Robin Schulz built his remix of “Prayer in C” off a CD, a physical copy of a nearly unknown 2010 album by a French duo named Lilly Wood and the Prick. It’s the kind of quiet discovery that happens in bedrooms and studios everywhere and almost never leaves the room. This one didn’t stay quiet for long. The song belonged to Nili Hadida and Benjamin Cotto, two Paris musicians who met outside a cafe in 2006 and started writing together under that name.
A folk song built for one room, not a festival
“Prayer in C” first appeared on Hadida and Cotto’s 2010 debut album, “Invincible Friends,” Hadida’s haunting, goose-bump vocal over Cotto’s wistful acoustic guitar. In France, the duo were already stars: their album went double platinum, and one of its other tracks, “Into Trouble,” turned up in a television commercial for Cartier. Outside France, almost nobody had heard “Prayer in C” at all.Schulz was already having a big year. The DJ, producer and label owner, who runs Lausbuben Records out of Osnabruck, Germany, had months earlier watched his remix of Mr. Probz’s “Waves” knock Pharrell Williams off the top of the German charts and climb to number 24 on the global iTunes chart. His own tracks were already racking up serious numbers on SoundCloud, one remix alone passing 1.2 million plays. For “Prayer in C,” he kept Hadida’s voice and Cotto’s guitar exactly as they were and laid a straight, driving house beat underneath them. Then he gave it away for free.
A free download that a record label was not thrilled about
The bootleg remix started circulating as a free download, a move that reportedly did not sit well with Wagram Music, which held the rights to the original recording. It didn’t stay free for long either. On June 6, 2014, “Prayer in C (Robin Schulz Remix)” was officially released through Tonspiel and Warner Music Group, and a song that had spent four years living quietly on a French album took off. It reached number one in Germany, the United Kingdom, France and more than a dozen other countries, and was later certified Diamond in Germany, three times platinum in the UK and five times platinum in Australia. It became the opening track on “Prayer,” Schulz’s own debut album, released September 19, 2014.
The dog in the credits
The official credits list a director, a cinematographer, a producer and an editor. Then one more line, unexplained: “The Dog: Don.”It started as a track on a CD, in a German producer’s hands. It ended up the second most Shazamed song in the world, behind only “Dance Monkey.”
