Katy Perry Jokes About Josh Groban Engagement as “The One That Got Away” Surges Again

Katy Perry has found herself back in the middle of one of her oldest pop narratives, and this time it comes with a punchline. As “The One That Got Away” keeps circulating on TikTok, the singer posted a knowingly absurd response on Monday, May 11, to news that Josh Groban, the man she previously confirmed inspired the 2010 single, is engaged.

In the clip, Perry stages a melodramatic bit of fake heartbreak, complete with tears and an oversized drink that she sips as an article about Groban’s engagement sits in the background. It is the sort of reaction that only works if everyone already understands the joke, and Perry leans into that familiarity by pairing the video with her own hit. Her caption was just “congrats,” followed by a champagne glass emoji.

Groban announced in April that he had proposed to his girlfriend, theater actress Natalie McQueen. “MY BEST FRIEND SAID YES!!!” he wrote on Instagram, making the news public a couple of weeks before Perry’s response.

The timing is especially neat because Perry’s personal life has also been widely visible lately. She is dating Justin Trudeau, with the two reportedly starting their relationship last year, and she has shared multiple photos of them together on Instagram. So the TikTok lands less like a real lament than a wry nod to a song that has outlived its original context and now has a second life online.

That context has been on record for years. In 2017, Perry confirmed to James Corden during a livestream that “The One That Got Away,” which peaked at No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100, was about Groban, whom she briefly dated around 2009. Groban later addressed the revelation on Watch What Happens Live in 2018, saying, “I was not expecting that. That was a double take and a spit of my coffee. It’s very sweet of her to say that.”

Perry’s latest joke is one of several ways she and her team have been riding the song’s current resurgence. In April, she released an extended director’s cut of the track’s music video, then followed it with the Thinking of the One That Got Away EP, which bundled the single with another older Perry track that has also been trending, “Thinking of You.”

The new TikTok keeps the whole thing in the realm of playful self-mythology. Perry has been revisiting an era that already had a built-in emotional shorthand, and the internet, as usual, is doing the rest.