Ariana Grande has the Midas touch when it comes to creating smash hit pop tunes. From ‘One Last Time’ to ‘thank u, next’ her back catalogue is bursting with stone-cold smashers that’ll be caught in your head for days at a time. The latest of these is likely ‘Boyfriend’, a collaboration with Grande’s tour support and pals, Social House.
So, where did that one come from, then?
“We started writing ‘Boyfriend’ when we came back from a long day of getting our hair done,” one half of Social House, Mikey Foster, tells NME. “We came home to the surprise of Ariana Grande in our living room, with [songwriters] Tommy Brown and Steven Franks.
“They were like “hey, we have a really cool song,” and she hits play, and it’s her verse done, it’s just like one small vocal pattern thing. So we immediately start writing our verse…and we’re like, we’re going to be on this song, it’s happening tonight!”
However Mikey revealed that he took a little longer than expected, which meant Scootie (the other half of Social House) had to finish up his verse as soon as they’d jumped off stage at the Forum in Los Angeles, where they were supporting Ariana on the Sweetener World Tour.
The music video was filmed later, and sounded like a hectic affair – after Ariana jumped off stage one night, they all jumped on a jet and flew to New York.
“We got to New York, and then slept for 45 minutes,” Mikey explained. “We woke up, drove to the shoot…shot the entire video in one day, and by the end of it we were entirely delirious. If you watch the behind the scenes you’ll see Ari dancing in stuff, and this was the wildest point of the night where we were all desperately in need of sleep.”
Watch our interview with Social House above to hear more about how they created the song, and what it was like writing in a haunted hotel.