"The One That Got Away" is a song by American singer-songwriter Katy Perry from her third studio album, Teenage Dream (2010). She co-wrote the track with its producers Dr. Luke and Max Martin. The song was recorded in Conway Recording Studios, based in Hollywood, California, and is a mid-tempo pop ballad about a lost love.
Capitol Records released "The One That Got Away" on September 30, 2011, as the album's sixth and final single. Commercially, it charted within the top 10 in Austria, Canada, Hungary, Indonesia, Malaysia, and the United States, while reaching the top 20 in Iceland, Ireland, New Zealand, the Philippines, Scotland, Singapore, Turkey, and the United Kingdom. The track also received multi-Platinum certifications in Australia, Brazil, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. On the Billboard Global 200, "The One That Got Away" peaked at number 23, becoming Perry's highest entry on the chart.
An accompanying music video for the song was directed by Floria Sigismondi and premiered in November 2011, featuring actor Diego Luna. An official remix featuring rapper B.o.B was released to digital retailers on December 20, 2011. An official acoustic rendition was released to digital retailers on January 16, 2012, and it would later be included in the Teenage Dream reissue, Teenage Dream: The Complete Confection, released on March 23, 2012. The song has been covered by various artists, including Kelly Clarkson, Chappell Roan, and Tate McRae.
Release On September 13, 2011, at the New York City's Irving Plaza, Capitol Records confirmed to Billboard that "The One That Got Away" would be the sixth single from Teenage Dream. Perry said from the label:
Later that month, Perry wrote the following message on her Twitter account: "The One That Got Away... It's happening!!!", along with a picture of the official single artwork. The artwork shows a pink-haired Perry looking up at the sky while wearing a disc-shaped hat. The photo gives a whimsical nod to the 1970s, with its distinctively retro appearance. On September 30, the song received radio airplay release in France. Soon it was followed by the release of the song to American mainstream and rhythmic contemporary radio stations on October 11. The single was issued to Italian radios through EMI Music Publishing on October 28. On December 2, the remix EP of "The One That Got Away" was released. The remix featuring American rapper B.o.B was issued by Capitol Records to American pop and rhythmic radios on December 15, followed by a digital release of the song five days later. An acoustic rendition of the song was released on January 16, 2012.
Capitol Records said that they are not specifically releasing the song in hopes of it reaching number one and rewriting Hot 100 history (since Perry was the first woman to obtain five number ones on the chart from one album); rather the decision came out of "Perry's fondness for the song, its ear-catching hook and her obvious track record of success at pop radio". EMI Music/Capitol Records EVP/marketing and promotion Greg Thompson told Billboard that, "if it goes to No. 1, that would be great, If not, we still have a Katy song on the radio in fourth quarter", presumably boosting sales for Teenage Dream in the Christmas season.
Composition Originally titled "In Another Life", the song was produced by Dr. Luke and Max Martin, both of whom co-wrote it with Perry. It is a midtempo pop song positioned in the key of E major and has a tempo of 134 beats per minute. The song follows the chord progression of E–G♯m–C♯m–A, and Perry's vocal range spans from B3 to E5. Joanna Holcombe from Yahoo! Music noted that the song is about first loves. Leah Greenblatt from Entertainment Weekly, said that the song is "a midtempo ode to a summer-after-high-school love with whom she recalls sharing Mustang makeout sessions to Radiohead'". Michael Wood from Spin magazine said that the song is one of the album's quieter cuts and that it recalls "Perry's singer-songwriter days at L.A.'s Hotel Café". Kitty Empire of The Guardian wrote that Perry's voice is wistful throughout the song and that the references to June Carter Cash and Johnny Cash were unexpected. Rob Sheffield from Rolling Stone stated that when Perry sings, 'I was June, and you were my Johnny Cash,' "it's understood that she's thinking of the scrubbed-up Hollywood version of June and Johnny, from Walk the Line." After death of actor Johnny Lewis, media outlets speculated that the song was about him. In 2017, the singer revealed that "The One That Got Away" was about Josh Groban.
