Hmmm…where shall I begin…Okay, at the beginning.

I’m a huge fan.  I basically have the emotional maturity of a middle schooler, which is how I understand my students.  I blast “Roar” and “Wide Awake” when it comes on or any other Katy Perry song.  I once spent an entire karaoke-style evening singing Katy even though I shouldn’t have been (if you heard me, you’d understand).  So, you can imagine my excitement when I received tickets to her concert for my birthday!

My concert buddy (also known as my daughter) and I arrived at the American Airlines arena, headed straight to our area in the upper levels and then invested in cute t-shirts to remember the moment — I do love my pink tee: .

Then we sat down to listen to the first opening act — Ferras, who in retrospect was okay, but at that moment felt as though if I listened too long, I might fall into a deep depression.  An hour later, the second opening act, Capital Cities, came on; they are the ones that sing the catchy tune “Safe and Sound” and that is their ONLY catchy tune (the moment they tried to sing Madonna’s Holiday, I left to eat the world’s worst pretzel).

Moving on…as we sat and waited, I took notes like “Tick tock Katy. It’s 9:13 and it’s past your target audience’s bedtime…and mine”.  We were among a sea of pink, purple, and fluorescent green wigs on the heads of so many kids, one might think you detoured into Disney World.

Then at last, she came on with Roar…great performance.  The rest of the evening was a blur of scary animated cats that vogue and shop on Rodeo, her songs set to a mix Power 96 can use, and a lot of time speaking with the audience.

I was disappointed, but it made sense: she’s a pop star and her target audience is a younger one that likes that sort of performance with the really cool light show and visual effects…I guess I just really wanted to hear more of her.  However, I will not end this on a negative note, so here are the highlights:

• As I mentioned, Roar was incredibly well done.
• Her acoustic performance of The One that Got Away was amazing…it reminded me why I was there and nearly brought me to tears (but that’s another blog).                                                                                        
• Her final encore performance of Firework was outstanding…we wore special Prism Vision glasses and the entire arena became a kaleidoscope of colors and well, it was simply, awesome.
• I also need to mention: #MakeRoarHappen;  Katy teamed up with Staples to donate $1 million to DonorsChoose.org to help teachers and students in the classroom.
• I also liked the fact that she was telling a sea of girls and young women to love themselves first and foremost.

Set list (pardon any mistakes, but the cats may have confused me at times):

1. Roar
2. Part of Me
3. Wide Awake (usually my personal favorite)
4. This Moment
5. Love Me
6. Dark Horse
7. E.T. (Supernatural)
8. Legendary Lovers
9. I Kissed A Girl
10. Hot and Cold (with cats)
11. By the Grace of God
12. The One that Got Away – acoustic – amazing!!!
13. Unconditionally
14. Walking On Air
15. It Takes Two
16. This Is How We Do
17. Last Friday Night
18. Teenage Dream
19. California Gurls
20. (Encore) Happy Birthday
21. (Encore) Firework