Songfacts®:

• Here, Katy Perry teams up with Swedish DJ Alesso for a dancefloor-ready anthem. Over Alesso's frantic beats and powerful piano melodies, Perry offers up a fierce warning to the lover who's left her behind:
  
  When I'm gone, I'm never really gone
  You think you're movin' on
  But it won't be for long, you'll see
  When I'm gone, I'm never really gone
• Alesso and Perry wrote the song with Alida Garpestad Peck, Rami Yacoub, Alma Goodman, and Space Primates' Nathan Cunningham and Marc Sibley. "The show must go on in a way, people use music to do all kinds of things – to be happy, to get their grief out, to dance," said Perry to GMA of the track. "We all need a soundtrack to our lives and I hope I can be a part of that."
• When Perry kicked off her Las Vegas residency on December 29, 2021, she gave "When I'm Gone" its live debut as part of a mashup with "Walking On Air."
• Katy Perry and Alesso premiered the video during halftime of ESPN's January 10, 2022 broadcast of the 2022 College Football Playoff National Championship. In doing so, the pair became the first artists to debut a global music video within a live event on ESPN.
  
  Perry has past football history: A record 118.5 million viewers watched her halftime performance at the 2015 Super Bowl (remember Left Shark?), becoming the highest-rated halftime show in Super Bowl history.
• Katy Perry performed "When I'm Gone" on the January 29, 2022 episode of Saturday Night Live along with her Smile ballad "Never Really Over." Accompanied by Alesso, she sang the song surrounded by giant dancing mushrooms holding "Eat Me" signs.
• Alesso approached Perry for the collaboration after he'd created most of the track. "It's just fun to step into other people's worlds," Perry told Audacy. "Like Alesso's world is a dance, DJ world."