Katy Perry once ruled pop music with hit after hit. Songs like Roar and Teenage Dream turned her into a household name. But that dominance now feels like a distant memory for the singer today.
Her comeback single Watch It Burn was supposed to turn things around. Instead, it flopped badly, and fans are openly saying her career is finished. Keep reading below to see exactly what went wrong now.
A career once untouchable
Katy Perry spent over a decade as one of the biggest pop stars on the entire planet. Hits like California Gurls and Dark Horse dominated radio and streaming charts for years without much real competition.
Songs such as The One That Got Away and Last Friday Night still rack up billions of streams even today. That old success makes her recent struggles look even more dramatic and surprising by comparison.
The slow fade begins
Perry’s 2020 album Smile received mixed reviews and failed to match her earlier commercial peaks. It debuted at number five, snapping her streak of chart-topping albums, an early signal that something had already shifted.
Her 2024 album 143 fared even worse, becoming both a critical and commercial disappointment overall. The accompanying Lifetimes Tour also drew mixed reviews, adding more pressure onto an already shaky comeback attempt for her career.
The Blue Origin backlash
In April 2025, Perry joined an all-female crew for a short eight-minute Blue Origin space flight alongside Gayle King and Lauren Sanchez. It was meant to celebrate women working in the aeronautics field.
Instead, it triggered widespread mockery online, with several celebrities and even Wendy’s joining in. Perry later admitted the experience left her feeling emotionally shaken, though she said she remained hopeful throughout that entire difficult period.
A new song meant to save her
After months of harsh criticism, Perry teased a comeback single called Watch It Burn. She openly described it as an honest look at deep anger she had quietly suppressed for most of her adult life.
On the Unfamous podcast, Perry admitted she had been confronting deep inner turmoil while writing the track. She called the past year especially difficult and said she finally openly allowed herself to feel real anger.
Watch it burn finally arrives
The single dropped on June 25, 2026, through Capitol Records, with a dramatic music video directed by Christian Breslauer. Perry performed the emotional song live in both Spain and Portugal shortly before its official release.
She also brought the track to Dublin’s Malahide Castle just one day before release. Despite the buildup and the deeply personal songwriting behind it, the track needed strong numbers to prove her comeback was real.
Streaming numbers tell a grim story
Watch It Burn opened with roughly 1.2 million Spotify streams on its very first day, a respectable start on paper. But that early momentum disappeared almost immediately after the opening rush of that initial attention.
The song failed to crack the top 200 on Spotify’s global chart or its United States chart. Its best charted position came in Brazil at number 123, with Portugal only following distantly at number 176.
Comparing it to Bandaids
Watch It Burn actually performed worse than Perry’s previous single, called Bandaids, released back in November 2025. That earlier song had still managed to briefly reach number 101 on the global Spotify chart before fading.
Even Perry’s last charting Hot 100 single, Woman’s World from 2024, only reached number 63 before quickly fading away. Critics and fans alike widely panned that track, showing a pattern of underperformance already clearly forming.
Fans react with brutal honesty
Social media reaction to Watch It Burn turned brutal almost overnight after its release. One fan bluntly wrote that it was finally over for Perry, capturing a growing wave of angry sentiment shared across several platforms.
Not everyone agreed with that harsh take, though, and opinions remained split. Another fan called it Perry’s best song in years, showing the reaction still stayed divided even as the numbers looked quite undeniably rough.
Weather Woes add to the chaos
Perry’s rough stretch continued offstage as well during that entire period. She was forced to cancel her Werchter Boutique festival set in Belgium after officials cited dangerous weather and genuine crowd safety concerns for everyone.
She still managed to perform days later in Cardiff, Wales, despite that earlier setback. The timing only added further to the growing sense that little was going smoothly for her career right at the moment.
What comes next for Katy Perry
Despite the harsh numbers, Perry still has a massive back catalog of songs thriving today. Her older hits keep racking up huge streaming numbers, especially thanks to viral moments on the popular TikTok app.
Whether she can translate that lingering goodwill into fresh new hits remains uncertain for now. Fans and critics alike are watching closely to see if her next move can finally turn things around for good.
Featured Image: By Colleen Sturtevant – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=194966308
