Live review: Katy Perry delivers a masterclass in pop escapism and receives a marriage proposal on The Lifetimes Tour in London

Katy Perry brought her Lifetimes Tour to The O2 in London and delivered an astounding pop concert spanning her 17-year career,

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By Philip Hamilton

Tuesday, October 14, 2025 2:00 PM

By Philip Hamilton

Tuesday, October 14, 2025 2:00 PM

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They say the music business goes in cycles. The past few years have given us Taylor Swift's record-breaking Eras Tour and Olivia Rodrigo's Guts World Tour, with the two singer/songwriters rightly being celebrated for their songs and artistry. But there will always be room for an over-the-top, stunt-filled, pop spectacular, and Katy Perry has given us just that with The Lifetimes Tour.

The show arrived at The O2 in London on Monday night (13.10.25) and the near 20,000 KittyCats in attendance were not disappointed.

The concert begins with a video explaining that Perry is on a mission to save the world from AI overlord 'The Mainframe' who has subjugated humanity and imprisoned all of the world's butterflies, oh, and there are five missions to complete. It is this fantastical theme that influences Katy's staging, outfits and later in the evening one of her biggest stunts.

Katy arrives on stage inside a cage of wires dressed like a cross between a Marvel superhero and a character from TRON (well she is on a mission to save the world) and opens with ARTIFICIAL and Chained to the Rhythm.

Katy Perry arrives at The O2 / Credit: AVALON

The five missions represent the entire "timeline" of Katy's 17-year career - we're not including the Katy Hudson record released in 2001 - and it doesn't take long for Perry to give us a run of huge hits.

The second act opens with Woman's World - which draws a huge reaction from the crowd, despite being much maligned online - and features her dancers performing acrobatics on scaffolding and a giant blow-up female statue on stage. Then comes a run of Katy classics from her first two albums; California Gurls, Teenage Dream, Hot N Cold and Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.) provide a medley that sees the entire O2 Arena on its feet and dancing. It's testament to the songs that are to come later in the set that she can serve up these abridged pop bangers.

It is after this medley that Katy takes her first moment to speak to her fans and show off her famous sarcastic wit and sense of humour.

After grabbing a fan's smartphone from the Infinity pit within her stage and taking photos with her "dancer boys", Katy turns down a request for her to sing Peacock, insisting she can't perform the sexually suggestive track because he mother Mary Perry is in the audience before breaking into a few bars.

Revealing it is her daughter Daisy's favourite song, she said: "I will not sing Peacock. No, I won't. My mother doesn't like it and it's Daisy's favourite song. "Whoever wrote that song should be ashamed of themselves. Yes, I wrote it, I cashed the cheque. I can't sing that song because that song is just about a bird, you know?"

The one major smash hit missing from her medley was 2008 number one I Kissed A Girl and it is because Katy gives it the special treatment the track deserves, including her spinning around in a giant glitterball cage suspended from the ceiling.

Introducing the song, Katy reflected on the lengthy break she had in order to become a mother to Daisy, saying: "It's been eight years, that's not OK. I was just on the couch doing nothing eating a block of cheese. No, really, I was working and I made a child who is half-English, thank you very much.

"This Lifetimes Tour represents all of the timelines and I think it would be appropriate to take the time machine all the way to 2008 because this next song I'm going to sing from that timeline is actually the song that put me in this arena. It was such a controversy at the time, oh my god, what is bisexuality?! It's called I Kissed A Girl."

It is no surprise that the song has the fans in raptures, with Left Sharks, mothers and daughters dressed as cup cakes and blue wigged teenagers on their feet dancing and singing along to every word.

Continuing to charm her audience, Katy makes refences to her English exes Russell Brand and Orlando Bloom, shouting: "London, England, you’re like this on a Monday night after a whole day at work and a whole day at school?

“No wonder I fall for English boys all the time… but not anymore.”

Katy performs one of her many stage stunts to wow fans / Credit: Philip Hamilton

The hits keep on coming, as do the surprises. Crush - from most recent album 143 - turns into Jennifer Page's 1998 song of the same name, whilst Wide Awake gets a techno makeover which takes the track to another level live.

But the biggest surprise of the evening comes from a fan.

During the Choose Your Own Adventure section - during which the audience can vote for a song for Perry to perform by scanning a QR code on the giant screen - Katy brings up two young female fans who tell her they want to be a marine biologist and an astrobiologist, perhaps inspired by the singer becoming an astronaut herself after flying to space on Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin rocket.

But it is "Darren from Hampshire" plucked from the highest row of The O2 who shocks Katy when he says "I heard you were single" before unveiling a sign emblazoned with the words "Katy Perry will you marry me?"

An astonished Perry exclaims, "I couldn't read that high up," before adding "you really should have asked me about 48 hours ago".

Katy's words come with a grin and seemingly refer to her being spotted kissing former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on her yacht, prompting congratulatory cheers from the crowd. It seems she really is done with those English boys.

The spectacular show continues with Katy defeating the evil AI overlord the Mainframe and his minions with the help of a Star Wars inspired laser weapon and a pounding rendition of Part of Me during which she changes a lyric to "I just want to throw my social media away", tackling the white noise of the "Katy Rats".

As Katy has saved Earth that means the butterflies are now free, and of course that means that during Roar she is going to fly around The O2 sat atop a giant butterfly. The question is not why, but why not?

As promised earlier in the night, Perry closes the show with 2010 hit Firework - taken from her 2010 album Teenage Dream - sending everyone home on a joyous note.

At times ludicrous, outlandish, quirky and even a little bit tacky, but what The Lifetimes Tour show really provides is two hours of unadulterated fun and pure escapism.

And in an age of depressing news cycles, social media trolls and doom scrolling inducing algorithms, isn't that what we want our pop stars to be?