Songfacts®:

• This summery anthem finds Katy Perry "cruising down a heart-shaped highway" as she draws parallels between love and riding motorcycles in Hawaii.
  
  I'm on the back, I'm holdin' tight, I
  Want you to take me for a ride, ride
  When I hula-hula, hula
  So good, you'll take me to the jeweler-jeweler, jeweler
  
  Perry is using metaphors related to bike riding and Hawaiian culture to show her affection towards her sweetheart.
• Perry was inspired to write the song following a trip on a Harley Davidson in Oahu with her fiancé Orlando Bloom. "To be on the back of a motorcycle in Hawaii with the air blowing on your face, it's so beautiful," the singer recalled to radio DJ Zach Sang. "I can remember specifically where I was; the street corner I was on in Oahu, whispering to Orlando and saying 'I'm going to write a song called Harleys in Hawaii.' And I did. That's something that will come at some point."
• Perry wrote the song with her "Small Talk" collaborators: American singer Charlie Puth, Swedish-American songwriter Johan Carlsson, and American songwriter and rapper Jacob Kasher Hindlin. Carlsson and Puth produced the track.
• Perry filmed the song's music video in July 2019 in Hawaii. Helmed by the Barcelona-based directing studio Manson, it shows the singer riding a Harley Davidson in a leather jacket featuring the yin-yang logo from her previous "Never Really Over" clip. Elsewhere in the visual, Perry relaxes on a beach in a floral-patterned red swimsuit and throws a low-key dance party.
• Katy Perry performed the song live for the first time at the OnePlus Music Festival in Mumbai, India, on November 16, 2019. "We're going to sing something we've never sung before," Perry declared to the cheering crowd. "Let's go for Harleys in Mumbai."
• The song enjoyed a resurgence in the fall of 2021 thanks to the "You and I'" TikTok trend. Users lip-synced a slowed-down version of the part where Perry sings "you and I" while turning their camera to the side.
• When she was promoting Smile, Katy Perry started a quirky series called Potty Jams (yes, even superstars love bathroom acoustics). She gave "Never Really Over" and "Small Talk" the restroom treatment, but it was the "Harleys in Hawaii" powder-room performance that took the internet by storm. In September 2023, two years after it initially went viral on TikTok, the song resurged in popularity again.
  
  What made "Harleys" rev up again? Well, picture a Tiny Desk-style bathroom performance: Perry crooning in the middle while musicians and backup singers magically appear from bathroom stalls, giving the song a unique acoustic twist. Then there's Perry powerhouse attack of the lyrical phrase "you and I." Her "you and ayyyyyyeeeeeyeahhyeahhhhh!" belatedly turned into a viral meme and millions of TikTok streams.