Rita Ora On Creating “Ask & You Shall Receive,” Working With RAYE | How It Went Down | Billboard
In today's episode of 'How It Went Down,' Rita Ora shares how she collaborated with RAYE on “Ask & You Shall Receive,” her movie inspiration for the music video and more!
Category
🎵
MusicTranscript
00:00What's up? I'm Rita Ora, and this is how it went down for Ask and You Shall Receive.
00:14I got the demo sent to me in my email from Ray, who is my Brit icon queen.
00:20The song felt really uplifting, super great for the summer.
00:24My last record was all about love, and so I wanted this one to be very easy.
00:29You know, and uplifting and vibey.
00:32Ask and You Shall Receive, it's such a famous mantra, and it's exactly where I was at,
00:36and how I feel about life recently.
00:38Like, you know, if you want something, you gotta go get it, you gotta ask for help,
00:42and that's what this song's about. It's about being cheeky, feeling fun,
00:45and so that really resonated with me.
00:54The recording process was pretty great. I worked with my guy Cam, who records everything for me.
00:58There was a lot of words as you listen to this song, and a lot of, like, runs.
01:03I tried to add on as many sort of stacks on the harmonies as I could,
01:06and then Ray was sort of, like, coming in with her little bits and bobs,
01:10and I was like, how can we mesh our two worlds together?
01:13And so that's what we did. We meshed all of our vocals together,
01:16and it just feels really kind of, like, milky and nice.
01:20So when I recorded it, I felt like this was a fun song.
01:23I knew the festivals were gonna love it, I knew that when I performed it live,
01:26like, everyone was gonna be like, woo! That, for me, is my first test,
01:29and so I kind of really just went with my gut on this one.
01:33I never really try to put pressure on myself to figure out, like, oh my gosh, is this gonna be a hit?
01:38It's just all about your instinct and how you feel about it.
01:46Being in a washing machine was fun. First of all, you gotta find a big enough one.
01:49Now, I do not recommend it, anyone watching this. Don't try and get into your washing machine, please.
01:53I went to the laundry mat where they shot everything everywhere all at once.
01:57I wanted this video to be a bit weird, like, not a typical pop video.
02:01You know, you've got people in there doing their laundry, and they're, like, sewing up their arm,
02:05and they're, like, drinking out of the laundry basket.
02:07Like, everything is a bit like, what's happening?
02:10The theme that I wanted for the song and the video was that it's a pop record when you listen to it,
02:15but when you watch it, it's a bit like a Harley Quinn sort of movie
02:19that is leading into something like an auraverse of, I don't know, weirdness and darkness,
02:24which is a great introduction to more songs coming from my new record.
02:28Everything's gonna be a bit left, musically and visually,
02:31so check out the second video, because it's about to be crazy.