Seemingly out of nowhere, Soko”s two-year old song, “We Might Be Dead By Tomorrow,” zoomed onto the Billboard Hot 100 this week, bowing at No. 9. Even more impressively, the song launched at No. 1 on Billboard”s Streaming Songs chart.
How did that happen?
Here are five things you need to know about “We Might Be Dead By Tomorrow”
1. The song”s success is due wholly to its use in the “First Kiss” video which went viral nine days ago. The striking black & white video features couples meeting and kissing for the first time as Soko”s atmospheric, spare track plays in the background.
2. Soko, a French singer songwriter, bowed the song two years ago via a video, that, interestingly enough, opens with her passionately kissing her girlfriend. It does not look like their first kiss.
3. “First Kiss,” according to Billboard, is a collaboration between Soko and women”s clothing company, Wren. Soko was first chosen to appear as one of the women appearing in the video and she then offered up the song as the soundtrack.
4. “First Kiss” is the first exposure to Soko”s music for most of us, but some folks were early adopters: Cee-Lo sampled her song “I”ll Kill Her” on a 2010 mix tape and director Spike Jonze asked her to write a song for an animated short in 2011.
5: “First Kiss” has already logged more than 63 million views on YouTube. This past week it drew more than 11 million, resulting in “We Might Be Dead By Tomorrow”s” chart success and various streaming parodies (the Billboard Hot 100 is composed of streaming, sales, and radio airplay…98% of “Dead”s” points came from streaming). The real question is if radio will now piggyback onto the song's success.