Even as Katy Perry does her best to be “in on the joke” that has been her career ever since the rollout period for 143 began in mid-2024 with the catastrophic release of “Woman’s World,” she still manages to offer little in the way of “compelling” music. Nonetheless, Perry has taken a cue from the likes of many female pop stars in recent years (and weeks) by choosing to release a single that pertains to the heartbreak she endured as her marriage to Orlando Bloom fell apart. And for the accompanying visual, co-directed by Christian Breslauer (which means Perry really is trying to claw her way back into having some “artistic” clout, seeing as how Breslauer is associated with more, let’s say, “inventive” pop stars like Ariana Grande, Doja Cat and The Weeknd), Perry opts to liken what she’s gone through, both personally and professionally, to the premise of the Final Destination series.
To convey that sense from the outset, “Bandaids” commences with Perry washing dishes at the sink. And as she goes to put some more soap on the sponge, the wedding ring she’s foolishly placed atop one of those superfluous kitchen accoutrements that the soap dispenser is on wobbles ever so slightly. But it’s enough to knock the ring off of it too, sending it straight down the drain. A rather on-the-nose metaphor for her marriage, but so be it. And as she reaches her hand down in there, everybody knows what’s coming. It’s one of those “we’ve seen this one before” moments, a classic trope in many a horror movie. And what causes the garbage disposal switch to get hit is some of the plates already placed on the dish rack “miraculously” toppling forward in a “domino effect” form so that the switch is flipped. Before Perry and Breslauer dare show too much blood spurting from the sink, there’s a, er, cut to the next scene, which features Perry sitting on a tree branch…sawing away the side she’s sitting on (perhaps another on-the-nose metaphor, this time for self-sabotage).
As she starts to fall, the scene then transitions to her on an escalator carrying a Miniso bag with a teddy bear’s head sticking out the top, with a brief focus on the company’s tagline, “Life is for fun.” Though it seems to be for anything but that as Perry’s next misadventure relates to her untied shoelace getting caught in one of the stairs of the escalator as she tries to step off of it, instead tripping and falling forward while the lyrics, “Bleeding out, bleeding out, bleeding out slow/Band-Aids over a broken heart,” soundtrack the moment.
And, of course, one would be remiss if they didn’t mention the fact that the line definitely harkens back to Taylor Swift declaring, “Band-Aids don’t fix bullet holes/You say sorry just for show” on “Bad Blood”—a song that, as everyone eventually found out, was actually directed at none other than Perry. However, rather than making that correlation hyper-obvious with a “Swift sound” to the single, Perry (and her coterie of producers, Justin Tranter, Sean Cook, Russ Chell, Eren Cannata [and no, it might not be Dr. Luke again, but it’s still all men]) favors a more “rock”-oriented tinge. In fact, it seems as though Perry is willfully doing her best to emulate the style of Alanis Morissette. Something she was also trying for during her “secret shame” of a debut album, Katy Hudson (released in 2001), which favored the “Christian rock” genre. To an extent, that’s also the “flavor” “Bandaids” exudes, while hiding behind a “pop rock” slant.
After evading death on the escalator, Perry walks outside the Light and Love Crystals store (presumably Madeline from West End Girl’s favorite shop), which is going out of business—another on-the-nose metaphor. And since this is the premise of Final Destination in a music video format, Perry is faced with yet another unforeseen attempt on her life by way of an exposed electrical wire that ignites some conveniently leaked gas on the pavement. Of course, Perry survives that too, with the next scene featuring her sitting outside of a café with glass windows. Naturally, due to some nearby construction snafu, the glass shatters onto Perry, who still can’t catch a break in the next scene when she is distracted by putting directions into her phone long enough to miss a sign that warns, “Wrong Way Do Not Enter.”
So now, there she is, going against traffic. But even when she corrects her path in time to avoid Death yet again, it’s still not over, with the famed scene from Final Destination 2 (complete with the use of a coffee spilling) involving the semi-truck loaded with logs now entering the “Bandaids” universe. Yet even this can’t kill Perry, who walks “whimsically” on a train track in the following scene, only to get her foot caught between the metal rails. Around this time, she sings, as though directly to Bloom, “If I had to do it all over again/I would still do it all over again/The love that we made was worth it in the end” as Breslauer cuts to a shot of a tiny daisy growing and sprouting through the rocks. Another heavy-handed image that of course alludes to their daughter, Daisy. Then, Perry gets even more over the top with her cornball visuals in this scene by choosing to stop struggling with getting her foot out and just “letting it happen” (that is, being open to the oncoming train hitting her) instead of trying to force anything.
Alas, when she frees herself, it sends her tumbling down the hill and lands her in quicksand. After sinking entirely in, she miraculously manages to burst out of the ground, subsequently walking to a gas station while covered in the muck. Once inside the “convenience store” part of it, she buys some cigarettes to take the edge off. Perry then proceeds to smoke one of the cigs next to a gas pump (prompting the viewer reaction to be, “Well, clearly she deserves what’s coming if she’s that daft”). As this is happening, the opening verse of “Woman’s World” can be heard in the background, Perry’s nod to, again, being “in on the joke” that was 143. It also harkens back to the scene in “Woman’s World” where Perry is at another (more rural) gas station and takes the pump out to stick into her backside to, presumably, re-power her bionic legs (which she apparently got out of nowhere after an anvil dropped on her—because, yes, some very Final Destination-y things happen in that video, too).
So it is that the core of the “Bandaids” video’s message makes itself ultimately about Perry’s career rather than her marriage to Bloom, with a line like, “I’m flatlining trying to save this” applying all too well to her past few album cycles. And perhaps by allowing herself to finally blow up (and presumably die this time) in the last scene, she’s attempting to say that she’s willing to reincarnate in another form in order to respond to the vast criticism against her musical stylings the last time around. “Bandaids,” however, isn’t memorable or innovative enough to allow Perry to “reanimate” and recover from her previous death, as it were.
