Little Miss Sun Shine

Backstage at the Gwinnett Arena near Atlanta, Katy Perry opens the door to her dressing room and stands there, unrecognisable. “Come in,” she says. “I’m kind of dressed ”“ I’ve got a sarong on. But come in.” Her lips are without pucker, colour or substance. Her eyes are small, her cheeks pale. She’s neither glossy nor sleek, and not in evidence at all is her famous, heaving bosom. She looks 17, not 26. This can’t be her. It makes no sense. It’s like she’s sent some wan underage doppelgänger out to play a practical joke.

A few minutes later, she’s being fitted for costumes for the North American leg of her California Dreams worldwide tour, 50 dates in all, most already sold-out, including this one, the very important first. The outfits are all wacky and wild, featuring loopy stripes, kooky cat ears, puffy bags of cotton candy, swirling electric discs. Everything is “bigger, better, more,” as Perry likes to say, and she takes an intense interest in the correct workings of each. She wants a strap shortened here, hook-and-eye fasteners substituted for snaps there. She goes into the bathroom and comes out wearing some kind of layer-cake confection. “It just seems like this thing is going to fall apart,” she says. Then she takes a closer look, narrowing her eyes at a pair of plastic dolls affixed to the front. “Take those crazy dolls off,” she says. “She’s not invited to the show, and neither is her sister.” She appears to shiver. “Crazy eyes,” she says. “They’re freaking me out.”

Her longtime stylist, Johnny Wujek, nods. She asks, and it will be done. Everything has to be perfect and in harmony, and crazy-eyed dolls can play no part.

Then it’s on to studying the video for her hit ”˜Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.),’ which will be released in a few days. It’s the fifth single to come off Teenage Dream, her second album of the past three years, which, like One of the Boys before it, has gone multiplatinum. The statistics regarding Perry’s success are pretty out-there unbelievable. The singles from One of the Boys, foremost among them ”˜Hot N Cold’ and ”˜I Kissed a Girl,’ have sold more than 20 million digital downloads. When the follow-up album debuted last August, it started right at the top, and all the singles ”“ ”˜California Gurls,’ ”˜Teenage Dream,’ ”˜Firework’ and ”˜E.T.’ ”“ have reached Number One too. Perry is the first artist to ever have a tune ranked in the Top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100 for a full year. She’s been nominated for five Grammys. She’s been a guest on How I Met Your Mother. She married the former-sex-addict nut-job comedian from the UK named Russell Brand and apparently keeps him quite happy and vice versa. Her lyrics ”“ or, at least, eight words from one of her songs (“I kissed a girl and I liked it”) ”“ have pissed off both the uptight right and a good many of the equally uptight left. She’s been called a crassly commercial and conniving master manipulator of the culture, although she has always maintained her innocence, even while trotting out songs like ”˜Waking Up in Vegas’ and ”˜Peacock’ and singing lines like “Infect me with your love and fill me with your poison.” In brief, she is the current reigning pop-candy princess, with a sly wink and a tasty, wholesome smile. If you don’t get Lady Gaga, you’ll get her.

The ”˜Last Friday Night’ video concerns the drunken misadventures of one Kathy Beth Terry, as played by Perry, wearing big nerd glasses and a mouthful of braces. At one point, as it rolls, a bunch of bare skin slides into view.

“Hey, let’s go back to that last shot,” Perry says. The video zips backward and forward. She leans in. “My boobs,” she says. “They have to fix that. That’s the screenshot everyone is going to take.” She points. “It should be blurred out here, there and there.”

“Blur out the tit,” an assistant says.

“And did they fix the butt cheek?” Perry asks.

“I think they cropped it off.”

“Let me see.” She looks closely. “It’s fine. OK. Can I see the trailer? The new one that has the burps and farts cut out?”

Ah, boobs, butt cheeks, burps and farts. That’s more like it. Surely big bunches of suggestive puns and naughty double-entendres, two of the staple tropes for which Perry, a cunning jokester, is so well-known, can’t be far behind. But, in fact, they are; they never come. Today, she’s mostly all business. Frankly, it’s a little discombobulating. For example, aren’t boobs and butt cheeks two of the things that got her here? And she wants to crop them out, blur them into oblivion? Can this be the real Katy Perry? The one who tweets things like, “I’ve been artificially inseminated with a cat foetus!” Seriously. Where the hell has that crazy-fun girl gone?