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"Beautiful Girls"
#1 weeks: 4
weeks: 2007-08-11, 2007-08-18, 2007-08-25, 2007-09-01
genre: r&b, reggae fusion
artist: Sean Kingston
album: Sean Kingston
writers: Ben E. King /Jordan/ Mike Stoller / J.R. Rotem / Jerry Leiber / Kisean Anderson
producers: J.R. Rotem
label:
formats: CD single, ringle
lengths: 4:02 (Album Version), 3:43 (Radio Edit)

"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.