Entertainment
Katy Perry Torches Her Past in New Song Watch It Burn
Katy Perry is done holding back her anger.
The singer, 41, released her new song, “Watch It Burn,” on Thursday, June 25, which serves as the sister song to her November 2025 track “Bandaids.”
The song explores the replacement of years of restraint, people-pleasing and silence with the truth, using anger as a vehicle for honesty.
“Said I was too hard to love … For years/ I tried to rise above/ Was only light and love/ But now I’m shut the f*** up,” Perry sings, later adding, “Don’t wanna cause a scene/ But give me the gasoline/ Tonight’s the night/ I light a match/ Throw it hard behind my back/ Gonna try to forgive and forget/ Light a cigarette/ And watch it burn.”
Katy Perry is turning to music after upheaval in her personal life. The pop star, 41, dropped her powerful new song, “Bandaids,” and its self-deprecating music video on Thursday, November 6, marking her first release since her split from ex-fiancé Orlando Bloom. In the video, a down-on-her-luck Perry finds herself in a series of near-death […]
In the video, Perry — with a giant scorpion stinger on her backside, a symbol of balance and accepting all parts of oneself — escapes from a hospital and drives through a car wash as she sings about lighting a match and setting fire to the pain and toxicity of her past. As she continues her transformation into a scorpion, Perry ignites her stinger and sets a street on fire. Her journey concludes as she enters a church and collapses to the floor. The churchgoers pick her up and drop her into a bath, where she is baptized, becoming a new woman.
The video features a handful of Easter eggs, including a newsstand with Gaslight Magazine and Slop Times, which Perry burns to the ground. There is also an antique store called Time Will Tell Shoppe and a TV displaying the breaking news story, “Don’t Believe Everything You Hear.”
Prior to dropping the new track, Perry explained her inspiration during a June 17 appearance on her producer Justin Tranter’s “Unfamous” podcast.
“I don’t typically feel like a victim. You can hear it in my songs. I don’t resonate with that,” she said. “But last year was pretty tough and it would have been easy for me to fall into that weird victim triangle.”
Perry elaborated on “wrestling with [her] darkness” on “Watch It Burn,” revealing how the anthem allowed her to tap into a new side of herself.
“I have not given myself permission to be angry my whole life over things where I should be f***ing angry about. What I’ve done is I’ve pushed it down, but I should be f***ing angry,” she noted. “I’m allowed to be angry for a f***ing moment!”
Instead of embracing a “woe is me” mentality, Perry opted to sit with her emotions during the difficult period in her personal life.
“I just was like, ‘OK, let’s just feel this f***ing pain. Let’s feel this pain. Let’s feel this anger and let’s move on. Let’s learn from it also,’” she recalled. “‘Let’s get some feedback from it. Let’s apply it. Let’s learn from it.’”
Perry also hinted at the timeline of the song’s creation, sharing that she wrote it “last March” but finished it in August.
Us Weekly confirmed Perry and Bloom’s split in June 2025. The pair — who share daughter Daisy Dove, 5 — were together for nearly a decade and engaged for six years.
A source exclusively told Us at the time that the breakup was “a long time coming” as things between the two had “been tense for months.”
The following month, reps for Perry and Bloom said in a joint statement to Us that the exes had been “shifting their relationship over the past many months to focus on coparenting,” adding that “their shared priority is — and always will be — raising their daughter with love, stability and mutual respect.”
Katy Perry has sparked fireworks with Justin Trudeau. The “Roar” singer and the former Canadian prime minister were first spotted out to dinner together in Montreal, Canada, in July 2025, just days before Trudeau attended Perry’s Lifetimes Tour stop in the city. A source exclusively told Us Weekly at the time that their outing was […]
Bloom broke his silence on the split during a September 2025 appearance on Today.
“I’m great, man. I’m so grateful. We have the most beautiful daughter,” he said. “You know, when you leave everything on the field, like I did in [The Cut], I feel grateful for all of it.”
He added, “We’re great [and] we’re going to be great. It’s nothing but love.”
Perry, for her part, released her first post-breakup song, “Bandaids,” in November 2025, singing about her “broken heart” and how “the love we made was worth it in the end.”
Since calling it quits with Bloom, Perry has moved on with Justin Trudeau, whom she was first linked to in July 2025. Earlier this month, she called the former Canadian prime minister, 54, “the love of my life” during a Tribeca Film Festival Q&A.
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