Songfacts®:

• Jessie J recorded this uplifting ballad for the soundtrack of the movie Pitch Perfect 2. She told Entertainment Tonight: "Everyone loves to sing, and everyone loves to sing songs that they know. What's so great about this movie, there's a twist. The big song, the big finale, the big final song is a song that no one knows, which is 'Flashlight.'"
• Jessie had a previous connection with the Pitch Perfect movie franchise. In the original Pitch Perfect film, the Barden Bellas tackled the English songstress' "Price Tag" during their final performance medley.
• The song's music video finds Jessie heading to the Barden University campus where she performs the track. Footage from Pitch Perfect 2 is also dispersed throughout the visual.
• The Sam Smith and Sia-penned original song marked a departure for the Pitch Perfect franchise. "Story-wise it was taking a chance, definitely, because the first one was all cover songs that everybody knew," co-music supervisor Julianne Jordan explained to Billboard magazine. "But when we got 'Flashlight,' we just knew. [Director] Elizabeth [Banks] could see exactly how that song was going to work every time it was used."
  
  Screenwriter Kay Cannon added that the Pitch Perfect team are proud how the song works as an organic part of the storyline. "To be honest, I think we were all really trying to capture the new 'Cups,' and we understood that is a really tall order and we won't do that per se, but this is something new to the audience; [an] original song sort of became the most organic way of giving the audience something new," she said. "It's like the song from the movie That Thing You Do where you hear the song in different variations before you're hearing it at the finals, because I and the producers wanted the audience to catch on to what the song sounded like and hopefully connect to it by the time you hear it in the finals."