We Are Young

"We Are Young" is a song recorded by American pop rock band Fun, featuring American singer Janelle Monáe. It is the third track on the group's second studio album, Some Nights (2012). The song was released on September 20, 2011, as the lead single from the album. The song quickly received widespread acclaim from music critics, with many noting the song as a breakthrough for the indie genre and praising the song's catchiness. "We Are Young" attained commercial success worldwide, reaching number one in several countries.

Initially, the track gained only online media attention, in addition to its first commercial radio airplay on Tampa Bay alt radio station 97X, debuting on September 19, 2011. After this, it was soon covered by the television show Glee. With the Glee version having success on the charts, the song was licensed for use in a Chevrolet Sonic commercial that aired during Super Bowl XLVI. This song alone propelled the band into mainstream success, topping the digital charts in February 2012 and becoming a crossover hit. Peaking at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 through airplay on contemporary hit radio stations, the song topped the charts for six weeks straight. It is also the first song to log seven weeks of 300,000 or more in digital sales, surpassing a record previously held by Eminem and Rihanna's "Love the Way You Lie" (2010).

"We Are Young" has been certified Diamond by the Recording Industry Association of America and is both Fun and Monáe's first charting single on the Hot 100, as well as their first number-one single. The song has also been used in the American Dad! episode "Faking Bad". The song also topped the Hot 100 Airplay chart with 120 million impressions in seven weeks, becoming the first group since Destiny's Child's "Survivor" (2001) to do so. The song was named 99th on the Billboard Hot 100 Songs of All-time.

An accompanying music video was directed by Marc Klasfeld at David Sukonick Concert Hall in Los Angeles. It features the group performing on a stage at a bar where a riot breaks out. As part of the promotion for the song, it was performed at the 2011 Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, the American late night television show Conan, and was used as the opening song at the 2012 MTV Movie Awards. The song is featured in the music video game Rock Band Blitz. The song won the Grammy Award for Song of the Year at the 55th Grammy Awards, where it was also nominated for Record of the Year and Best Pop Duo/Group Performance.

After the poor commercial performance of their debut album, Aim and Ignite, Fun decided to put Jeff Bhasker as producer for their second studio effort. The band's frontman, Nate Ruess, met with Bhasker at his hotel in New York City in February 2011. Ruess was anxious about meeting Bhasker, so he arrived early at the bar in The Bowery Hotel on the Lower East Side "and had a little to drink just to make sure [he] was loosened up." According to Bhasker, he did not want to meet the band, as he "was working with Beyoncé, and also with Alicia, Kanye and Jay-Z, and doing this had been a big goal in my life. I had no intention of being distracted." Bhasker has stated that the instrumental for the song was "an inch" away from being included on West and Jay-Z's collaborative album Watch the Throne (2011).

Bhasker had just finished a long day in the studio with Beyoncé and had decided to give Ruess 10 minutes. He had previously already canceled two meetings with him. The two began talking about music, and Ruess' desire to merge hip-hop beats and electronic effects with pop rock intrigued Bhasker, who invited Ruess up to his hotel room to show him some Beyoncé tracks he had been working on. "Slightly tipsy and feeling inspired", Ruess belted out the chorus for "We Are Young", which at that time was an unfinished composition. Bhasker was taken aback and automatically "freaked out", demanding he see the band for studio time "in the next few days." The next day, Bhasker and Ruess booked a New York studio and cut a version of "We Are Young" not far from the final version of the track.

On the first day of recording at Jungle City, Bhasker programmed the drums on his Akai MPC3000, a Moog bass, and "maybe using my little Roland Juno-106, and we added vocals and piano. We worked for many more days on it afterwards, but the core of the final version of the song was recorded on that first day." After the Jungle City sessions, more vocal, guitar and piano tracks were recorded at Electric Ladyland Studios. From there, sessions continued at Enormous Studios in Los Angeles, the Village Recorder to track the children's choir, and Abbey Road Studios to record the orchestral arrangements. The band invited Janelle Monáe to provide guest vocals on "We Are Young" through her friendship with Bhasker. After being played the song, Monáe was enthused and recorded her vocals in Bristol, England. Bhasker further mixed the song in a 44.1 kHz/24-bit Pro Tools HD session over almost two weeks, and the stereo mix was mastered using an L2 limiter and an API 550 EQ.

When Bhasker multi-tracked Ruess' vocals for the chorus, he noticed that it "had a Queen/Freddie Mercury vibe to it." Guitarist Jack Antonoff called "We Are Young" the "bull's-eye center" of the sound the band was striving for while producing Some Nights. The song displays the influences brought by Jeff Bhasker and hip-hop music. Antonoff agreed with the notion that the song was their de facto anthem: "It's pretty rare, because any other projects that we've done, I don't think any of us have ever had that song that was like, 'This is our band,'" Antonoff said. "We're proud to say, 'Listen to this one song, and then come listen to the rest. Here it is.'"