"Beautiful Girls" is a song by reggae-influenced musician
Sean Kingston from his eponymous debut. The song samples Ben E.
King's classic "Stand by Me" and uses digital pitch correction
technology on the vocals. The song is about a boy who is
suicidal over the failure of his relationship with a "beautiful
girl".
Rapper Lil Mama and actors Kenny Vibert and Lil' JJ are
featured in the music video.
Certain radio stations (mostly AC or hot AC stations and
including Radio Disney) play the censored version of the song,
which replaces the word "you had me suicidal, suicidal" with
"you got me in denial, in denial." On MTV the word "suicidal"
is completely removed with no replacement. On BET, Fuse and
MuchMusic, as well as several top 40, urban and rhythmic top 40
and AC stations, "suicidal" was left intact.
Due to the lyrics containing references to suicide, the
track has been removed from many radio playlists including
FM104 in Dublin, where thousands of complaints were phoned in
on a late night chat show
The Adrian Kennedy Phoneshow, and
Wild 102in Roseau, Minnesota. It was allegedly pulled
from two FM although a spokesperson said the song is currently
not on its playlist but could not confirm if it had been in the
past. FM104 replaced "suicidal" with "in denial", a change Sean
Kingston made for the radio station.
UK CD single
The song benefited from extensive airplay before its digital
release, reaching as high as #17 on the Hot 100. On July 24,
"Beautiful Girls" was accidentally leaked onto the U.S. iTunes
Store, two days before the planned release date. The week after
the song's digital release it hit number one on Billboard's Hot
Digital Songs, debuting with 260,000 downloads in its first
week (the second highest digital sales for a new song of 2007,
only behind Rihanna's "Umbrella"). Kingston became the first
artist born within the 1990s to top the Hot 100, beating rapper
Soulja Boy Tell 'Em to it by six weeks. In the same week the
song advanced from #23 to #1 on the Billboard Hot 100, tying it
with Brandy and Monica's "The Boy Is Mine" for the biggest
single-week upward movement to #1 on the Hot 100. It has also
gone on to occupy the top spot on the U.S. Hot 100 Airplay and
the Canadian Hot 100. It remained on top of the UK Singles
Chart for four weeks before being knocked off by the Sugababes'
first single from their 5th studio album
Change, "About You Now". The song ended 2007 as the
year's 15th biggest-selling single in the UK. However, it made
Sean Kingston a one-hit wonder as his next few singles
underperformed in the UK Singles Chart.
On the official ARIA charts in Australia it debuted at #1,
fell to #2 when Delta Goodrem's comeback single took the top
spot. "Beautiful Girls" returned the next week and remained for
a month before being replaced by Timbaland's "The Way I
Are".
This song was #86 on
MTV Asia's list of Top 100 Hits of 2007.
A few months after "Beautiful Girls" was released in 2007, a
new online video service called Votigo began a cover contest in
which fans could submit covers of the song for a chance to get
a call from Sean Kingston. After an online vote user Mallory
Robbins won with an a cappella version of the song. Top honors
also went to a rock cover of the song performed by the Ailan
Christopher Project. Shortly afterward, recording artist JoJo
released a cover response version of the track which was
released on MySpace, however will not be featured on her
upcoming album. Chris Moyles also released a parody cover,
however it was about the song describing how bad it was in his
opinion.
The Plain White T's, whose song was knocked out of the
charts by this one, did a cover version for Yahoo Music. Lead
vocalist Tom Higgenson says that the group "started covering it
as a joke almost. We started learning it because we were number
one for a few weeks and then we got knocked out of the number
one spot by Sean Kingston, by this song. It's kind of like an
ode to Sean." To close out the song guitarist Mike Retondo
breaks into the chorus of "Stand by Me", (which is also done in
the cover version by Boyce Avenue a nod to the fact that that
song's bassline is used in Beautiful Girls.
Teddy Geiger covered the song on his 2007 tour, due to
popularity a recorded version of the song will be featured as a
bonus track on the iTunes version of his upcoming CD "The
March".
Jesse McCartney covered Beautiful Girls during his Right
Where You Want Me tour.
David Archuleta briefly sang the chorus of the song at the
end of his May 6, 2008 performance on the U.S. TV show American
Idol. He was singing Ben E. King's original Stand By Me
song.
Deer Tick (band) recorded a cover of Beautiful Girls, which
can be found on Myspace.com.
Casey Crescenzo of The Dear Hunter recorded a cover of this
song and has occasionally performed it live.
Boyband JLS choose a Mashup of the song and Stand by me as
their bottom two performance on UK TV show The X Factor A year
later on Series 6 of the show Lloyd Daniels sang the chorus and
the last verse of the song in his November 30, 2008 performance
also singing King's original Stand By Me.
Bayside covers the song on Punk Goes Pop 2.
BAMF! recorded a version entitled Bootyfull Girl.
This song is also featured in the 2008 monster film
Cloverfield, and on The CW's
Gossip Girl. The "suicidal" version of the song, which
ends differently from the single mix is also featured in the
video game SingStar Hottest Hits.