Pointless music detective time again:
So the song "The One That Got Away" by Katy Perry topped several billboard charts BUT THERE'S ONE QUESTION that needs to be answered.

the lyrics start:
"Summer after high school when we first met
We'd make out in your Mustang to Radiohead"

Which raises two closely related questions:
1. Does that make biographical sense?
2. if so, which Radiohead album?

OK SO first I'm assuming "Summer after highschool" means the summer after she graduated highschool, and not a summer DURING one of her highschool years.

You don't normally go to highschool during the summer anyway.

anyway you usually graduate highschool around the age of 18, and the next line confirms she was under 18 at the time:
"And on my 18th birthday we got matching tattoos"

so:
When was Katy Perry 17? And what was the most recent Radiohead album at the time?

So she was born on October 25, 1984, meaning she turned 18 in fall of 2002.

So "summer after highschool" can be assumed to mean the summer of 2002.

So the latest Radiohead album at the time was...

Amnesiac, released in June 2001.

It's also, of course, possible that she was making out to earlier Radiohead albums:
Kid A (2000), OK Computer (1997), The Bends (1995), or Pablo Honey (1993).

So that all makes sense, right?

BUT IT'S WRONG

We've made at least one incorrect assumption.

One of them is that she wrote the song... she did, but had two co-writers. Either of them could have been the one who added the Radiohead reference.

But the other one is that "after highschool" means after she graduated from highschool. It can't: She didn't graduate highschool.

a 2013 article in Elle Canada mentions that she left highschool (by getting her GED) in her freshman year, in order to concentrate on your music career: https://web.archive.org/web/20131008235316/http://www.ellecanada.com/celebrity/celebrity-spotlight/katy-perry-elle-canada-interview/a/77774/2

So she actually left highschool at age 15.

Meaning her "making out to radiohead" time could have been any time from ages 15-17.

She turned 15 in 1999, when the latest Radiohead album was OK Computer.

In the middle of that date (no pun intended) range, Radiohead released Kid A, in 2000.

SO TO SUMMARIZE:
Depending on her age, and assuming it was their most recent work, the Radiohead she mentions could be OK Computer, Kid A, or Amnesiac.

and, of course, the real question is: https://twitter.com/oatmatcha/status/1349802587034292224

anyway unlike a lot of songs from a lot of singers, she's chosen not to add official comments to her Genius lyrics page, so we may never know which Radiohead album she meant.

BTW, the two co-writers of the song were the infamous Dr. Luke and the significantly less infamous Max Martin.

Both were born in the early 70s, meaning they graduated before the 1992 EP "Drill" was released, making it impossible for them to make out to Radiohead in highschool.

Anyway the real scandal about this song is that she teamed up with EA to make a music video in The Sims 3, to promote their Expansion pack, Sims 3: Showtime.

why's that a scandal? because unlike other artists who did versions of their popular music for The Sims, she DIDN'T DO IT IN SIMLISH.

You might argue she made up for it by doing two other songs for The Sims (yes, Katy Perry has recorded three songs for The Sims. The world is weird), and those WERE in simlish.

The Sims 2: Apartment Life has a version of Hot n Cold which is in Simlish:

And the Sims 3: Katy Perry's Sweet Treats stuff pack... hang on a second while I recover from this.

But yeah, that contains a version of Last Friday Night in Simlish.
I really like how this fan-made music video has the lyrics. In Simlish. I was expecting english, or maybe english-simlish alongside, but nope! just Simlish.

The Sims series has had a lot of musicians rerecord their songs with Simlish lyrics over the years. I highly recommend listening to them if you want to feel like you're having a brain aneurism. https://sims.fandom.com/wiki/Songs_in_Simlish

The standout hit of which is the title track from The Urbz: Sims in the City, featuring The Black Eyed Peas and Ga Ra Ta Da (aka Let's Get It Started), which is uploaded to the official Black Eyed Peas channel in TERRIBLE AUDIO QUALITY:

although the worst for brain aneurism is probably the version of Too Shy by Kajagoogoo.