What happens when two pop superstars collaborate on a track? They shoot it straight to Number 1. Ariana Grande and Lady Gaga, two of America’s finest musicians, dropped a song on Friday, called ‘Rain On Me’. Along with the single, the two artists also released a music video which has already got 42 million views. What else would you expect from a collab of two of this generation’s favourite artists?
According to Billboard, the single rules the Official Chart First Look Top 10 with a lead of 7,000 chart sales, pushing DaBaby’s Rockstar from the top. The collaboration with Ariana Grande comes a week before the release of Lady Gaga’s sixth album Chromatica, which is due to be out this Friday May 29. If the duet is going to keep its position until the Official U.K. Singles Charts is published this Friday, ‘Rain On Me’ will mark the sixth Number 1 hit for both, Grande and Lady Gaga.
Fans had been speculating about a collaboration after they found what seem to be clues in a birthday post Ariana Grande dedicated to Lady Gaga on Instagram. The speculations were confirmed after both artists posted artworks for the single in various tweets since May 15.
Lady Gaga has been talking about the collaboration to Zane Lowe on Apple Music. “I think maybe she assumed that it’d be that she came in and I was like, ‘Here, just sing this and thank you so much for your time’. But instead I asked her what she needed, how she wanted to do things”, Gaga says about Grande. Gaga recalls telling Ariana that she was going to dance in front of her whilst Grande was going to record her parts of the duet. “I said to her, ‘Okay, now everything that you care about while you sing, I want you to forget it and just sing. And by the way, while you’re doing that, I’m going to dance in front of you’, to which Grande reacted with “oh my God. Oh my God, I can’t, I can’t. I don’t know. Oh my God. Okay, okay.” Well, we for sure think that she was able to do it just fine, and Lady Gaga seems to agree: “Then I did it and she sang, and she started to do things with her voice that was different. And it was the joy of two artists going, ‘I see you.’ “
To see if the general public also thinks that the two could do it, we still have to wait a couple more days until the official charts are going to be released on Friday, to find out if the duet can officially claim another Number 1 hit with ‘Rain On Me’.