Critical reception Kerri Mason from Billboard described the song as "delectable", noting that it has more texture than anything on Perry's previous album, One of the Boys. Mikael Wood from Spin magazine said that although "Perry delivers the gurl-gone-wild stuff with requisite sass", she actually "sounds more engaged on 'Not Like the Movies,' and 'The One That Got Away'. Similarly, Kitty Empire from The Guardian praised the collaboration, stating that Perry and Luke are at their most appealing in the song. In a similar note, Rob Sheffield from Rolling Stone, stated that Perry is more at home with the mall romance of "The One That Got Away". The same opinion was echoed by Greg Kot from Chicago Tribune who felt that Perry sounds more invested in the more "serious" songs on the album, such as "The One That Got Away". However, he added that it's as if Perry is "determined to balance the summer frothiness with a few shots of 'adult' earnestness". Leah Greenblatt from Entertainment Weekly was not satisfied with the selection of the song as the sixth single, noting that there are better songs on the album that could have been chosen instead. Robert Copsey of the website Digital Spy awarded the song with four out of five stars and said:
Commercial performance On the week ending October 29, 2011, "The One That Got Away" debuted at number 94 on the US Billboard Hot 100. In its sixth week, the song entered the top 10, making Teenage Dream one of only seven albums in Billboards 53-year history to have six singles enter the top 10. On the chart dated December 24, 2011, the song entered the top five, making Teenage Dream the third album to have six or more top-five singles from one album on the chart following Rhythm Nation 1814 by Janet Jackson and Faith by George Michael. "The One That Got Away" eventually peaked at number three on the Hot 100, making it the only single from Teenage Dream to fail to reach number one. On the chart dated January 7, 2012, the song topped the Hot Dance Club Songs chart, the seventh track on the album to do so, setting a new record in the chart. Nielsen SoundScan reported that the song had shifted 2.8 million pure sales in the US as of February 2017. "The One That Got Away" was certified five-times Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in April 2022 for sales exceeding five million units. Elsewhere, the song reached the top five on the Canadian Hot 100, and the top 20 in Austria, Iceland, Ireland, New Zealand, Scotland, Turkey, and the UK singles chart. It has been certified seven-times Platinum in Australia and Canada, four-times Platinum in New Zealand, and three-times Platinum in Brazil and the United Kingdom. As of May 2022, "The One That Got Away" has sold 6.5 million pure copies worldwide.
Following the song's resurgence on social media, specifically on TikTok in April 2026, "The One That Got Away" entered multiple charts worldwide, including the Czech Republic, Greece, Lithuania, Malaysia, Norway, the Philippines Hot 100, Portugal, Singapore, and Slovakia. In the United Kingdom, the song re-entered the UK singles Chart at number 41 during the week ending May 8, 2026, with 11,140 sales aided by the release of the director's cut version of the music video. The following week, the song moved nine places to number 30 on the chart, selling 12,161 units. It has sold a total of 1,698,970 units as of July 2026, becoming Perry's ninth most-consumed track in the nation. "The One That Got Away" also reached number 23 on the Billboard Global 200, becoming her highest-charting entry since the chart's inception in September 2020. On Spotify, the track has garnered over 1.7 billion streams as of July 2026.
Music video
Production and release
Perry started filming for the video on September 30, 2011. Filming ended on October 2, 2011. The video was shot at the Lima Residence, a contemporary home located in Calabasas, an affluent city in Los Angeles County, California. Mexican actor Diego Luna plays Perry's boyfriend in the video. Photos from the set surfaced online, showing Perry wearing a long-sleeved dress as well as sporting gray hair and prosthetic face wrinkles. The video was directed by Floria Sigismondi, who previously directed the video for "E.T." The music video premiered on November 11, 2011.
On November 4, 2011, a teaser for the video was released, narrated by Stevie Nicks. Nicks provides the elderly woman's voice, speaking about the past and her desire to go back for one day. The video contains scenes of Katy Perry and her past boyfriend (Luna) fighting, intertwined with scenes of them in love. She is later shown as a nostalgic, elderly woman dressed conservatively and standing by a fence looking into the distance. A seven-minute extended version of the video was shown on November 11, 2011, exclusively at select advance screenings of the motion picture My Week with Marilyn (2011). The music video for "The One That Got Away" has garnered over 1.1 billion views on YouTube as of May 2026.
Synopsis
Released on November 11, 2011, the video begins with an elderly woman (Perry) entering her modernistic home. She walks past her husband (played by Herman Sinitzyn), who asks her "How was it?", to which she responds by simply saying "It was fine", hinting that the two are in a loveless marriage. While making herself a cup of coffee, the elderly woman, unhappy with her present situation, begins to think about her colorful past when the song begins: her younger self with her artist boyfriend (Luna) paint portraits of each other.
The elderly woman continues to reminisce about her past in her bedroom alone as the song plays: the happy girl and the boyfriend dress up wildly, take Polaroid photos of each other, dance at a stranger's wedding, and give each other a makeshift tattoo.
As the woman's younger self appears to her older self and both sing the bridge, we see the younger self and the boyfriend get into an argument; she has a creativity block and is unable to paint anything, so he forces her to paint, and in response she splashes red paint on his painting. He leaves angrily and drives away in a Ford Mustang to blow off steam from the fight.
The younger version is shown in her older self's closet, crying and singing while the boyfriend is seen driving in his car. At the same time in the present, the older woman is shown driving out of her garage in a similar type of car as the boyfriend is driving in the flashback.
While driving, the boyfriend opens the sun visor above him and finds the veil of the dress the younger version of Perry had worn at the wedding. He stares at the veil, hinting that he decides to make up with her. But he is too distracted by the veil and does not notice the large boulders on the road from a small rock slide. He swerves to avoid the rocks and accidentally drives off a cliff, dying in the subsequent crash without getting a chance to make up. Meanwhile, the woman's younger self collapses at the same time (possibly representing the death of her colorful youth and personality). The song ends as the sounds of the car violently rolling down the cliff are heard.