Extraordinary

Album: New Eyes (2014)
Charted: 5
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Songfacts®:

  • The emotive house record features the soulful vocals of 16-year-old London-based singer Sharna Bass. Cellist Grace Chatto told HMV.com: "We heard Sharna Bass singing for the first time when she was 14, we loved her voice and when we wrote 'Extraordinary' we got in touch and she liked the track and came in and did vocals."
  • The self-produced video was filmed in Cuba. Clean Bandit's Grace Chatto told The Guardian: "(Cuba's) an incredible country - unlike anywhere else we have ever been to. We wanted to capture the euphoric feeling of the music in sunshine and dancing."

    "We made the video ourselves," she added, "with help from two Russian friends and some wonderful people we met out in Havana."
  • The video features a cute little pig sleeping on a piano. "We went to shoot and there was this little family of pigs so we just picked one up," Clean Bandit's Jack Patterson told MTV UK. "We had to give the farmer a can of Coke in exchange to use the pig!"
  • Clean Bandit wrote this with lyricist Jimmy Napes, who did a lot of Disclosure's tracks with them. Grace Chatto told HMV: "That's been him and Jack (Patterson, bass guitar and keyboards) sat at a grand piano, coming up with lyrics."
  • Chatto explained the song's meaning: "This is about a complicated 3-way relationship where lines are blurred between friendship and more. It is happy and sad."
  • Jack Patterson expanded on the song's meaning to The Sun: "It's about a situation where you are in love with your friend (who has someone) and you think they should be with you instead," he said. "It's inspired by my friend, Jess, who I hope will say that to me one day."

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