Roar (song)

• 1. Introduction

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  "Roar" arrived on the 10th of August 2013, two days before Katy Perry's label had planned, after a digital leak forced Capitol Records to release it early. That accidental early debut did nothing to slow the song down. Within its first week on sale, it sold 557,000 digital copies in the United States alone, the highest first-week sales figure of 2013 for any song. Perry had written it just months earlier, in March of that year, alongside co-writers Bonnie McKee, Dr. Luke, Max Martin, and Cirkut. It became the lead single for her fourth studio album, Prism. What made this anthem so unstoppable, and what were the stories behind its creation, its controversy, and its journey from a therapy room to the stages of the Super Bowl and the coronation of a king?

• 2. Writing and Sound

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  Perry wrote "Roar" in the immediate aftermath of therapy sessions, telling collaborators she was tired of keeping feelings inside and not speaking up for herself. That personal catalyst shaped a song Bonnie McKee described to MTV as "kind of a 'pick yourself up and dust yourself off and keep going', female-empowerment song" and "kind of an epiphany song."

  Recording happened at four studios across two continents in a single month. Luke's in the Boo in Malibu, Playback Recording Studio in Santa Barbara, and Secret Garden Studios in Montecito all contributed, and the sessions extended to MXM Studios in Stockholm, Sweden. Serban Ghenea handled the final mix at MixStar Studios.

  Musically, the track sits in the power pop genre with elements of arena rock. Its instrumentation is built on what reviewers called "pounding" pianos and "booming" bass drums. Musicnotes catalogued the song in the key of B major, at a moderate tempo of 90 beats per minute. Perry's vocal range across the track runs from B3 to E5, following the chord progression of B-Cm-Gm-E. The song shares its empowerment theme with Perry's earlier single "Firework", a connection that would prove significant when certification milestones arrived years later.

• 3. Release and Controversy

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  Before anyone heard the song itself, Perry teased it with a video of herself burning a blue wig, signaling a change from her earlier image. More teasers followed on YouTube. One showed her at a funeral beside a coffin decorated with her famous pink and white pinwheels dress. Another showed her entering a recording booth in what she called a "throwback" jacket, the same jacket that appeared on the cover art, which was revealed on the 8th of August 2013. That cover featured Perry wearing a blue Japanese silk sukajan jacket with a tiger printed on its back, framed by a tiger-print border.

  The lyric video, released the same day as the digital single, was produced by Joe Humpay, Aya Tanimura, Tim Zimmer, and Tuan Le. It showed Perry doing ordinary activities like eating breakfast and texting the lyrics to friends, with some words replaced by emoji characters. Music producer Dillon Francis accused the concept of copying his own video "Messages", which had used instant messaging imagery.

  The more pointed accusation came from listeners who felt the song copied Sara Bareilles's "Brave". Bareilles, however, refused to treat it as a conflict. She told reporters that Perry was a longtime friend and expressed frustration at the "negative spin on two artists that are choosing to share positive messages." She confirmed knowing about "Roar" before its release and said if she wasn't upset, she didn't know why anyone else should be. Dr. Luke addressed the timeline directly on the 14th of August 2013, stating that "Roar was written and recorded BEFORE Brave came out." The attention the controversy brought to "Brave" led Epic Records to promote Bareilles's single to mainstream pop radio.

• 4. Chart Dominance

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  "Roar" debuted at number 85 on the Billboard Hot 100 for the week ending the 24th of August 2013, carried initially by radio airplay before it was even available for purchase. Once it went on sale, it jumped 83 positions to number two in a single week, on the strength of those 557,000 digital copies. That first-week tally surpassed Perry's own previous record, set by "Firework", which had sold 509,000 copies in the week ending the 8th of January 2011.

  Two weeks at number two followed before "Roar" claimed the top spot for the chart dated the 14th of September 2013. It spent two weeks at number one before Miley Cyrus's "Wrecking Ball" succeeded it. Perry's eighth number-one on the Hot 100 also set airplay records on the Mainstream Top 40, where it logged 16,065 plays per week, and on Adult Pop Songs, where it registered 5,309 plays per week. Both figures were records for the most weekly plays in the history of those charts.

  On the Adult Pop Songs chart, the number-one position tied Perry with Maroon 5 and Pink for most chart-toppers, while also marking her fastest-ever ascension to the top of that chart, a record she had previously held with "California Gurls" from 2010.

  In Canada, "Roar" debuted at number one on the Canadian Hot 100 on the 31st of August 2013, becoming only the eleventh song ever to enter that chart at the top spot. It made Perry the artist with the most number-one debuts in Canada at the time, and gave her a record-breaking ninth Canadian chart-topper, pulling ahead of the tie she had shared with Rihanna.

  In the United Kingdom, the song entered the UK Singles Chart at number one on the 8th of September 2013, selling 179,500 copies in its first week. It ended the prolonged run of Ellie Goulding's "Burn" at the top. At the close of 2013, the IFPI ranked "Roar" the fifth-best-selling single worldwide, with 9.9 million combined sales and track-equivalent streams across the year. By November 2019, total worldwide sales reached 15 million copies.

