(LifeSiteNews) – A promotional clip for pop star Katy Perry’s latest music video is raising eyebrows for juxtaposing lyrics about “watch[ing] it burn” with the backdrop of a church, which some on social media are connecting to the ongoing problem of church arsons across Canada, where Perry’s current boyfriend Justin Trudeau was Prime Minister.
On June 25 Perry released her latest single and music video, “Watch It Burn,” reportedly a sort of treatise on moving forward from trauma, symbolized by setting a city ablaze. In a TikTok clip promoting the song highlighted by journalist Harrison Faulkner, Perry is sitting in a church pew while singing the chorus, “Tonight’s the night I light a match / Throw it hard behind my back / Gonna try to forgive and forget / Light a cigarette and watch it burn.”
Katy Perry's new video – Sitting in a church. Singing about burning it down. Under Trudeau, over 100 Canadian churches were burned or vandalized. Art imitates life — or promotes it… pic.twitter.com/3A6up7HMbA
— LifeSiteNews (@LifeSite) June 30, 2026
Elle, which published the full lyrics for review, reports that Perry says the song is about “wrestling with my darkness,” particularly her “pretty tough” last year. “I have not given myself permission to be angry my whole life over things where I should be f***ing angry about. What I’ve done is I pushed it down, but I should be f***ing angry. I’m allowed to be angry for a f***ing moment.” Elle adds that the song is speculated, though not confirmed, to be at least partly about her broken engagement with actor Orlando Bloom.
The lyrics do not mention or allude to religion, and the video does not depict religion as a target of her ire, but there is religious imagery. In the beginning, she is rushed to an emergency room where a priest in a hazmat suit appears to be giving last rites. Later, she rampages through a city street, setting fire to a magazine stand prominently featuring a Bloom lookalike on one of the covers and causing some other light destruction before collapsing in the entrance to a church, where the video ends with Perry being picked up and dropped into a baptismal pool.
Whatever Perry’s intentions may have been, Faulkner noted that “When Justin Trudeau was Prime Minister over 100 churches in Canada were burned or vandalized,” suggesting the juxtaposition of church and burning was in bad taste given what’s been going on in the real world. Perry and Trudeau have publicly been in a relationship since July 2025. “I am very in love,” Perry said according to Us Weekly.
“132 Christian churches across Canada have been vandalized, burned to the ground, or desecrated” since the announced discovery of unmarked graves near a residential school in Kamloops, British Columbia, Juno News reports, “and to this day, there has been NO national inquiry called to address this national crisis.”
Last November, Conservative Member of Parliament (MP) Kelly Block introduced Private Members Bill C-255, which would increase penalties for criminals convicted of mischief directed at places of worship.