The 15 Best Katy Perry Songs Ever

It would be an understatement to say that Katy Perry’s new album, 143, has been received poorly; “empty,” “boring” and “out of time” are among the descriptors used by critics. Per review aggregator Metacritic, 143 is the worst-reviewed album released since 2011, as not a single major critic has delivered a positive verdict. Paste’s own Victoria Wasylack advised that “averting your eyes and ears from this tedious trainwreck would be a relief,” and awarded the LP a mere 3/10.

Even as critics panned Perry’s seventh studio effort, they’ve also been forced to admit that they too quickly dismissed the superstar’s early efforts at the time of their release; belatedly recognising the charms of her early hits. Even if Perry’s music no longer dominates radio stations and the echelons of the Billboard Hot 100, the influence of her tongue-in-cheek bubblegum pop is evident in the emerging pop stars of today, like Chappell Roan and Sabrina Carpenter.

So 143—whose title is inspired by the code for “I love you” used on pagers—may have been received poorly, but what about the music that originally made the masses fall in love with Katy Perry? From her brash debut record One of the Boys and its maximalist follow-up Teenage Dream, to the oft-overlooked late career highlights from Witness and Smile, these are the tracks that made Katy Perry the face of early-2010s pop and worthy of that Vanguard Award she just received at the VMAs.

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15. “I Kissed A Girl” (2008)

Admittedly “I Kissed A Girl” may not feel particularly provocative in 2024—and maybe it didn’t even feel particularly that way back in 2008, either. But for Perry, who grew up in a conservative Christian home where deviled eggs had to be called “angeled eggs,” the bi-curious number marked the height of rebellion. The song didn’t just introduce the world to Katy Perry, it also established one of her trademark strengths: the ability to package youthful rebellion and celebration in vivid, hook-heavy technicolor pop bliss.

14. “California Gurls” (2010)

“California Gurls,” Perry’s first single from the Teenage Dream era, works because Katy Perry is in on the joke—and she really, really commits to it. Critics had largely dismissed One of the Boys, and often in unforgiving terms, piling on with terms like “disposable,” “juvenile,” “craven” and “mind-numbing.” So how did Perry respond? With a Snoop Dogg-feature, fit with lyrics about melting “your popsicle” and a misspelled title, accompanied by a music video where Perry shoots whipped cream out of her bra. For what seems like such a proudly unserious song, it’s proved surprisingly impactful, arguably setting the stage for the likes of Chappell Roan and Sabrina Carpenter, whose playfulness and ability to not take themselves too seriously are among their most defining strengths.

13. “Chained to the Rhythm (ft. Skip Marley)” (2017)

“Chained to the Rhythm” divided fans and critics alike upon release and effectively marked the end of Katy Perry’s imperial phase; being her last Top 10 entry on the Billboard Hot 100 chart to-date. But the song’s meta commentary about the capacity for mass entertainment’s ability to numb us to the harsher realities of the world proved remarkably adept, and Perry’s switch to dance-pop was surprisingly fruitful. Turns out “a newly politically-radicalized Katy Perry co-writes a protest song for the Trump era” sounds far better in practice than one once thought it did on paper.

12. “Witness” (2017)

Perry’s Witness was poorly received both commercially and critically—so much so that it’s now regularly referred to as one of the definitive examples of a “flop” album. But while not all of Perry’s stabs at “purposeful pop” hit the mark on her fifth album, the LP’s title track spoke compellingly to a collective sense of isolation and confusion. Backed by one the record’s sturdiest melodies, Perry’s plainspoken declarations (“We’re all just looking for connection / Yeah, we all want to be seen”) proved powerful by nature of their simplicity and sincerity.

11. “Tucked” (2020)

2020’s Smile felt like an attempt to recalibrate from the failures of Witness by rehashing the Katy Perry formula that had yielded success a decade earlier. As such, parts of the album read as dated, forced and, frankly, unconvincing. But deep-cut “Tucked” was a terrific exception—a breezy, low-key, bass-heavy, love-struck highlight free of pretenses and focused on small pleasures.

10. “Unconditionally” (2013)

It can be jarring to hear Katy Perry enter a serious mode, but on “Unconditionally”—the second single from 2013’s PRISM—she proves that she can pull off the mighty power ballad. Sure, she couldn’t move past her usual reliance on clichés—dirty laundry, weathering storms and the such—but Perry’s powerhouse voice and the conviction with which she belted the titular word 14 times was enough to make “Unconditionally” convincing; and it was enough to garner a 2x Platinum certification in the States.

9. “The One That Got Away” (2010)

These days, Katy Perry’s legacy is defined by her gloriously unserious pop music but, in all fairness to the hit-maker, she was never afraid to try her hand at depth. Of Perry’s many stabs at power-balladry (a mixed bag, certainly), “The One That Got Away” is among her strongest—a compelling display of yearning and bittersweet nostalgia, with an eye for small intimacies that suggested Perry had taken a page out of Taylor Swift’s book. Sometimes, the teacher becomes the student.

