Clean Bandit have released the French The Kid and Rema-featuring Afrobeats tune ‘Sad Girls’.
The ‘Rather Be’ hitmakers – comprising Grace Chatto, Jack Patterson and Luke Patterson – have a number of “future-facing pop” records on the way, including yet-to-be-released collaborations with Central Cee, Burna Boy, Ckay and Omah Lay.
For now, their latest earworm is with the rising British rapper and Nigerian artist Rema.
French The Kid previously provided a verse on a version of Clean Bandit’s 2021 track ‘Drive’.
As for Rema, he had just 24 hours to lay down his part on ‘Sad Girls’, which was nailed at 5am and blew the ‘Rockabye’ hitmakers away.
The trio said in a statement: “We met French The Kid last year, after falling in love with his song ‘Thrill’, and we were honoured that he recorded a verse for our ‘Drive’ remix. After that, he came to our studio and we made two songs from scratch, one of them is ‘Sad Girls’.
Rema is one of our favourite artist in the world, so we were again honoured when during a recent 24-hour stopover in London he spent a night with us in the studio. He wrote his verse for ‘Sad Girls’ at about five in the morning towards the end of the session. We were so tired but he was totally energetic, and witnessing his creative process was one of the best experiences we’ve had in the band’s history.
The meeting of musical styles contained in this song is exactly what we strive for and have always strived for since the beginning of Clean Bandit – the weaving of unexpected sound worlds in organic moments, creating songs that we love.”
The tune is the follow-up to February’s A7S-featuring ‘Everything But You’.
Clean Bandit’s last studio album was 2018’s ‘What Is Love?’.
Stream ‘Sad Girls’ now via cleanbandit.lnk.to/sadgirls.