Katy Perry plays numbers game
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Katy Perry launched her Prismatic tour in Australia last week. Picture: Brett Costello
Source: News Corp Australia
There must be moments in Katy Perry’s life when she stops to wonder who are all these people.
The 51 million followers on Twitter. The four million more on Instagram. The fans who bought more than 11 million albums and, wait for it, 81 million singles and counting.
She will be able to see the hundreds of thousands of people who buy tickets this week to see her Prismatic tour in Australia when it kicks off in November.
And it was impossible to miss the wave of people who followed her into the Telstra CEO’s truly Star Trekian boardroom in Sydney last week for our interview.
Team Following Katy included representatives of her Australian promoter Paul Dainty, her label EMI, the artist’s entourage and Telstra executives and publicity. Let’s say more than 20 people.
It was interview kryptonite. Yet Perry walks in, all grace and smiles, makes her way through the throng of minders and observers in a figure-hugging white dress, stops to shrug on a vintage Chanel jacket and zeros in.
“Hello luv,” she says with a decent Australian accent.
She recalls we have spoken before, gives me a hug and then politely but in full voice suggests the room be cleared.
Phew. Perry did wonder who all these people were.
Later she jokes about contemplating the mind-boggling numbers attached to her life because of her career and its record-breaking achievements.
“How do I cope?” she jests.
Perry puts all the figures down to the same catalyst every artist who has amassed millions of fans will claim.
The music did it. One song, then another and several more made the connection. To a lot of people and then more and then millions.
After that, you naturally experience an exponential explosion of popularity courtesy of the instant celebrity which attaches itself to chart positions and Youtube views, and the steady stoking of the social media fires.
Perry the celebrity may polarise opinion in the blogosphere but the numbers don’t lie. Her fans love her.
“I think the reason people have decided to follow my Twitter or whatever is because they can tell that I run it and it’s not just a publicist or a manager,” she says.
“They can see all my typos, sometimes I am late to my own announcements. It’s not just me self-promoting, buy my thing.
“It’s here is my personality, here’s what I discovered while trawling online or here’s me being able to communicate with you directly. I think they see there is a genuineness about it and it’s not like corporately run or whatever.”
Perry doesn’t usually do promotional visits to announce a tour and she was in Australia only four months ago to launch her Prism album off the back of the unstoppable single Roar.
But she has made no secret of wanting to match Pink’s phenomenal big concert numbers here and astutely knows that takes regular face time.
“I am happy to be back, I don’t usually do big stops for announcements but it’s funny that Australia has been really responsive with this past record, like one of the top three leaders (in the world),”’ she says
By the time she returns with the tour, she will have performed almost 80 concerts in the UK and North America from May to October.
Perry knows her tour will be viewed through the prism of Pink and every other female pop artist on the planet.
She locked lips checking out Miley’s controversial Bangerz show, bopped in the front row of Britney’s A Piece Of Me production in Las Vegas and clocked Beyonce’s Mrs Carter World Tour.
Of course she loved them all.
“I am a music junkie, a lover of music, still. People have raised the bar for live shows and our attention spans are very short these days but … you have to have the songs to do a two hour show,” she says.
“That’s my luxury, I do have the songs and I am really happy about that because if it was just costumes, it can get a little tiresome.
“When you have everyone singing along to these songs they have had their own personal experiences with, everyone is unified, it is a fantastic feeling.
“When I see a show from a really big artist whose catalogue I know I want to see all the hits. And I understand people want to see that from me and I won’t shy away from that.”
But yes, people, there will be costume changes executed in 30 seconds or less. and there will be flying. You gotta fly high at a pop concert.
“Of course, yeah, der! There will be some flying,” she says, laughing.
“You bet one day I will come around with a tour that is acoustic in a beautiful theatre that doesn’t have aerialists and 10 costume changes. But I am still in my 20s and I am still going to act like it.”
The tour will kick off at Perth Arena on November 7 and head to Adelaide Entertainment Centre on November 11, Rod Laver Arena in Melbourne on November 14 and 15, Allphones Arena, Sydney on November 21 and 22 and Brisbane Entertainment Centre on November 27. general Tickets are available from noon on March 11.
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