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The 11 best Katy Perry songs
Why have a Top 10 when you can have one more? Here are our 11 favourite Katy Perry songs, ranked
Katy Perry has lived a lot of lives, as was highlighted in her Lifetimes tour, which visited the UK in autumn of 2025. From Christian rock musician to pop provocateur all the way to consistent chart topper, Perry has become one of the most influential performers of the last two decades. Never easy to pin down, she’s cycled through a parade of larger-than-life identities and eclectic pop sounds, and we’re narrowing down the best of them. In honour of Perry’s upcoming summer dates in the UK, here are our top eleven tracks.
11. ‘I Kissed A Girl’
(One Of The Boys, 2008)
Perry’s debut single introduced the singer as a provocateur party girl and inspired moral outrage from across the political spectrum. The singer has since described the track as a “snapshot” of 2008, and it certainly captures a certain moment – in ‘I Kissed A Girl’ she sings for every church girl new to the club, deeply earnest about the mildly shocking. It’s not exactly a timeless track – it would be more confusing than anything if released today – but Perry’s overtreated vocals and its distinctly late 00s flavour give it an enduring charm.
10. ‘bandaids’
(2025)
Perry’s latest single sees her return to the height of her powers for a huge pop-rock breakup ballad. She breaks out her biggest vocals for this one, delivering an unapologetically cathartic chorus. The message is direct, the feeling strong, and it all feels genuine and non-performative – always Perry at her best.
9. ‘Wide Awake’
(Teenage Dream: The Complete Confection, 2012)
‘Wide Awake’ is a dreamy piece of pop-rock, as Perry groggily emerges from the bad dream of her previous relationship. Perry always does well with a breakup track, and there’s plenty of vocal space on this one for her to let her feelings out. The track has a shimmery quality, and Perry’s reverbed vocals and the swooping chorus melody pull us right into the story.
8. ‘Hot N Cold’
(One Of The Boys, 2008)
‘Hot N Cold’ is unapologetic bubblegum dance-pop with a deliciously dirty beat. The second big hit from Perry’s debut album One Of The Boys, it sees Perry confront her partner over the way his changing moods make her feel in their relationship, all to a hip-bobbing rhythm. There’s a nursery-rhyme quality to the chorus which, with the song’s near-frantic rhythm, somehow works – it’s chaos, but joyfully so.
7. ‘Rise’
(2016)
‘Rise’ gains quite a few points for Perry’s “Oh ye of so little faith” delivery, but the singer’s Olympic anthem is a solid offering. Smouldering and slow-building, it stands apart from her other major pop-rock tracks with its controlled, focused sound and echoey marching drums. It’s not easy to land an Olympic track without it feeling a little twee – ‘Rise’ goes in a direction that gives it life long after the Games.
6. ‘Daisies’
(Smile, 2020)
The lead single from Perry’s sixth studio album Smile sees her embrace a slightly more stripped-back sound, which ultimately builds into an electro-pop anthem. ‘Daisies’ is a triumphant ode to dreaming big, with some of Perry’s best vocals and great production moments. The emotional track took on a deeper significance when three months after its release, Perry welcomed her baby daughter, Daisy.
5. ‘California Gurls’
(Teenage Dream, 2010)
‘California Gurls’ is Perry’s brightest summer hit, an ode to her home state, its beaches, and the girls who dance on them. It’s a perfect party song, complete with a fairly seedy rap verse from Snoop Dogg, and the simple melodies and commands to “put your hands up” give it a straightforward sunniness. Although Snoop’s ad-libs do, after a while, take on the energy of someone who desperately needs to be involved.
4. ‘Firework’
(Teenage Dream, 2010)
“Do you ever feel like a plastic bag, drifting through the wind, wanting to start again?” sings Perry, in what must be one of the most non-sensical opening lines in pop. But the charm of ‘Firework’ is in its earnestness, Perry commanding us to shine as bright as we can over staccato synths, before we reach the biggest, most sparkly beat drop imaginable.
3. ‘Teenage Dream’
(Teenage Dream, 2010)
Speaking of earnestness, ‘Teenage Dream’ embraces all the naivety of first relationships. The song contains some of Perry’s best lyrics, demonstrating vulnerability and optimism whilst also suggesting nostalgia for something already gone. It all culminates in one of Perry’s signature big choruses, but it’s the bridge that really shines here, capable of hatching butterflies in the stomach of any cynic.
2. ‘Never Really Over’
(Smile, 2020)
We’ve got two of Perry’s biggest and best choruses topping this list, and if our number one pick had never been released, ‘Never Really Over’ would have run away with the win. Perry gives us euphoric high-notes and a catchy tongue-twister, spreading bubblegum pop over an infectious house beat. Singing about an off-again, on-again dynamic, Perry manages to both lament and celebrate the fact that the relationship will never really end.
1. ‘The One That Got Away’
(Teenage Dream, 2010)
When it comes to singing about nostalgia, few pop stars do it as well as Katy Perry. ‘The One That Got Away’ isn’t just her best track, but one of the best tracks ever written about romantic regret. Universal enough that almost all listeners can relate, but specific enough that it feels vulnerable and personal, it walks a careful lyrical line, all culminating – of course – in a massive chorus. It’s the sort of song that works just as well when you strip out all the production, but its early 2010s sound only deepens its impact as time continues to pass and the sonics themselves become more nostalgic. Fine wine could only dream of aging like this.
