Little Miss Sun Shine

Four hours before the first show of her tour, inside her dressing room, Perry settles into a chair in front of a mirror and lets her team go to work, changing her into the Katy Perry that will appear onstage. The process is officially known as “Glam,” as in, “It’s time for Glam!” and on the schedule it is allotted three hours. Right now, Todd Delano, Perry’s makeup artist, lines himself up by Perry’s side, appraising the situation. Foundation goes on first, all over, warming up her skin a little, adding a bit of colour. Then he turns her eyelids a shade of soft, smoky plum, using eyeliner to draw out the shape of her eyes, for a winged, cat-eye effect. On go the false eyelashes ”“ Eylure Naturalites Double Lashes 205 (“Gorgeous, layered lashes for superb texture. Be daring, go double!”) ”“ jet-black in colour, superlong, real standouts. They are followed by concealer and sparkly highlighter, matte bronzer and plenty of bright baby-doll-pink blush. Then he darkens and shapes her eyebrows, very Bettie Page, very Betty Boop, the fine hairs held down by an application of clear eyebrow gel. Finally, above the black cat-eye liner, Delano dashes on one last defining line, lavender and ultrasparkly. After that, Kim the wig girl comes in bearing Perry’s trademark blue wig. She pulls Perry’s hair up and back, flattening it tight against her scalp. She lowers the wig into position, scrunches it down, fastening it in place with a handful of bobby pins. Perry does her own lips, and they are the knockout colour of the ripest cranberries ever.

There’s a rapping on the door. It’s one of Perry’s opening acts, the loopy-great Swedish dance-pop singer Robyn. Perry is a huge fan. After exchanging pleasantries, she can no longer contain herself. “I love you! I want to skin you and wear you like last year’s Versace!”

It’s an interesting moment. Perry has changed. She’s no longer some wan doppelgänger. She’s become the supervivacious and quippy Perry of lore, in looks, attitude and action. It’s really some turnaround and almost shockingly complete.

“Ooh, tonight’s gonna be cray-cray,” Perry is saying now. “It’s gonna be a hot mess of fun, I can already feel it.” A few minutes later, she lifts her head, listening to a chunky beat coming from the arena. “Oh, is Robyn on? Robyn’s on! Let’s go watch, really, really quickly.” She dives into a black onesie, pulls the hood over her head (because she is totally recognisable as Katy Perry now, blue-wigged and about to burst), plays “ditch the bodyguard” (naughty, naughty girl: “How can I do my job when she does that?” the bodyguard says later), and high-tails it out to near the stage-left stands, where she bops along to Robyn’s synth-heavy sound in the shadow of the crowd, unseen and happy.

An hour later, it’s her turn, and out she goes, waving and shouting stuff like, “Hello, Atlanta!” Pretty soon, she’s floating high in the sky on a mechanised cotton-candy cloud, lifted there by gears and pulleys, the height maintained for minutes on end, until it’s time for her to come back to Earth and step back onto the stage. She smiles constantly. She seems right at home. She gives everybody what they want and more ”“ all of her hit tunes, as well as a medley of some favourite songs (Jay-Z’s ”˜Big Pimpin’,’ Rebecca Black’s ”˜Friday’ and Willow Smith’s ”˜Whip My Hair’), everything accompanied by vast amounts of spectacular cleavage and, on ”˜Peacock,’ a good bit of goofy-looking head-bobbing innuendo ”“ and in return gets what she wants, 10,131 happy faces. Then she’s blasting the first 10 rows with a mixture of water and soap that looks like whipped cream and singing the final lines of ”˜California Gurls’ and calling it a day. Well, not quite. She’s still got to give notes on how it all went. (And how did it go? “Good. I thought there were no major mess-ups,” though later on she does say, among other things, that during ”˜Firework’ someone “pre-ejaculated the pyro mountain.”) She also has to go to a meet-and-greet with 85 lucky fans and friends. And to not get back to her hotel until 2 am. And to not be able to get to sleep until 5 am. And to not wake up again until 1 pm. the next day.