Katy Perry just dropped a major revelation over the weekend about the lyrics to her 2010 hit, “Firework” on American Idol saying, it’s “awe” not “up.” On Sunday night’s (March 6) episode, the 32-year-old pop star says we have all been singing the incorrect lyrics this whole time — even her fellow Idol judge Luke Bryan got it wrong!
For over a decade Katy has kept this secret, but when Bryan began an impersonation of Perry singing “Firework,” she tells him, “It’s not ‘up up up,’ and it’s not ‘ah ah ah,’” to which Bryan sarcastically replied, “Well what is it then, because I’ve been dying to know all these years.”
“It’s ‘awe awe awe.’ ‘A-W-E,’” Katy said, spelling out the word to be perfectly clear. “It’s ‘awe awe awe’ everybody, get it right!”
Perry went so far as to post on Instagram to let all her fans know the correct lyrics, writing, “FOR THE OFFICIAL RECORD
• it is AWE not UP
• it is FIREWORK not FIREWORKSSS
Swipe for proof.”
In the second slide, she included a screenshot of a Kerouac.com article that highlighted the time she said at the 2012 Grammys nomination concert that “Firework” was inspired by Jack Kerouac’s iconic 1957 counterculture novel, On The Road: “The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time,” the Beat legend wrote in one of the books’ most quotable passages. “The ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes ‘Awww!’”