Katy Perry slams White House for using Firework in strike video

Katy Perry blasted the White House after it paired her 2010 hit Firework with footage of military strikes on the @WhiteHouse TikTok account. In an Instagram post, Perry said she was “deeply appalled and angry,” adding, “I did not approve this, I was not asked, and absolutely do not condone it.”

Perry went further, calling the use of the song a “complete violation of everything my song stands for” and accusing Donald Trump and the White House of “celebrating warfare.” The criticism landed because Firework was written and released as a pop anthem of self-worth and resilience, not as a soundtrack for combat imagery. Perry put the song on her Teenage Dream album in 2010, and the official music video was posted to YouTube on Oct. 28, 2010.

The song has also carried political meaning in a very different direction. Perry performed Firework during the Jan. 20, 2021 Celebrating America inauguration special, and ABC News described that performance as part of the star-studded programming around Joe Biden’s inauguration. That contrast sharpened the latest dispute: the same song that once helped mark a presidential transition for Democrats was later used by Trump’s White House in a post tied to military force.

The episode sits in a familiar gray area at the intersection of politics, platform culture and music rights. Government accounts can move fast on TikTok and other social channels, but artists still have strong objections when their work is folded into public messaging without permission, especially when the imagery shifts the meaning of the song. In this case, the White House did not just borrow a recognizable hook. It attached Perry’s anthem to a visual message about strikes, turning a feel-good pop track into a political signal.

Perry has also faced attention over authorization in another setting. Reuters reported in 2024 that she was in hot water over an allegedly unauthorized beach video shoot in Ibiza, a reminder that disputes over permission have followed her productions before. Here, the argument was less about nostalgia than control: who gets to decide what a pop song stands for when the government uses it to frame power.