Katy Perry delivers thunderous performance to adoring Winnipeg fans

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 26/07/2025 (389 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Let’s get all the headlines out of the way at the top: Yes, Katy Perry went to space for 11 minutes on a Blue Origin space flight in April and was roundly mocked as soon as she kissed the Earth.

Yes, her latest album, 2024’s 143 — which is how the kids say I Love You (get it?) — was a critical and commercial flop, helped along by Woman’s World, a confused mess of an empowHERment anthem that is, tellingly, not performed in full on this tour. Yes, she recently split from her husband, actor Orlando Bloom.

But nevertheless, the pop star persists.

About 14,000 people came to hear her roar at Canada Life Centre on Saturday night, the Winnipeg stop on her Lifetimes Tour — Perry’s answer, one guesses, to Taylor Swift’s juggernaut Eras Tour. It’s been over a decade since she was last through town on her Prismatic tour and Perry, for her part, was in her pull-out-all-the-stops, galaxy-brain era.

Lifetimes, you see, is a loosely conceptual show, separated into five acts. The premise is set up at the top: Perry has cast herself as a half-human, half-android in a video-game battle against an all-powerful artificial intelligence called Mainframe who has stolen all of Earth’s butterflies and our girl’s gonna get ’em back.

The stage was a catwalk on steroids: a giant infinity symbol set up in the centre of the floor, backed by a towering wall of screens. Perry, dressed in metallic thigh-high boots and a futuristic armoured bodysuit, rose from the centre just before 9 p.m., suspended in rings of LED lights, for the opener Artificial before returning to Earth for a frantic version of Chained to the Rhythm.

At some points, as on hits Dark Horse and California Gurls, Perry let them take the lead on the choruses. Many people in the audience — which, like last time, included a solid contingent of kids and tweens — sported notice-me neon wigs, sparkly outfits and flower crowns and costumes. There were plenty of astronauts, and one person on the floor wore a giant inflatable alien.

The crowd adored her, and the feeling seemed mutual.

“You wanna hear a coinky-dink? I have two best friends, and one of them was born-and-raised in Winnipeg,” Perry said from the stage. “And I understand why he is so cool, so smart, so present, so handsome, because you guys are the best audience we’ve had in Canada so far. You represent the Win in Winnipeg.”

She was a chatty, warm host, taking selfies with fans and engaging in lots of stage banter. For such a slick production, the concert had plenty of loose moments.

She even let the crowd dictate the setlist during the Choose Your Own Adventure portion, in which the fans could vote on songs, and invited a bunch of young costumed crowd members onto the stage for The One That Got Away. (That section also featured her wildest costume of the night: a fleshy rubber dress with boots that looked like her legs had been dipped in cotton candy.)

Though missing some of the cheesecake camp we’ve come to expect from Perry — save for a truly unhinged light sabre battle because, oh yeah, she’s gotta defeat Mainframe — there was no shortage of big moments throughout the two-hour show. She was suspended upside down, spread eagle, in a globe-like cage for I Kissed A Girl. She flipped through the air for Nirvana.

For the final act — which included a thunderous performance of the anthem Roar — she soared through the arena on a giant mechanical butterfly, the same butterfly she almost fell off of when it malfunctioned at a show in San Francisco earlier this month.

There were also some beautiful, quieter moments, too, such as a truly affecting performance of Not Like The Movies.

Her live band — which includes powerhouse guitarist Devon Eisenbarger, who also performs with Chappell Roan — and eight backup dancers also deserve huge props for adding dimension to the show.

A concert like this is kind of like looking at an impressively decorated cake: it has wow factor, to be sure, but scrape off all the icing and what are you left with? How does it actually taste?

Perry’s always been about the shiny spectacle, but sometimes all the elaborate setpieces and costume changes and lights and multimedia felt like distractions from some of her shortcomings as a live performer. She is a powerful vocalist, but she doesn’t always let us hear her authentic voice. She has impressive physical endurance, but she is notably not a dancer.

Still, Katy Perry is a showwoman, and what she provides is an experience. No one could leave Saturday night saying they weren’t entertained. By the time she was closed with a booming Firework, confetti cannons popping, everyone in the place was on their feet.

Rebecca Black — yes, she of viral It’s Friday/Friday/Gotta get down on Friday fame — opened the show. Now 28, the American singer/songwriter/DJ, who came out as queer in 2020, has re-emerged as something of a gay icon and a pop star in her own right. A pretty far cry from the middle schooler who was bullied online by adults for singing about her fave day of the week back in 2011.

Flanked by two harness-clad male dancers and dressed in a sliver micro mini, she set the energy high with a quick set of loud, thumping club jams, including the earworm single Sugar Water Cyanide — during which gave a good-humoured wink to Friday.

“Winnipeg, you are by far the loudest city on the tour, so go off,” she cooed to enormous cheers. If you need a hype woman, she’s it. She got everyone partyin’, partyin’, yeah.

jen.zoratti@freepress.mb.ca