Katy Perry drops the video for her new single “Chained to the Rhythm” today, and it delivers on the song’s political message. In the Mathew Cullen-directed video, Katy attends a carnival with rides that play on traditional American motifs like the Nuclear Family and the American Dream. The candy-colored video has a distinctly dystopian feel; masses of people move around together and follow orders without question, much like in George Orwell’s classic novel 1984.
The video goes along with the song’s theme, which is about living in a bubble and not being present enough in our own lives:
Are we crazy?
Living our lives through a lens
Trapped in our white picket fence
Like ornaments
So comfortable, we’re living in a bubble, bubble
So comfortable, we cannot see the trouble, trouble
“Chained to the Rhythm” is the lead single from Katy’s upcoming fourth album, which doesn’t have a title or release date yet but is expected to drop sometime this year. She recently performed the song at the 2017 Grammy Awards alongside Skip Marley. Although the track has yet to hit the Billboard Hot 100, it recently broke Spotify’s first-day streaming record for a female artist with 3,062,293 total streams in its first day of release.
You can watch the video above and read all the verified lyrics to Katy Perry’s “Chained to the Rhythm” on Genius now.
