Katy Perry – Hammersmith Apollo, London 17/03/11

Hey, you there, with the guitar. Thinking about starting a band? Contemplating the glamour of playing the country’s finest basement venues? Toying with the idea of developing a casual hard drug habit? I wouldn’t bother if I were you. Katy Perry has rendered your anachronistic artform irrelevant.

Last year, while everyone else seemed to be fawning over Beach House’s Teen Dream, I was falling completely in love with Teenage Dream – Katy Perry’s second album. By ‘everyone else’ I mean, of course, people who write blogs – not the general record-buying public. I was hooked when I saw her play the title track on an early morning TV show in the States, and then fell in love with the record in a way that I can’t remember ever having done before.

It was, and remains, utter perfection. From the first chord of ‘Teenage Dream’ to the final, waning strings of ‘Not Like The Movies’, it is one of the greatest pop records I have ever heard. In fact, it is one of the most expertly crafted, heartbreakingly bittersweet, lyrically entertaining albums I have ever had the pleasure to sit through, regardless of genre.

Where One Of The Boys was all angsty-yet-funny Morissette-lite, the world of Teenage Dream is populated by cotton candy, kittens, and comically ridiculous innuendo. On tour, this world is reified – the most immediate sign of which is the almost overwhelming scent of cherry sweets that hangs over the venue. In fact, the only thing that can compete with the stench of E numbers as we enter the Hammersmith Apollo, is the heavy fug of pubescence – as, inevitably, the crowd is made up almost exclusively of 14-year old girls. And their dads.

The girls scream their way through a rambling video intro, part ‘Amelie’ part ‘Delicatessen’, that involves an impossibly innocent-looking Katy Perry losing her cat, being forced into semi-slavery by a looming butcher, and then being fed a brownie that gets her stoned. Or something along those lines. Plot isn’t important.

Eventually, though, the lights spark, and the band are there, dressed in matching white suits and tie-dye sleeves. Katy appears, inevitably, from the back of the back of the stage, rising from behind the drumkit, singing the opening bars of ‘Teenage Dream’. And the 14-year olds lose. Their. Shit.

From the moment she appears on stage, everything that makes the album great is rendered even larger. The humour, the self-awareness, are there in abundance; from the frankly ridiculous costumes to the faux-naive posing, there is little or nothing here that can be taken seriously.

But that certainly doesn’t mean that it isn’t worthwhile – and nor does it mean that Katy Perry isn’t a serious entertainer. She is onstage for almost two and a half hours, with barely time to breathe. She struts around the Tim Burton fairytale set, entirely captivating, entirely believable. There are, at a rough count, 25 costume changes. She has a dozen separate outfits in ‘Hot n Cold’ alone. And throughout, her voice is pitch-perfect and unforced. The assumption that she won’t be able to do it live is completely unfounded.

Some of the most entertaining moments are born of the fact that the content of the show is entirely inappropriate for the audience. The clenching of parental teeth is almost audible during the periods of mimed fellatio in ‘Peacock’. And Perry, of course, knows this. She seems to revel in her apparent ability to perform a decidedly post-watershed show to a room full of people not yet old enough to buy a Lottery ticket – and have them fawn on her, almost worship her, as evidenced by the (slightly contrived) stage invasion that closely resembles a group of children being reunited with a long absent mother.

There is nothing classy about a Katy Perry show. It is gaudy, unrestrained, brash, and nigh-on obscene at points. And that is exactly why it is currently a show without parallel. I have seldom enjoyed a gig so much. The prospect of returning to dingy basement venues to watch joyless guitar bands seems dire indeed.