Sia, Sean Paul’s ‘Cheap Thrills’ Certified 9X Platinum In The US
Cheap Thrills, the 2016 song by Australian singer-songwriter Sia and Dancehall superstar Sean Paul, is now certified 9X Platinum in the United States. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) issued the certification on Wednesday (July 3) after it reached the sales and streaming equivalent of 9 million units sold in the country.
The song is set to become Sia’s second Diamond certification after Chandelier, which reached that milestone on Wednesday.
It was produced by Greg Kurstin for Sia’s seventh studio album, This Is Acting. The hit version, with Sean Paul’s patios bars, was later released for digital download.
Described as a bouncy, Dancehall-tinged synthpop song, Cheap Thrills was Sia’s first Billboard No. 1 song, and it also marked Sean’s fourth top song as well as his first chart-topper in 10 years at the time. The success of Cheap Thrills also gave Sia the distinction of becoming the first woman over 40 years old to top the Billboard Hot 100 since Madonna topped the Hot 100 with Music in 2000.
In the UK, the song spent 66 weeks on the Singles Chart.
It was later nominated at the 59th Annual Grammy Awards for the Best Pop Duo/Group Performance Award.
The song’s lyric video, released in February 2016, has over 1.8 billion views on YouTube.
Interestingly, Cheap Thrills was originally written for Rihanna’s Anti album, whose Diamonds, Sia had also co-written. However, it was rejected and Sia ended up recording it herself for her own This Is Acting album which entirely featured songs she had originally written for other superstars and which were ultimately rejected, according to Billboard.
In November 2021, Sean Paul and Sia, who have still not met face-to-face, released visuals for their second collaboration, Dynamite.
Sean Paul’s other platinum singles in the United States are Rockabye with Clean Bandit and Anne-Marie (3X Platinum), Get Busy (Platinum), Temperature (3X Platinum), We Be Burnin (Platinum), Bailando with Enrique Iglesias (4X Platinum), Do You Remember with Jay Sean and Lil Jon (2X Platinum) and Shake Señora with T-Pain Pitbull (Platinum)