"Friends" | ||||
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Single by Francis and the Lights featuring Bon Iver and Kanye West | ||||
from the album Farewell, Starlite! | ||||
Released | July 7, 2016 | |||
Length | 3:09 | |||
Label | KTTF Music | |||
Songwriter(s) |
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Producer(s) |
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Francis and the Lights singles chronology | ||||
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Bon Iver singles chronology | ||||
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Kanye West singles chronology | ||||
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"Friends" is a song by American music project Francis and the Lights featuring Bon Iver and uncredited contributions from Kanye West. The song was released as a single on July 7, 2016, accompanied by a music video featuring Francis Farewell Starlite, Justin Vernon of Bon Iver and Kanye West.[1]
The song was sampled in Chance the Rapper's song "Summer Friends" from his 2016 mixtape Coloring Book.[2] "Friends" was sampled in "Summer Friends" before it was officially released independently as a single by Francis and the Lights.
Red Bull named it as the 15th best song of 2016.[3]
Francis and the Lights, Vernon and West collaborated again in 2019 on the song "Take Me to the Light."[4]
A music video for "Friends" was released on July 7, 2016.[5] The video was directed by Jake Schreier.[6] Knowing each other since childhood, Francis and Schreier have been making single-take, minimalist performance videos since 2008.[6] They wanted to do the next iteration of what they had been doing before.[6] In a 2016 interview, Schreier said, "We had never done a synchronized dance in a video or really had other protagonists in the video, so that's what we wanted to add to this one."[6]
Pitchfork named it as the 18th best music video of 2016.[7] NPR named it as one of the best music videos of 2016.[8]
No. | Title | Length |
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1. | "Friends" | 3:09 |
Chart | Peak position |
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UK Singles Downloads (OCC)[9] | 90 |
US Spotify Velocity (Billboard)[10] | 13 |
US Spotify Viral 50 (Billboard)[11] | 1 |