Katy Perry
AO Arena, Manchester
8th October 2025

There is plenty of good. There is occasionally some bad. And there is a sense of absolute madness and chaos that you rarely see in a major stadium show. David Edwards is equally beguiled and bewildered by Katy Perry’s Lifetimes Tour as it hits Manchester’s AO Arena.

Pop music, due to its tendency to weave multiple threads through all aspects of life and culture, has a unique way of transporting you back to a previous age. Such as drifting back to the summer of 2008 when Katy Perry burst into public consciousness. The global financial crisis hadn’t fully engulfed us. Donald Trump was just a doddering fool spouting nonsense on Fox News (umm…) and there was still a sense of unbridled optimism in the world. And Katy Perry was the ideal popstar for that age. Retro, brightly-coloured. A neon comet that smashed into the charts with a sense of carefree fun and absurdity. Flash forward now to 2025, and tonight’s show at Manchester’s AO Arena seems shelter from the storm amidst the increasing bleakness of modern existence. We all really do need a smile right now, and when pop gigs fulfil their potential, they can prove to be a glorious and vivid release in the midst of turmoil.

Not that Katy Perry has been immune from such gathering clouds. The recent backlash against her trip to space on Jeff Bezos’s rocket ship (somewhat harsh IMHO) and the criticism of her decision to work with Dr Luke (entirely justified IMHO), combined with a generally negative reception to recent album 143, and wildly-polarised responses to the North-American leg of The Lifetimes Tour has rocked one of the world’s most consistently-successful pop artists of the past two decades onto the back foot. It really feels as if Perry is here to prove something as she embarks upon the UK leg of the tour. And hanging in the air amidst a sea of sparkles, glitter and garish illuminated accessories floats a simple question – will she put on a show to conclusively shut down the doubters?

Well, yes and no. But boy, is there some fun to be had on the way to that conclusion.

Tonight’s show is probably the simultaneously memorable, bonkers, ill-disciplined, chaotic, eye-popping and confusing concert I have ever witnessed, but ultimately results in a fascinating and strangely joyful experience. The narrative framing of the show – Katy Perry is the half-human, half-machine KP143 cyborg, tasked to take on a dystopian Matrix-like AI Mainframe that has harnessed the world’s butterflies as a power source (stay with me here) and KP143 must battle through different levels in order to free them from captivity. It’s the sort of thing that Frank Herbert might have come up with if he fell asleep in candy floss after ingesting magic mushrooms (indeed, we later see KP143 battling two colossal metallic worms), but it weirdly works as a way of structuring the show through several distinct acts.

And for the most part, it’s actually pretty good. Perry does have charisma and genuine star-power, and her voice is in good form tonight, especially given the constant wirework, dancing, hi-energy dancer interaction and seemingly spending as much time up in the air as she does on the ground. The songs are generally strong (Dark Horse is highly impressive live), although some of the best moments of the night are when the tempo drops and she can just be herself. The narrative framework – whilst convoluted – does generally work, with the graphics and visuals appropriately comic-inflected and retina-blasting. And the superb dance troupe and sense of overall theatricality is compelling throughout, whether they be weaving around a hastily-assembled lattice structure or fighting a Darth Maul lightsaber-wielding Perry. There is an enormous amount of goodwill from the crowd and a globally positive outward message about acceptance, tolerance, love and protecting those around us which, while somewhat hackneyed and cringeworthy at times, clearly resonates with the multi-generational audience. You get the distinct impression that everyone is welcome at a Katy Perry show.

The problem, however, is that the rigid structuring required for the narrative device leads to baffling artistic choices, and occasional ill-discipline that tests the resilience and bedtimes of the audience, with the show only ending past 11pm. Perry initially seems a little stilted and her crowd banter somewhat lacking in enthusiasm, though this quickly dissipates as the show progresses. It is also true that the songs from recent album 143 do not shine (especially the woeful Europop of Crush), and there is a clear drop in energy when they are brought out.

However, the most egregious example of the storyline interfering with creative choices occurs within the second act/stage of the storyline. After dispensing quickly with the flimsy Woman’s World we quickly move into absolute pop heaven. California Girls radiates sun and glamour as we…oh, we’re cutting. Oh my – Teenage Dream! A stone-cold, effortless and majestic pop track that simply…ah, we’re cutting again? Same with Hot n Cold. Same with Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F). And although I Kissed a Girl is given a longer outing, following two minutes of on-stage talk and a snippet of Peacock before it, all momentum is lost.

All in all, the combined time of all these five songs is around 12 minutes, which is roughly the same amount of time that Perry then spends conversing with her bass player and talking about how much she loves the UK in a “transition” skit between this and the next phase of the “storyline”. This issue with structure and flow is further emphasised later, when a well-meaning and occasionally emotive audience participation section (including a visibly moved kid called Max who shouts out to his ill mother) somehow goes on for nearly 20 minutes before culminating in a disappointingly flat Unconditionally.

The whole thing is extraordinarily disjointed for a stadium show, to the point of being somewhat anarchic at times, especially when Perry starts interacting with her “KatyCats/KatyRats” and reads audience signs, including telling one audience member good-heartedly to “piss off”. It’s engaging, it’s certainly never boring and it does have a real sense of individuality. But that pales into comparison when you treat your best songs almost as an afterthought; a truncated mega-mix that fails to generate any real momentum or magic when it should be soaring.

But to be too critical would be to ignore the sheer bravado, ridiculousness and absurdity of the vision on display here. Sometimes it really works, sometimes it doesn’t. And you would need a Parliamentary-level committee to investigate why anyone had the sheer audacity to come up with such a concept. But beyond the unnecessary skits and audience participation, it is certainly engaging. As Perry soars around the arena on a metallic butterfly during a triumphant Roar, followed by a hysterical, pyrotechnic-propelled Firework as a conclusion, it is nearly impossible not to give in to the sheer audacity and energy.

The Katy Perry Lifetimes tour is all over the place. But frankly, I’d rather see a show which tries to do something different than yet another bland, formulaic arena show lacking any sense of experimentation or creativity Part of what made Katy Perry so endearing in the first place was her sense of flamboyance and garish absurdity, and after she warms up tonight, this is on full display. It will likely be a long time before I see anything quite like it again and, like the aftermath of devouring a gigantic bag of confectionary, it’s not something I’ll want to go back to anytime soon. But as a stark contrast to the constant doom-scrolling and creeping sense of unease permeating the world right now, it’s somehow the perfect antidote to such intrusive negativity. You have little choice but to go with it. And maybe that’s the true genius fluttering behind the absolute madness here.

Anyway, we freed the butterflies…

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Words by David Edwards. Read more of his writing for LTW here

Photographs © Neil Chapman, his website and other examples of his work can be found here