Katy Perry's 'Firework' has a surprising hidden meaning

Katy Perry has been in the pop music industry since 2008 when she burst onto the scene with her hit 'I Kissed a Girl', but she's also known for other huge hits including 'Hot n Cold', 'California Gurls', 'Teenage Dream' and her 2010 tune 'Firework'.

Now in a recently re-surfaced interview, the dark meaning behind the song has been revealed. Back in 2010, the year that the song was released, Billboard.com interviewed Katy, where she opened up about 'Firework'.

"Basically I have this very morbid idea..." she explained: "When I pass, I want to be put into a firework and shot across the sky over the Santa Barbara Ocean as my last hurrah.

"I want to be a firework, both living and dead. My boyfriend showed me a paragraph out of Jack Kerouac’s book ‘On the Road,’ about people that are buzzing and fizzing and full of life and never say a commonplace thing. They shoot across the sky like a firework and make people go, ‘Ahhh.’ I guess that making people go ‘ahhh’ is kind of like my motto."

At the time of its release, Katy said she thought of it as her defining single, adding: "It’s a song where I think my purpose to some people might change when they hear it."

A&R executive Anokutem, who worked closely with Katy also added: "It’s the best vocal performance I’ve ever heard from Katy."

In 2022, more than a decade after its release, Katy also revealed that we've been singing the lyrics to her Top 5 hit wrong all this time! In an episode of American Idol, where Katy shares the judging panel with Lionel Richie and country artist Luke Bryan, she explained that it's not 'up, up, up', it's 'awe, awe, awe', and it's not 'fireworks' it's firework.

Katy shared a clip from the TV show to her Instagram account along with an excerpt from a novel called 'On The Road', written by American novelist and poet Jack Kerouac, which read: 'the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes "Awww!".'

So there we have it!

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• Katy Perry