8. “Self Inflicted” (2008)

Chalk it up in part to the ongoing pop-punk revival, but Katy Perry’s pop-rock debut One of the Boys has aged far better than anyone could have reasonably expected—and it’s not just because of the singles. “Self Inflicted” is the Katy Perry hit that never was—slightly spikier than the album’s big swings, but demonstrating the same gift for executing chart-topping melodies that would later become her trademark. “I’m going down in flames,” Perry repeats across the song’s four minutes, although by this point you can sense that she already knew her star was firmly rising.

7. “Birthday” (2013)

In the six years before Katy Perry released “Birthday” as a single, she had achieved no less than nine #1 singles, and finally it seemed like fatigue had set in and there was simply no room for another Perry hit. At least, this is the only sensible explanation as to why “Birthday” wasn’t a smash. A far better demonstration of Perry’s pop prowess than PRISM’s preceding singles—“Roar” and “Dark Horse”—“Birthday” is bubblegum pop at its purest and least self-serious. Perry herself seems to take delight in the song’s lack of anything substantial to say, instead leaning into the simple, blissful sugar rush of it all. With melodies this strong, who could blame her?

6. “Firework” (2010)

Not many people could pull off the line “Do you ever feel like a plastic bag? / Drifting through the wind wanting to start again?” But Katy Perry could. Much like the later “Unconditionally,” Perry’s attempts at anthemic power-balladry work here because of how adamantly she believes in what she’s singing. Mocked relentlessly at the time of it’s release, Perry would go onto sing the song at Joe Biden’s inauguration, just two weeks after the January 6th insurrection exposed the fragile nature of American democracy. The surprisingly moving display suggested there was more profundity and staying power in Perry’s songwriting than many may have first suspected.

5. “Waking Up in Vegas” (2008)

Perry’s final single from the One of the Boys era ensured her star would keep rising—and it set the groundwork for the blockbuster of Teenage Dream. Documenting a frightful anxiety following a reckless night in Las Vegas, this is Katy Perry doing what she does best: rendering youthful hedonism in glossy technicolor and refusing to hang onto it for too long. Though the song failed to replicate the same commercial success as “Hot n Cold” and “I Kissed A Girl” both had, this full-throttled embrace of maximalist pop on “Waking Up in Vegas” offered the clearest indication yet that Perry intended to become a recognizable face in the pop game.

4. “Teenage Dream” (2010)

Upon release, most critics either ignored Teenage Dream or greeted it skeptically. In the years since, those same writers have had to admit that the album didn’t match Michael Jackson’s record of five #1 hits from one album for no good reason. Fittingly, the song from the album that has undergone the most favorable critical re-evaluation is its title-track. When Teenage Dream came out, it received no review from Pitchfork, who we later discovered allegedly had it out for Perry at the time. But by the end of the 2010’s, it made the site’s best songs of the decade list. For good reason, too. Like the LP’s other big singles, “Teenage Dream” is brutally efficient at getting stuck in your head—and while Perry isn’t known for her world-building, she does a remarkably good job at it here, conjuring up the boundless hope and unbowed idealism of youth.

3. “Never Really Over” (2020)

There’s a cruel irony to Katy Perry’s attempted comeback from Witness: “Never Really Over”—a song about being unable to accept the end of a good thing, whose own meager chart performance all but confirmed the end of Perry’s dominance over the pop music landscape. Perry, and producer Zedd, however, can take consolation in the fact that the song is not just one of Perry’s best, but one of the best pop offerings of the 2010s altogether; a slick, cathartic slice of electropop that suggested a promising path forward for the pop star (albeit one she has yet to take any further).

2. “Hot n Cold” (2008)

“I Kissed A Girl” may have been the single that introduced Katy Perry to the world, but it was the follow-up, “Hot n Cold” that really solidified the Californian’s staying power at the top of the charts—a slightly spiky pop-rock anthem that found Perry embracing the unseriousness of her own music and penning what remains one of her most instantly memorable choruses.

1. “Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.)” (2010)

“Last Friday Night” is rarely considered a contender for the “Best Katy Perry Song” title—the singer herself doesn’t even seem particularly inclined to praise it. But surely there’s no other song that better embodies the qualities we most associate with Perry’s best music: playful irreverence, an unabashed embrace of the unserious, defiance towards good taste and, most of all, killer melodies. If Teenage Dream is the ultimate emblem of the kind of sickly sweet bubblegum pop that dominated early 2010s radio, then “Last Friday Night” is its proudly unserious centerpiece—a nostalgic time capsule offering a window into a simpler time that, in the wake of 143, many of us are desperate to return to.

Listen to a playlist of these 15 songs below.