, a fairy tale with a happy ending, a Candyland for tweens. But none of that candy-coating can hide the unsavory center: an R-rated performer in G-rated mufti, Perry is a gumdrop filled with arsenic.

Its a production so materialistic, narcissistic and emotionally bankrupt, it answers a question no one has asked: What would a Kardashian sound like if one could sing?

The answer: a bit like Lady Gaga (note the stuttering chorus to Peacock) plus some Ke$ha-inspired raunch (in the celebration of overindulgence that is Last Friday Night [T.G.I.F.]), along with touches of Rihanna (Who Am I Living For?) and Britney (too many to mention).

Its a riot of mixed messages, ranging from Pearl, which advises listeners not to let a man overwhelm them, to E.T., in which she gives herself up to a toxic lover, asking him to infect me with your love and fill me with your poison wanna be a victim, ready for abduction. She may sing about kissing a girl, but in concert she pulls a shirtless young man from the crowd, regales him with jokes that were old when Totie Fields first told them, gives him a kiss, then tosses him off because my husband is here. (She did exactly the same during her three sold-out nights at Nokia Theatre in August.)

Certainly, Perry works hard for your attention, and there are moments when you can catch a real person underneath the glitz. For this tour she starts off I Kissed a Girl as a kind of Peggy Lee ballad; The One That Got Away, a perfectly serviceable torch song, is performed before a curtain alongside two acoustic guitarists, a stand-up bass and two backing vocalists.

And the production values are first-rate: During Just Like the Movies, balloons that with just a touch burst into pink smoke floated above the audience, while her multiple onstage costume changes during Hot and Cold are nothing short of spectacular. There are fireworks, a phalanx of dancers, constant video accompaniment and a cotton candy cloud that allows Perry to float above the crowd.

But with her big round eyes, perfect plasticine skin and bodacious bust which d! uring th e show are variously made to look like peppermints, Hersheys kisses and candy dots she may be her own best effect. You look and wonder: How did they teach that sex doll to sing?

Setlist: Katy Perry at Staples Center, Nov. 22, 2011Main set: Teenage Dream / Hummingbird Heartbeat / Waking Up in Vegas / Ur So Gay / Peacock / I Kissed a Girl / Circle the Drain / E.T. / Who Am I Living For? / Pearl / Not Like the Movies / The One That Got Away (full band acoustic) / Thinking of You (Katy Perry acoustic) / I Want Candy (Strangeloves/Bow Wow Wow cover) > Milkshake (Kelis cover) / Hot N Cold / Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.) / I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me) (Whitney Houston cover) / FireworkEncore: California Gurls

Photo by Armando Brown, for the Register.

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