Hot 100 First-Timers: Little Simz, Elyanna & Tini Debut With Coldplay Collab ‘We Pray’
Little Simz, Elyanna and Tini each earn their first career entry on the Billboard Hot 100 (dated Oct. 19), thanks to their collaboration with Coldplay, “We Pray.”
Released Aug. 23 as the second single from the band’s album Moon Music, the song (which also features Burna Boy) debuts at No. 87 with 8 million in airplay audience (up 11%), 3.3 million U.S. streams (up 103%) and 3,000 downloads sold (up 109%) in the Oct. 4-10 tracking week, according to Luminate.
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Radio-wise, the song concurrently rises 16-15 on Adult Pop Airplay and 24-23 on Pop Airplay.
The song’s gains are tied to the album’s release on Oct. 4, with Moon Music debuting at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 with 120,000 equivalent album units earned. The band earns its fifth No. 1 and first since Ghost Stories in 2014.
TikTok has also been a factor in the song’s growing profile. Multiple snippets of the track highlighting the artists featured on the song have broken through on the platform. There’s the “We Pray (Elyanna Version)” and “We Pray (Tini Version),” plus a “Blank Verse Version” that allows users to add their own verses (with all three posted to Coldplay’s official account).
Little Simz, from Islington, London, first appeared on Billboard’s charts in November 2017 via her feature on the Gorillaz song “Garage Palace.” The track debuted and peaked at No. 37 on the Hot Dance/Electronic Songs chart. She earned her first solo appearance in 2021 with her fourth studio album, Sometimes I Might Be Introvert. The set reached No. 33 on the Top Album Sales chart, plus No. 22 on Vinyl Albums. Across the pond, it peaked at No. 4 the Official U.K. Albums chart.
Little Simz has released four other albums: A Curious Tale of Trials + Persons (2015), Stillness In Wonderland (2016), Grey Area (2019) and No Thank You (2022). Outside of music, she starred in the Netflix drama series Top Boy.
Elyanna, a Palestinian-Chilean singer-songwriter from Nazareth, also reaches the Hot 100 for the first time thanks to “We Pray.” The song marks her first appearance on Billboard’s charts. Elyanna has been releasing music since 2019 and dropped her first full-length, Woledto, in April, via Universal Arabic Music. In February, she appeared on the cover of Billboard Arabia. “I’m on a Billboard cover, and we have a sold-out tour, and I have an album coming,” she told Billboard Arabia at the time. “It feels insane to me. I’m doing things I dreamt of my whole life.”
Elyanna also performed at Coachella in April, making history as the first artist at the festival to perform in Arabic.
Argentinian singer-actress-dancer Tini also arrives on the Hot 100 for the first time via “We Pray.” Tini (full name Tini Stoessel) is already a household name in Argentina, having begun her career as a child actress in the Disney Channel Latin American telenovela Violetta. She reprised the role for the series’ sequel film Tini: The Movie in 2016. She became the first Argentine act to sign with Hollywood Records in 2015. Since then, she’s released five studio albums: Tini (Martina Stoessel) (2016), Quiero Volver (2018), Tini Tini Tini (2020), Cupido (2023) and Un Mechón de Pelo in April.
Cupido reached No. 45 on Billboard’s Top Latin Albums chart. Tini has charted 41 songs on the Billboard Argentina Hot 100, including five No. 1s: “Miénteme,” with Maria Becerra; “Bar,” with L-Gante; “La Triple T”; “La_Original.mp3,” with Emilia; and “Pa.”
Elanna and Tini both performed “We Pray” with Coldplay on NBC’s Saturday Night Live on Oct. 5 when the band was the musical guest.
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