"The One That Got Away" by Boyce Avenue (Katy Perry Cover) + Under the Covers: Spotify Edition, Friday, February 25, 2022

Twelve years ago, Katy Perry tied with Michael Jackson for the most #1 Hot 100 songs from a single album, 5 in total. The album's sixth single, "The One That Got Away," peaked at #3 on the Hot 100, but topped other Billboard charts, including the Top 40 pop radio-play chart.  Today, we're hearing from another perspective, a cover by Boyce Avenue. Katy Perry's music video depicts an unrequited teenage romance that ends in a fiery car crash to the tune of Johnny Cash singing "You Are My Sunshine," Perry as an old woman visiting the spot where it happened. But the true story of this song probably didn't end so dramatically.

IN ANOTHER LIFE, YOU WOULD BE MY GIRL. Wikipedia doesn't have a "personal life" section of Katy Perry chronicling her dating life. At the time of this single, the singer's marriage with polarizing actor Russell Brand was about to end. Currently, Perry is engaged to actor Orlando Bloom. But sometime back when Katy Perry was Katy Hudson, a Christian pop singer, and perhaps during her transformation to the star she became, Perry dated Relient K frontman Matt Thiessen. The relationship is said to have lasted about ten years. Many rumors and much speculation among Christian music enthusiasts and Katy Perry fans surround this relationship. While it's quite possible that the relationship was casual and that neither party was too much affected by it, I'm going to entertain another theory. First, it seems that Matt Thiessen has a commitment problem given that the album Forget and Not Slow Down is a simultaneous apology and a denial of guilt for cheating on his ex-fiancé, Shannon Murphy. Thiessen later secretly married songwriter/producer Emily Wright in 2015 and they divorced in 2018. 

ALL THIS MONEY CAN'T BUY ME A TIME MACHINE. Whatever ended the relationship between Perry and Thiessen, the two stayed friends, though "not close" friends. Thiessen co-wrote two songs with Perry post-major label debut, "A Cup of Coffee," a Walmart Exclusive track from One of the Boys (2008) and "Dressin' Up" from Teenage Dream: The Complete Confection (2012). It's true that Katy Perry told James Corden that she wrote "The One That Got Away" about Josh Groban, and there may be some truth to that story; however, I don't buy it completely. While Perry and Groban may have had a short romance, they didn't meet "the summer after high school," which seems to match up with her and Thiessen's timeline if not literally then metaphorically. Of course, we all know that songs work on multiple levels and that while a songwriter may write about one thing but it's just as true about another thing. Sometimes songs are too personal to reveal the true meaning. Heck, we may never know exactly who "You're So Vain" is about. Maybe the song really is about Josh Groban. Maybe it's about a movie Perry watched or about nobody at all. But my guess is that the song is so personal to Perry that she hasn't told the public who it's really about.  In the meantime, imagine it appearing, kind of like in the form of this Boyce Avenue cover, maybe with a few more electric guitars, covered by Relient K on Forget and Not Slow Down. 



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