It's easy to be a Katy Perry fan. It's harder to be Katy Perry.

MANHATTAN — The little girls twirling in glittery skirts outside of Katy Perry’s Madison Square Garden concert don’t know her latest album flopped. They don’t know how poorly her spaceflight stunt was received, how her quirky persona has been panned as dated or how her split from fiancé Orlando Bloom is being dissected online.

“I like ‘Firework,’” says Ivy, an 8-year-old who’s in attendance with her mom and little sister. She’s shy talking with a stranger, but bursting with energy after I walk away. She tells me she loves listening to “California Gurls” and “Teenage Dream” in the car, though she wasn’t born when those songs came out.

2025 has been, statistically and anecdotally, a tough year for Perry. Once a main pop girl who was the first female artist to land five No. 1 hits from a single album, her 2024 release 143 was gleefully panned as dull and uninspired, peaking at a career-low No. 6.

Still, on Aug. 11, she’s in the middle of her “Lifetimes Tour,” performing in front of a sold-out crowd. There are a lot of children here, flanked by nostalgic millennials and Gen Z-ers donning alien costumes and colorful bob wigs to pay tribute to her famous looks.

Surrounded by the futuristic, metallic visuals of her latest, least popular era, Perry takes the stage. “Turn your notifications off,” she instructs the audience after performing high-energy choreography in futuristic robot garb, surrounded by several male backup dancers. She opens her set with three songs from later albums — not her most beloved work, but she puts on an entertaining show.

When the crowd hears the opening notes of “Dark Horse,” the energy shifts. Everyone comes back to life, singing instead of just swaying. This wasn’t some concert; it was the Katy Perry, queen of late 2000s pop music. She has already cemented her legacy with 14 songs that hit the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100 — from “I Kissed a Girl” in 2008 to “Chained to the Rhythm” in 2017. Her music is woven into the cultural tapestry of the aughts, and her playful imagery is unmistakable. We’re lucky we get to behold her at all.

Hot N Cold

“I’m 40 years old,” Perry says to the crowd, taking it slow after running around the infinity symbol-shaped stage. She then pauses, smiling and flipping her hair from side to side. “40 and f***ing fabulous.”

Over and over, Perry demonstrates incredible feats of athleticism and cardio, impressive for a human being of any age. She sprints, slides and aces TikTok-friendly moves with her backup dancers. But every time she breaks character by grabbing the mic to ad lib or punctuating choreography with a silly face or a robotic dance break, I cringe.

Now, Perry has always been quirky. It worked in the late 2000s, when reaction GIFs ran the internet and millennial-coded outbursts were king. It feels unkind to demand that the person who gave us “Hot N Cold” and “Last Friday Night” update her personality for the 2020s. At some points, she seemed aware of her perception to a fault, like she didn’t want to be onstage.

She repeatedly referenced that it was past her bedtime, and when fans voted for her to play “Not Like the Movies” and “The One That Got Away” during an interactive part of the nearly two-hour set, she announced that she would simply “dissociate” to be her “hot mess self and play a song from my very first marriage.”

Regardless of what mood Perry was in, her fans were thrilled to see her.

I talked to several of them standing outside the venue before the show started about what brought them out on a Monday night. Restaurant owner Krista was there with her 20-something bartenders, Howie and Zee, who were dressed in bright blue costumes to channel Perry’s song “E.T.”

The duo couldn’t even pinpoint when their fandom began — it’s been part of their lives since childhood. As their “momager,” Krista said she bought them all tickets as a birthday present, fulfilling a longtime dream to see Perry. All three refused to critique the pop star, focusing instead on how happy they were to be there.

“We’re rooting for her. I just can’t wait to see all the theatrics because I know it’s going to be hot,” Krista said.

I thought that Maria, a 28-year-old wearing an astronaut jumpsuit as a tribute to Perry’s Blue Origin trip to space, might have been playfully making fun of the singer, but she didn’t have any hot takes to share. She came all the way from Ecuador to see Perry, who’s she’s loved for more than half of her life.

“People who think there’s something about her that’s wrong … they’re wrong,” Maria told me.

Matt, a 21-year-old who immediately declared himself to be more of a Taylor Swift fan, couldn’t deny how excited he was to see Perry. “I’ve been a Katy Cat since birth … it's like healing my inner child and whatnot,” he told me of identifying with the star’s fandom.

He’s aware Perry is past her peak, but that’s not going to stop him from having fun.

“Katy Perry is a flop. She’s a flop! Let’s be real,” he said. “But I’m very excited for [the concert.] Like, Katy Perry herself. Not a new album.”

Not like the movies

So what if the music flopped? Perry sold out Madison Square Garden. She has a legion of young fans screaming the lyrics of her child-friendly empowerment songs, who are then surrounded by dressed-up Gen Z-ers who got to know her music when they were young, too.

For every moment Perry made me cringe, there were others that made me laugh. She took a selfie on someone’s phone, then instructed them on her favorite filters they could use to post it. She snatched a sign that said “Lesbians for Katy” and stuffed it in her bodysuit, dedicating “I Kissed a Girl” to “the community.” She refused to play the sexually suggestive song “Peacock” in the presence of her 5-year-old daughter, condemning whoever wrote it (it was her), then sang a few bars anyway. She battled a giant worm with a lightsaber. At her best, she is silly and self-aware.

So what happened next, during the climax of Perry’s performance, was perhaps the most perplexing moment of the show. It was when she started bringing fans from the audience onstage.

It began on a sweet note. There were two children and two older Gen Z-ers she had handpicked to stand beside her, all dressed in costumes. She indulged the little kids, asking them what they wanted to be when they grew up (a singer and a lawyer, respectively) and praising the one who refused to tell her where she lives. I recognized one of the older people Perry welcomed to join her — 19-year-old Aidan, whom I spoke to earlier with his 21-year-old friend Kira. They told me they’d been Perry fans since childhood, just like the kids that Aidan was towering above.

There was a fourth person. His name was Jason, and because of the way he quickly asked for a selfie and then requested Perry perform a different song than planned, I knew something was up. Then he called his boyfriend to join him. Ah, a proposal was unfolding. Perry made a lot of jokes — some landing better than others — and the whole thing seemed to go on forever. I’m happy for them, but please, the people want to hear “Part of Me.”

“Maybe one day this will happen for us,” Perry said of the proposal to one of the children onstage. Then she just moved on with the show.

Wide awake

I was struck by how Perry continued performing love and breakup songs through her very public split from Bloom, whom she’d been with on and off for nearly a decade. As rumors about a budding romance with former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made headlines, I couldn’t help but wonder what was going on behind the scenes and brewing in her heart as she poured her emotions and energy out for screaming strangers.

“I know you wish you were in bed, just like me,” Perry said to the moms in the audience, cementing my guilt about expecting nostalgic perfection from a woman who’s been through so much since 2010’s Teenage Dream. Maybe it’s fun living out her peak years in front of thousands of adoring fans. Maybe it’s a constant reminder of how she’s failed to achieve on the same level she once could.

As Perry sang “Roar” and flew around the venue on a giant butterfly, which fortunately didn’t fall apart on her like it had in the past, I thought about the contrast between her gloomy quips and her sunny visuals. For a pop star, the dichotomy of who she wants to project and who she is right now doesn’t make sense — but she’s not just a famous singer, she’s a person. Though she was flying in circles above the crowd, she felt grounded and relatable to me for the first time.

Perry might not have really wanted to be there, but she was, and that meant so much to the sold-out crowd, even if she resented them a little bit for it. Her life might not be relatable, but ambition and disappointment are. She’s both a plastic bag and a firework. I know how that feels.