Katy Perry is slamming President Donald Trump’s administration after the official White House TikTok account featured her hit song “Firework” in a video highlighting ongoing U.S. military strikes in Iran.
“I am deeply appalled and angry to see ‘Firework’ used on the @WhiteHouse TikTok account as a backing track for video footage of military strikes,” the singer, 41, wrote via X on Saturday, July 25. “I did not approve this, I was not asked, and I absolutely do not condone it.”
She continued, “I wrote this song to be an anthem of hope, healing, and inner strength for people going through their darkest personal moments. To see a message of self-worth and upliftment weaponized to soundtrack destruction and violence is a complete violation of everything my song stands for. My music is for bringing people together, not celebrating warfare.”
On Thursday, July 24, the White House shared unclassified footage of U.S. airstrikes on what appeared to be Iran military infrastructure. The video, which showed the missile strikes in black and white, is set to Perry’s song, focusing on her “boom boom” and “even brighter than the moon” lyrics. (Perry sold the rights to her music in 2023 for a reported $225 million.)
“Iran has been warned,” the White House captioned the video. When asked to comment on Perry’s claim she was not consulted about the use of her song in the video, a spokesperson for the White House referred Us to a video shared via X featuring Perry cosplaying as an American soldier for a previous music video.
@whitehouse Iran has been warned. 🎆
Trump, 80, and his administration are facing increased scrutiny over the unpopular decision to go to war with Iran — according to a July Washington Post-ISOS poll, 68 percent of Americans say the war in Iran is not worth fighting. Despite the U.S. military’s overwhelming might, Iran has been successful in closing the Strait of Hormuz, a key passageway for various goods, causing gas prices and the cost of other necessary items to skyrocket.
To date, Trump has claimed at least 32 times that the war was ending, near an end or over, yet the conflict wages on with no end in sight as his Department of Defense requests an additional $67 billion in supplemental funding.
Perry, for her part, is just the latest in a growing list of performers and entertainers to condemn Trump and his White House for using their art without their explicit permission.
“Please do not ever use my music in relation to this barbaric, inhumane, heinous nonsense. Fck [f***] ice,” Ariana Grande wrote in direct response to a June, pro-immigration enforcement video shared by the White House featuring her son “Bye.” After a spokesperson for the singer, 33, confirmed to Us it was, in fact, Grande who wrote the comment, the White House removed the audio from the controversial video.
Singer Kesha also slammed Trump and the White House for using her song “Blow” in another pro-war TikTok Video prior to the conflict in Iran.
“It’s come to my attention that The White House has used one of my sons on TikTok to incite violence and threaten war,” she wrote in March. “Trying to make light of war is disgusting and inhumane. I absolutely do NOT approve of my music being used to promote violence of any kind.”
White House director of communications, Steven Cheung, responded to Kesha at the time, claiming performers were simply “falling for this.”
“This just gives us more attention and more view counts to our videos because people want to see what they’re bitching about,” Cheung claimed, before using Trump’s signature social media sign-off. “Thank you for your attention to this matter.”
