Katy Perry's 2011 Song Is TikTok's No. 1 Hit of Summer 2026
A 16-year-old Katy Perry single just beat every song released this year. TikTok named "The One That Got Away" its Global and US Song of the Summer 2026 on Tuesday, and the timing lines up with the theatrical release of Perry's new concert film, "Katy Perry: The Lifetimes Tour - Live from Paris," which opens in IMAX and theaters today.
The numbers behind the win are unusual for a catalog track. "The One That Got Away," the sixth and final single from 2010's "Teenage Dream," has soundtracked more than 42 million TikTok videos and drawn over 55 billion views this summer alone, according to TikTok's data. The revival pushed the song back onto Billboard's Global 200 chart for 21 straight weeks and past 1.8 billion Spotify streams - figures that outpace some songs actually released in 2026. Perry made the track a centerpiece of her 2025-26 Lifetimes Tour, and that live performance, now captured in the new concert film, is widely credited with feeding the online resurgence rather than the other way around.
Perry told PEOPLE the attention still surprises her: "It's amazing to see a new generation just TikToking to the song." She pointed to fans working backward through her catalog - discovering "California Gurls" and "Teenage Dream" first, then landing on the deeper cut - as the mechanism behind the nostalgia wave.
The win is part of TikTok's broader "Songs of the Summer, Vol. 2026" campaign, a digital mixtape built around three defining cultural moments of the season. Alongside Perry's nostalgia comeback, TikTok named Swedish pop singer Zara Larsson its Outstanding Contribution to the Summer for the "Pop Girl Summer" trend built around her single "Midnight Sun," and tapped Korean boy group CORTIS to represent a "K-Pop Summer" category built around their single "REDRED." Pop singer Slayyyter was named the platform's Emerging Artist of the Summer. TikTok's global head of music business development, Tracy Gardner, said the list reflects a platform where "emerging artists" and decades-old "catalog tracks" now compete for the same cultural attention.
For Perry, the moment doubles as a marketing tailwind: the Lifetimes Tour concert film's IMAX debut lands on the same news cycle as the TikTok honor, giving a 16-year-old song a second push into theaters just as its viral second life peaks.
