Katy Perry has been making headlines for all the wrong reasons lately. While the drama and the controversies have got fans wondering what on Earth went wrong with the pop star, one rare, unearthed early-career performance has been throwing fans back to the star’s unlikely humble beginnings, shining a light on who Katy Perry truly was before the pop industry got under her skin.
Amassing only 4.5 million views despite the passing of a full seventeen years since being posted to YouTube, this 2008 live concert comes around one month after Katy released her debut #1 single, ‘I Kissed a Girl,’ and one month before her debut album, ‘One of the Boys,’ hit the charts. Music Man readers can watch the magic unfold in the video below…
A fresh-faced, 23-year-old Katy stands alone on stage with an acoustic guitar slung around her neck; her plain grey t-shirt showing no hint of the A-List status she’d soon ascend to. She self-accompanies a stripped-back rendition of her early-career ballad, ‘Thinking of You’ – a song she’d penned all the way back in 2002, according to pop music legend, and which would later make waves as her third official single on its release in January 2009.
As she strums out a chord progression, Katy seems almost unsure of herself, but her iconic vocal tones soon hold her small and intimate crowd in pin-drop silence. It’s that one-of-a-kind, instantly recognizable voice which made her a star in the beginning and, here, fans can hear it in its full, raw effect.
After seeing Katy sell out arena shows and headline countless festivals for more than a decade straight, it’s almost impossible to envision the star as a budding celeb, without the A-list glitz and glam, without a full band or epic production behind her; simply appearing as a normal, average singer-songwriter.
But as this clip plays out, Katy’s humble roots are bared for all to see and admire. And fans can’t help but miss this version of the star, before ‘she sold her soul away,’ as one top commenter beneath this YouTube clip put it.
One fan even went so far as to say, ‘She is a prime example of what the music industry does to you. She used to be a lovely pure-hearted girl and they turned her into a monster. I’m so sad about that and sorry for her.’
Others picked up on the bittersweet mood behind this performance as they revealed, ‘This is the Katy Perry I fell in love with.’