| Friends | |
| Cover: | Friends (Francis and the Lights song).jpg |
| Type: | single |
| Artist: | Francis and the Lights featuring Bon Iver and Kanye West |
| Album: | Farewell, Starlite! |
| Released: | July 7, 2016 |
| Length: | 3:09 |
| Label: | KTTF Music |
| Producer: |
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| Chronology: | Francis and the Lights |
| Prev Title: | Wonderful Everyday: Arthur |
| Prev Year: | 2014 |
| Next Title: | Summer Friends |
| Next Year: | 2016 |
"Friends" is a song by American music project Francis and the Lights featuring Bon Iver and uncredited contributions from Kanye West. The song was released as a single on July 7, 2016, accompanied by a music video featuring Francis Farewell Starlite, Justin Vernon of Bon Iver and Kanye West.[1]
The song was sampled in Chance the Rapper's song "Summer Friends" from his 2016 mixtape Coloring Book.[2] "Friends" was sampled in "Summer Friends" before it was officially released independently as a single by Francis and the Lights.
Red Bull named it as the 15th best song of 2016.[3]
Francis and the Lights, Vernon and West collaborated again in 2019 on the song "Take Me to the Light."[4]
A music video for "Friends" was released on July 7, 2016.[5] The video was directed by Jake Schreier.[6] Knowing each other since childhood, Francis and Schreier have been making single-take, minimalist performance videos since 2008.[6] They wanted to do the next iteration of what they had been doing before.[6] In a 2016 interview, Schreier said, "We had never done a synchronized dance in a video or really had other protagonists in the video, so that's what we wanted to add to this one."[6]
Pitchfork named it as the 18th best music video of 2016.[7] NPR named it as one of the best music videos of 2016.[8]
| Chart | Peak position |
|---|---|
| US Spotify Velocity (Billboard)[9] | 13 |
| US Spotify Viral 50 (Billboard)[10] | 1 |