Katy Perry is in on the joke.
The pop star poked fun at the backlash she has received in recent months as she celebrated a sold-out show at Madison Square Garden in New York City on Monday, August 11.
“They said, ‘No way! MSG, it couldn’t be done.’ And I was scared too,” she began a lengthy speech to the crowd during the latest stop of her Lifetimes Tour.
Perry, 40, then quipped that she was “not talking about a sold-out show” before declaring, “I’m talking about the fact that I ate a hot dog from the corner!”
“I rolled the dice yesterday, and I loved it. Give me a jumbo with the onions,” she continued.
Perry went on to call Manhattan “special” — but also a “beautiful hot mess.”
“I rolled into New York, and it smelled like New York City. And you know what I’m talking about,” she said as the audience laughed. “It was late at night. We got in from Philly, and there were drunk people vomiting on the same corner as people making out. That was New York City! And I loved it.”
Perry explained that she has been to the Big Apple plenty of times throughout her life but “finally understood” its allure this time around.
“You know why? Because New York City represents life — the highs, the lows, the in-betweens, everything that is messy, everything that is beautiful, and it sure as hell is not perfect ’cause perfection is an illusion,” she added. “And I understood it because I resonate with it so much, because one of my favorite words is authenticity. And you know what New York is? Authentic!”
Perry came under fire last year when she released “Woman’s World” as the lead single from her seventh studio album, 143. Social media users criticized the former American Idol judge for collaborating with Dr. Luke after Kesha accused the songwriter and producer of rape, which he denied.
Perry faced more criticism in April when she flew to space on an all-female Blue Origin flight, which many critics blasted as both costly and an abrasive PR stunt.
Later that month, Perry admitted to feeling like a “human piñata” while calling social media a “dumping ground” for hateful comments.
“Please know I am ok,” she wrote on Instagram at the time. “I have done a lot [of] work around knowing who I am, what is real and what is important to me.”
Perry went on to reference her global Lifetimes Tour, which kicked off in April and is currently scheduled to conclude in December, writing that she loves seeing fans’ “faces every night, singing in unison, reading your notes [and] feeling your warmth.”
“I’m not perfect, and I actually have omitted that word from my vocabulary,” she concluded. “I’m on a human journey playing the game of life with an audience of many and sometimes I fall but… I get back up and go on and continue to play the game and somehow through my battered and bruised adventure I keep looking to the light and in that light a new level UNLOCKS.”
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