NASHVILLE -- Katy Perry is on a four-week journey that snakes around the world, including stops in Amsterdam, Australia and Japan. She's got Germany to go before crossing the Atlantic Ocean to Miami. And then it's across the continent to Los Angeles.
"I am probably not going to be able to tell you what day of the week it is or what time it is because I will have lived in so many different time zones," Perry said.
She's got one date memorized: Nov. 24. That's when the 29-year-old pop star will open the American Music Awards with her new single, "Unconditionally." Her performance will be announced Wednesday, along with appearances by Jennifer Lopez in tribute to Celia Cruz and TLC, and the pop star said in a phone interview she plans to step it up in what she believes is her first chance to open an awards show.
"You take that into consideration, that you are kind of like setting the tone for everyone in the evening, so you always bring out the big guns in the beginning," Perry said, later adding: "I always seem to be flying in on something or coming out of something. I like to entertain the kids, I really do."
Perry, Lopez and TLC, which will feature an unannounced guest, will be joined in performance by many of the year's top stars, including Justin Timberlake, Lady Gaga, Miley Cyrus, Luke Bryan and One Direction. Pitbull will host the show, to air live from Los Angeles on ABC.
Perry says "Unconditionally" is her favourite song from her new album, "Prism," which opened at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart three weeks ago with 285,800 copies sold. So far this year, she's boxed under New York's Brooklyn Bridge on MTV's Video Music Awards, and she became a human maypole on the network's European Music Awards last Sunday. She didn't want to give away too much about the performance, but the song is about unconditional love and not really geared to pyrotechnics.
"Let's just say it's a beautiful narrative that I learned about upon my travels, actually -- while I was in Japan. How about that?" Perry said. "That would probably give you some insight into the stylings, I guess, of this performance coming up."
