Katy Perry kisses up to girls and boys at her first Chicago show

March 26, 2009, at House of Blues

By Selena Fragassi
Published: March 29th, 2009 | 2:30pm

“So last night, I almost cut my boob off!” It’s only three songs into Katy Perry’s first-ever Chicago show and already she feels comfortable enough to tell the star-struck crowd about her strategically placed butterfly bandage. “But you guys would still love me if I only had one tit, right?”

The predictable applause that flooded the sold-out House of Blues was further proof that the tidal wave of success for this 24-year-old chanteuse has yet to crest. And why would it? Whether she’s experimenting with lesbian crushes, airing her dirty relationship laundry, or declaring that she’s no two-bit hooker, Perry’s shtick for pushing the envelope, all the while dressed in the tongue-in-cheek Lolita-meets–Chiquita banana wardrobe, is the stuff tabloids are made of. And in the past year and a half of her rise to being the cherry on top of the pop world, Perry herself has made quite a few covers since leaving the nest egg of her born-again preacher parents and embarking on a music career that puts Catholic-school sex ed to bed.

Dressed in a sparkly silver dress with a cummerbund and pinup bangs, Perry was outfitted in one of her more tame outfits that, despite her surface similarities to indie darling Zooey Deschanel, made her look more like Liza Minnelli. The main problem with Perry, as became evident in an hour-long set that included humping blown-up strawberries, the Hokey Pokey, and fake vomiting, was that she relies too much on her image than establishing herself as the Liz Phair prototype that tries to find its place in her risqué lyrics.

Perry has often said that she grew up listening to and singing gospel music in a strict household that forbade secular music, and her lack of knowledge (less a sarcastic cover of Queen’s “Don’t Stop Me Now”) was apparent in the night’s delivery of radio-friendly hits that lacked the complexity of the same thought put into her fashion and stage props.

Performing nearly every track off her platinum hit, One of the Boys (Capitol), her songs spoke for themselves in a night that was at best, “Hot and Cold,” and at worst, “Lost.” The latter song was the only one to provoke some ounce of emotion as she performed it solo alongside her acoustic guitar, bereft of the men dressed in white coats who should have taken her with them when they left the stage.

It was unfortunate that her mic time was less reliant on her powerhouse voice and more so on the forced comedy or well-timed and rehearsed song intros that bordered on the cockiness of televangelism, as she warned, “Don’t make me preach because that’s my background,” before introducing “Mannequin” with a Pinocchio soliloquy and “Ur So Gay” as comparable to “Satan’s period.”

By the end of the show, the only song left was the obvious and much anticipated “I Kissed A Girl,” which didn’t disappoint as a melodramatic, show-stopping number. As Perry returned for the encore performance in a hot pink, leopard-print unitard, she leaned into the crowd to ask an unsuspecting and unprepared concertgoer if she brought her cherry chapstick, which resulted in yet another blow-up stage prop, a full-size lipstick.

By the song’s end, Perry, held up like a puppet by a security guard, leaned down into the crowd to, yes, kiss a girl — a slick move that showed she knows how to kiss and makeup for a show that was, more or less, just lip service.

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Polly_Panda (over 3 years)
I thought this article had been posted as an April fool's joke, but the date is wrong. Katy Perry reviews in Venus. Seriously, what's going on????!