Katy Perry
Plaza Ballroom, Melbourne
Thursday 12th August 2010

The amount of people that sneered at me when I told them I was going to see Coldplay last year was telling: some things you're just not supposed to be curious about. Apparently. For all of "cool" music's supposed liberalism and mining of intellect, the same fanbase's attitude towards attending shows of pop stars is reliably stupid. Unless it's been approved by a third party - via nostalgia, filtered through the mashups of Girl Talk, say, or at least by the house party DJ after midnight - such people seem terrified to engage. Or at least nervous.

Two weeks ago a series of currently hip bands witnessed at Splendour in the Grass held pockets of influence that would be scoffed at by the indie cognoscenti. Yeasayer's bursts of horn samples and strains of latin rhythm clearly evoked the deeply uncool Miami Sound Machine (I said Ricky Martin, too); elements of INXS's dance-rock beats, horn sounds and sweeping synths can be heard in Foals (their newest single 'Miami' in particular revels in that very white strain of funk), while the Temper Trap evoke U2. Obviously. But if such influences - or 'bands', at least - aren't ever engaged with, how can you hope to understand what others so obviously see?

Absolutely American pop star Katy Perry is in Melbourne tonight playing her only Australian show - a filmed-for-TV set thanks to Debit MasterCard. The event is taking place in the Plaza Ballroom, an aging swish-ish rectangle deep underneath the Regent Theatre, that looks exactly like other such filmed-for-TV rooms: fake chandeliers, swirling light patterns on the walls, a glowing hue in the eaves. Unsurprisingly for such a massive pop star, attention is on the visuals. The stage is adorned with large candy cane props, oversize lollies dotted around the drum riser and other sweet-like effects littered elsewhere. As the room fills, early attendees cluster around a mini-catwalk at the front of the low stage like fluro barnacles. A camera boom practices its sweeps across the audience, spotlights are tested and various entertainment workers mill around chatting into headpieces. Meanwhile a number of tired-looking girls don silver-blue hairpieces (at odds with their hoodies and corduroy ensembles), girlfriends lead their boyfriends around the perimeter of the crowd and boyfriends take phone pics of their excited boyfriends.

Finally, after a series of commercial nightclub mainstays pump through the speaker system, an MC gets on stage to implore the crowd to scream for the cameras so that they might edit them into the performance footage later. Then to the strains of 'I Want Candy', a curtain drops, musicians appear around a tiered cake prop at centre stage, and Perry bursts out of the thing grinning like the popular, oversexed kid at the Year 12 formal - albeit one wearing a figure-hugging silver latex mini skirt. Her band - white suited wraiths who admirably play every note like they thought of it - jostle behind her as Perry launches into MasterChef theme song 'Hot N Cold'.

I have no investment in Katy Perry's music. I'm not looking forward to anything tonight beyond the spectacle, but there's several things I am impressed with by Perry as a performer. Her voice is strong, flexible and surprisingly versatile; the same could also be said of her guitar playing (I'm watching closely in the three or so tunes she plays on, and - like her singing -  there's seemingly no miming: in 'Ur So Gay' she drags the plectrum over the strings on every forth chord to naturally frill the chord out. As, y'know, a guitarist would). She doesn't dance so much as jump around, and she exudes a friendliness that seems quite real - or at least, doesn't chafe. There's not so much in the way of the crass titillation that I expected from her promo campaigns (no cream shooting bra cannons tonight) but she does make just the right amount of crotch thrusts, and mentions of "penis" to place her at the "edgy" tip of the perfectly safe pop spectrum.

What's most interesting is experiencing hits in the flesh. I don't mean the few of her well-known songs that she plays - 'Hot N Cold', 'Ur So Gay', California Gurls' etc -  I mean that every note aired, every chord, every production decision and change on EVERY SONG has been fastidiously engineered to extract the maximum amount of pop sugar out of the ether and into our skulls. And so every song sounds at least LIKE a hit. This suggests a poisonous atmosphere but it's not -  it's addictive. And I get how this package can be so compelling. It bypasses the critical faculties and floods the mind with cheery endorphins, yet it does so with an undeniable craft. Sure, one that's crassly commercial, committee generated, emotionally flimsy and sexually manipulative, but...does anyone know how HARD it is to write smash hit pop songs? Not just successful songs but global phenomenons? And then inhabit them? I mean, music nerds would scoff but, if Efrim from Godspeed! You Black Emperor! suddenly found that he could happily write a 'Billie Jean', (unnerving as it may be - go with me) wouldn't it be a disservice not to? And not that Perry alone pulls off such a feat, but...here they are. With her.

Anyway. It's oddly riveting to be assaulted by such a machine. New song 'Teenage Dream' is rolled out towards sets end: cheesy smash hit. 'Waking Up in Vegas' follows: smash. Forthcoming song 'Peacock' (with its asinine refrain of 'Peacock-cock-cock-cock-cock'): mega smash - all tightly engineered for global, cross-cultural impact, effortlessly achieving such a thing and now presented here in this small, half full (to make room for the cameras I presume) Melbourne room. The aforementioned 'California Gurls' steams by in a fug of confetti glitter and other stuff that by now I can't process and then she's gone. Nope, she's back to play a decent ballad in 'Lost' ("I don't have any hits left!") which is someone somewhere's hit anyway and now she's really gone. A lull descends.

We drift up the stairs as if having just put the down the game controllers for the first time in hours. Wondering where the time went. Oddly empty, oddly satisfied. Used. But fine with it.

(Pics: Tim O'Connor)