This week’s new music rings in triumph, from Sam Smith and Demi Lovato‘s “I’m Ready” anthem aiming for an Olympic gold medal to Pitbull‘s “I Believe That We Will Win” rallying cry fit for a sporting event (or worldwide lockdown). Billboard‘s First Stream Live podcast (listen to the full episode below) discusses those victorious singles and more on Friday (April 17).
When a friend approached Mr. Worldwide with the popular sports victory chant, Pitbull went all in for a remixed edition. “Well it started when somebody that’s very close to me, up and coming in the music business, happened to play the chant for me at a basketball game, showed it to me on the internet,” he exclusively told Billboard. “And then he said, ‘Hey, I made a beat to this. Tell me what you think.’ So when he showed me the beat with the chant already is when I said, ‘Oh man, I tell you what? It’s crazy that you played it for me.’ This is literally when they just started the lock things down with the coronavirus.”
Pit continued: “I told him, ‘Man, this is what the world needs right now. They need to believe that they will win.’ If you look at television, they’re talking about the virus. If you look at your phone, then it talks about the virus. Then you talk to your friends, who talk to you about the virus. And even as positive as you are, you start to program your mind into fear and not believe in yourself. So I thought, ‘Man, this is the perfect message for what’s going on right now.'”
Mr. Worldwide halts the fear spurred by the global health crisis right with his what-doesn’t-kill-you-makes-you-stronger message while donating all the single’s proceeds to charities like Feeding America and the Tony Robbins Foundation.
But Pitbull, Sam Smith and Demi Lovato aren’t the only artists completing victory laps: Fiona Apple successfully returns to the scene with her first album in eight years Fetch The Bolt Cutters, which unearths one of the art-pop singer’s best projects that tears away from society’s expectations of her so she can unapologetically reconstruct herself. Plus, Joji has the brand-new song “Gimme Love,” from his just-announced Nectar album, and in an exclusive interview with First Stream Live host Chelsea Briggs, he explained: “Back in the day, I feel like you had a favorite part of a song, and now that’s not really a thing anymore. So I thought it would just be nice to kind of have a song that’s long and in two parts.”
Plus there’s discussion about DaBaby’s Blame It on Baby album, Playboi Carti’s “@MEH,” Kid Cudi’s “Leader of the Delinquents,” Morgan Wallen’s “More Than My Hometown,” Dvsn’s A Muse in Her Feelings album, Brett Eldredge’s “Gabrielle” and Lauren Jauregui’s “50 Ft.”
Listen to the full podcast above.
