Katy Perry brings tremendously entertaining show to London

Katy Perry brought ‘The Prismatic World Tour’ to London last night (May 27) for the first of four sold-out shows at The O2 Arena.

She opened with last year’s global chart-topper Roar and kept the hits coming for a full two hours – having notched up 18 UK chart singles in under five years, this 29-year-old California “gurl” isn’t exactly starved for prime material.

Perry’s show isn’t as jaw-droppingly risqué as Miley Cyrus’s ‘Bangerz’, which called in at the same venue earlier this month (May), and Lady Gaga has rather ungraciously suggested that Perry might have borrowed one or two ideas from her own shows.

However, Perry’s great strength lies in being able to present world-conquering pop songs in a visually impressive manner to which everyone in the audience – mums and daughters, gaggles of girls glugging rosé, gays itching to twerk to Dark Horse – can relate.

Roar‘s message of self-empowerment is accompanied by boxing-influenced dance moves; a blanket of balloons is released from the ceiling during Birthday; and for Dark Horse, she actually does bring a mechanical horse on stage.

The singer’s vocals haven’t always been on point during TV performances, but tonight she sings as well as she needs to – as well as charging around the stage like she’s still a teenage dream, strumming a guitar during a likeable acoustic section and reeling off some of her trademark girl-next-door banter.  She jumps through a skipping rope; she flies into the audience; she rides that mechanical horse – she works hard.

Yes, her stage outfits are consistently terrible – for one section, she wears a hot pink leopard-print catsuit with kitty ears – but being a style icon is isn’t the point of Katy Perry. The point of Katy Perry is to be a massive pop superstar who knows how to deliver the goods, and with this tremendously entertaining show, she totally nails it.

Katy Perry’s setlist in full:

Roar
Part of Me
Wide Awake
This Moment/Love Me
Dark Horse
ET
Legendary Lovers
I Kissed A Girl
Hot N Cold
International Smile
By the Grace of God
The One That Got Away/Thinking Of You
Unconditionally
Megamix/Finally
Walking On Air
It Takes Two
This Is How We Do/Last Friday Night
Teenage Dream
California Gurls
Birthday
Firework