American rapper Wiz Khalifa has scored the fastest selling single of the year, as his tribute to actor Paul Walker, See You Again, climbed 21 places to top the British chart, the Official Charts Company said on Sunday.
The song featuring Charlie Puth is on the sound track to the movie Furious 7, and it pays tribute to cast member Walker who died during filming in November 2013.
It also hit the top of the Billboard Hot 100 chart on Thursday and set two Spotify records: It has earned the most streams in a day and week with 4.2 million and 21.9 million listens, respectively. And on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, it supplanted Bruno Mars and Mark Ronson’s 14-week run at the top spot with Uptown Funk.
Puth, 23, sings the emotional hook on the song. As he wrote See You Again, the singer thought about a friend who died around the same time as Walker. From there, the words came easily.
“It really hit home for me when my friend died in a very similar situation,” Puth said in an interview on Wednesday. “Paul Walker’s incident was devastating, so I thought about Paul and my friend. I sat down at the piano, played those chords and those words just fell out of me.”
It took Puth about 10 minutes to write the hook of the song paying homage to Walker, who was killed in a car crash in 2013. Puth and Khalifa beat out a number of artists who submitted their lyrics and vocals for a Walker tribute song.
“It just felt right,” Puth said.
“I didn’t think it was going to happen,” said Puth. “I’m still surprised because Uptown Funk is such a brilliant record ... so for our song to take its place, it’s major.”
Vin Diesel sang a snippet of the song in memory of Walker at the MTV Movie Awards.
Grammy-nominated Khalifa said he wanted to celebrate life and family instead of being sad.
“It’s such a meaningful song, so I tried to put all those things together,” Khalifa said in an interview Wednesday. “Charlie’s vocals are amazing, so it all came together and made sense.”
Also in the UK chart, A remix of OMI’s 2012 reggae song Cheerleader climbed 25 places to number two in the run down, while last week’s chart topper, Hold My Hand by Jess Glynne, slipped to number three.
Singer-songwriter Paul Simon scored his first number one album in 25 years after a string of British tour dates with Sting helped propel his The Ultimate Collection to the top, ahead of James Bay’s Chaos and the Calm.
