I just watched Katy Perry's movie Part Of Me and really enjoyed it. I've also seen and enjoyed Justin Bieber: Never Say Never twice. I like those sort of things and yet I'm also really tough - it's the paradox that makes me the flavour of the decade.
I had less than four hours of fitful sleep last night so am in the broken sort of state where watching pop stars really works for me. I used to really enjoy it when 90s Theakston and Middlemiss vehicle The Ozone would do a feature on Take That, East 17 or Blue. I think I can even remember quite getting into one on 911. That's the boy band 911, not the massive tragedy. In fact I've just looked them up and noticed that they split just 18 months before 9/11... COINCIDENCE????
I find it really easy to buy into the whole 'I've had some knock backs, but if you truly believe in yourself and my fans have always been there for me and touring is really hard but look at me having fun with the lighting crew and oh no, Justin's lost his voice - will he be able to get through the show?' thing. It's all very comforting. For the record, Justin does get through the show because he's a professional who loves his fans more than anything.
The Bieber film is ludicrously fake and formulaic but it still does the trick. As a person who has watched roughly 2500 hours of Neighbours in my life it's clear that I don't require my entertainment to have an earnest truth to it. Bieber has a 32 year old manager called Scooter who's also, like, his best buddy. You can't help but notice every time he lets Justin beat him at basketball or squirt him with a super soaker (ha ha ha ha ha ha ha) he's thinking about the mansion he's going to be able to buy in St Lucia once this fucking tour is over. There's a very creepy part of Justin's stage show in which a girl from the audience is invited on stage to be serenaded by him. He pops her on a stool, hands her flowers and croons the bitch with his adorable eyes and haircut in full effect. Everything about it is clearly designed by a marketing team to appeal to the burgeoning sexuality of eleven year old girls. The arena struggles to stay standing with the weight of shell shocked estrogen.
Perry actually comes across as very charismatic and pretty damn likeable as it goes. There's an amazing moment in the film when her marriage with Russell Brand is breaking down. As someone who performed on the same bill as him at Downstairs at the Kings Head in Crouch End in 2004 and has had somewhere between 2 and 5 conversations with the man (one as recent as 2006!) I think I have a closer understanding than most of what she was going through. Perry is in a terrible state, balling her eyes out, obviously suffering from real pain and mental exhaustion. Waiting for her are roughly 100,000 residents of Sau Paulo. There's no way she can do the show like this. But wait! She's walking towards the stage. But she's still wailing. A backing dancer looks concerned. She steps on to a platform. She's still in distress. Her breathing is panicked. The twirly things on her boobs start spinning. She looks at the crew guy and nods. She plasters on a fake smile and the platform rises. Every teenage girl and bi-curious boy in Brazil roars.
My account may seem facetious but the moment looked completely authentic and I'm not ashamed of being moved by it. Half way through the show the crowd start chanting something in Portuguese and her lip trembles. Her fans are pulling her through! To be fair, that looked like it could have been a clever editing trick but I'm happy to go with it. As I think I wrote in my blog post about Beyonce a couple of years ago I find watching audiences go crazy for superstars really touches me for some reason.
Does anyone want to go and see the new One Direction film this week?
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