• 5. The Jungle Video

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  Filming of the music video ran from August 7 to the 9th of August 2013, at the Los Angeles County Arboretum and Botanic Garden. Directors Grady Hall and Mark Kudsi built a story around Perry surviving a plane crash in a jungle after her negligent boyfriend, played by actor and model Brian Nagel, is taken by a tiger. A 21-second teaser arrived on the 25th of August 2013. Nokia posted a two-minute behind-the-scenes video on September 4, the day before the full video appeared. An extended 17-minute behind-the-scenes cut was uploaded to Vevo on the 14th of November 2013.

  The video's full narrative runs through Perry's transformation from helpless passenger to jungle ruler. She bonds with a monkey, befriends an elephant, brushes a crocodile's teeth, and ultimately tames the tiger that killed her boyfriend by roaring at it until it sits submissively before her. The tiger wears a collar reading "Kitty Purry", a reference to Perry's real-life cat of that name. The closing twist reveals the jungle adventure may have been a dream, though Perry wakes to find the animals still around her.

  Critics from Idolator offered mostly tepid assessments, with one writer likening its edge to "a woman's antiperspirant commercial" and another criticizing the CGI as "dopey". The site's average score came to roughly 6 out of 10. A reviewer from MTV News compared the video to the comic-book character Sheena, Queen of the Jungle, calling it "camp" that did not take itself too seriously. One writer who praised it noted similarities to the music video for "Doctor Jones" by the dance-pop group Aqua.

  Ramon Jimenez Jr., former secretary of the Philippines' Department of Tourism, publicly claimed that an image of Taal Volcano appeared in the video, and linked it to Perry's 2012 visit to the Philippines, where she had wrapped the final show of her California Dreams Tour.

  One month after the video's release, PETA accused Perry of using exotic animals under conditions involving cruel training methods. Perry obtained a statement from the American Humane Association, whose representatives had been present throughout the three-day shoot. Their statement concluded that the Guidelines for the Safe Use of Animals in Filmed Media had been followed and that no animal was harmed. On the 7th of July 2015, the video became the fourth to reach one billion views on Vevo, making Perry the first artist in history to have two music videos surpass that threshold. During May 2024, it reached four billion views, becoming the most watched music video by a female artist on YouTube at that point.

• 6. Performances and Cultural Life

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  Perry first performed "Roar" at the 2013 MTV Video Music Awards in a specially constructed boxing ring under the Brooklyn Bridge. On the 23rd of October 2013, she performed it alongside Sara Bareilles, Bonnie McKee, Ellie Goulding, Kacey Musgraves, and the duo Tegan and Sara at a show called We Can Survive: Music for Life. The December 14 performance at the NRJ Music Awards in France ran into trouble when the host stopped the performance midway through; the confusion led to speculation Perry had been lip-syncing. NRJ later issued an apology, clarifying that the wrong audio mix had been played over her live vocals.

  On the 16th of September 2013, the Cincinnati Bengals used the song during player introductions in their home opener against the Pittsburgh Steelers on Monday Night Football. The Bengals won the game 20-10, but the song drew sharp criticism from fans and players. One fan told the Wall Street Journal that Steelers supporters sitting nearby were laughing at Bengals fans throughout the game. The team publicly apologized four days later, announcing that while the song would not be removed from the stadium playlist entirely, a hard rock or classic rock song would be used for introductions going forward.

  Serena Williams used "Roar" as her theme song at the 2014 US Open Championships, winning the title while wearing a leopard-themed dress.

  On the 1st of February 2015, Perry performed the song during the Super Bowl XLIX halftime show in Glendale, Arizona. On the 28th of July 2016, she performed it at the Democratic National Convention. On the 4th of June 2017, she sang it at the One Love Manchester benefit concert held for victims of the Manchester Arena bombing. On the 7th of May 2023, the song rang out at the Coronation Concert outside Windsor Castle in celebration of the coronation of King Charles III and Queen Camilla. On the 30th of January 2025, Perry performed it at Intuit Dome in Inglewood, California at the FireAid benefit for victims of the Southern California wildfires.

• 7. Records and Certifications

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  In June 2017, the RIAA certified "Roar" Diamond, making Perry the first artist in history to hold three Diamond-certified singles in the United States. The other two were "Firework" and "Dark Horse". As of July 2024, the song carries a 15-times platinum RIAA certification, representing 15 million sales and equivalent units in the country alone.

  In Australia, the song topped the ARIA Singles Chart for nine weeks and became the country's best-selling song of 2013, with 560,000 copies sold within the year. It has since been certified 20 times platinum there, and ranks as the seventh best-selling single of the entire 2010s decade in Australia. In Brazil, it holds a five-times diamond certification. In Canada, Diamond certification followed. The song is listed as the 48th best-selling single of all time in New Zealand, where Perry holds the most all-time entries among solo artists.

  By its seventeenth week on the US charts, "Roar" had surpassed four million digital sales faster than any other song in digital history at that point. The song's performance in the United Kingdom made Perry one of only 18 artists to achieve more than one million sales in that country from a single, reaching that mark with "Roar" in January 2015. As of September 2017, UK sales stood at 1,112,787 copies, with a quadruple platinum certification from the British Phonographic Industry. According to Phonographic Performance Limited, "Roar" was the seventh most played song across the United Kingdom in 2014, sustained commercial momentum that carried the song well past its initial chart run.