On Katy Perry's new No. 1 album "Teenage Dream," she sings about adolescent milestones like beach parties and Friday-night dates, and earlier this week she lived out many teens' real-life fantasy: standing in front of a huge, adoring crowd and calling out a crush who never gave her the time of day in high school.
On Tuesday, the 25-year-old pop star returned to her alma mater, Dos Pueblos High School in Goleta, California (which she attended her freshman year before earning her GED) for a homecoming concert. With an acoustic guitar strapped around her neck, Perry started talking about the difference between teen boys and girls, and unrequited love. "It's like, don't break my heart, because I'm going to go and write a song about you," she said. "I'm so thankful that God gave me that gift."
[Photos: Katy Perry rocks vinyl dresses onstage]
Pointing out into the audience, she identified one specific member of the crowd and asked, "Is that Shane Lopes? You were the most popular kid in my class, but you never wanted to date me, it was always Amanda Wayne." As the crowd laughed and cheered, she adopted a bit of swagger and added, "Oh yeah, you really chose right, honey. What's up now, playa?" Becoming an international, Grammy-nominated pop star evidently does wonderful things for your self-confidence.
Perry dedicated her next song, a kiss-off anthem from her double-platinum 2008 disc "One of the Boys," to her former crush and even tweaked a lyric in the middle of the song for the occasion, singing, "I can't believe I fell in love with Shane Lopes."
At the end of the tune, she looked directly at Lopes, held up her hand -- which prominently displays her engagement ring -- and said, "That's cool, I got mine," and mockingly blew him a kiss. The singer is set to marry raunchy British comic Russell Brand, who wooed her publicly from the stage while hosting the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards.
Lopes,
a former high school football star in Goleta, played quarterback at
Delaware State, RadarOnline.com reports, before returning to his
hometown to coach the high school team. Lopes told RadarOnline.com
he was a little embarrassed when Perry turned the spotlight on him, but
claims her version of events wasn't totally accurate. Calling her story
"pretty fabricated," he said,
"I never got the feeling that she had a crush on me. We've always been
friends. I think it was more for entertainment and she was figuring out a
way to segue into her next song and kinda embarrass me just for fun."[Related: See other celebs' shocking high school photos]
TMZ caught up with Lopes, who said he was surprised when Perry picked him out of the crowd. As it turns out, he married his high-school sweetheart and is "happy with how things turned out."
Although an anti-Perry Facebook page titled "Shane Lopes picked correctly" has popped up, Lopes said he has no hard feelings about becoming the unwitting target of Perry's performance. "I haven't seen her in awhile. ... I just know her as Katy Hudson so to see her as the famous Katy Perry is kinda hilarious!"