Katy Perry’s latest single, “Wide Awake,” is certainly a pop delight, even if its lyrics are fairly generic (“I’m wide awake/And now it’s clear to me/That everything you see/Ain’t always what it seems”).
But Perry claims the video for the song — which she’s using to promote her 3-D movie, Part of Me — is nothing short of autobiographical and explains the journey she’s been on for the last two years.
“It’s kind of like the labyrinth of my life in the last two years,” Perry said during an MTV First presentation, where she sat down with MTV’s Sway to discuss the clip. “I just wanted to tell a story about myself kind of going through this journey, maybe sometimes trying to get out of the maze. There’s good parts, there’s bad parts, and the whole time there’s the younger version of me leading me through.”
Naturally, Perry referenced the struggle that’s outlined in “Wide Awake” and alluded to the fact — but didn’t explicitly say — that much of the song describes her feelings about her recent divorce from comedian Russell Brand. “Of course there’s been a lot of things that went on last year that I had to get through and overcome and obstacles that I had to, you know, go through,” Perry explained. “I think what kept me going is just, like, the purity of my belief in music and my love for music.”
Whether or not you buy into the platitudes that Perry is selling — sure, she’s had a rough year, and a divorce is a disaster for anyone — the video for “Wide Awake” seems to be just what her fans might want from her at this point in time. There’s a fantastical, whimsical vibe to it that finds Perry teaming up with her own self as a child.
The clip launches with a snippet from the shoot for her “California Gurls” and ends with the concert tour, book-ending the two crazy years she’s spent promoting her blockbuster album Teenage Dream. There’s a genius moment where the princess-like Perry emerges from darkness to find Prince Charming — and promptly smacks him.
The only thing that would have made the moment better was if the guy had looked a little bit more like Russell Brand. Check it out yourself below:
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One of indie rock’s most obsessed-over songwriters is back, and she has brought her travel journal with her.
