The Grammy-winning pop song "We Are Young" almost didn't materialize as it was supposed to be for Jay-Z and Kanye West's 2011 collaborative album, Watch The Throne, Jack Antonoff revealed.
Speaking to Nardwuar, the former fun. guitarist revealed that the song's producer, Jeff Bhasker, was working with them, and with Jay-Z and West at the time.
"We were told that the chorus was taken and that Jay-Z and Kanye had made the song," Antonoff said in the interview. "The story, I heard, is that Jay-Z thought it was too pop, which he may have been right since it end[ed] up becoming a big pop song."
The Midnights producer revealed that "We Are Young" was part of the leaked tracklist of Watch The Throne in 2011. However, it was removed from the final lineup on the final days before the actual album release.
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Antonoff confirmed in the conversation that he had "never heard of the song."
"Someone at Roc Nation or someone down the line [said] - the one bit of information that I've got to hear of the Jay-Z version of 'We Are Young' is that he shouts something like, 'Lighters up. I'm the king of Bonnaroo, I'm the king of Coachella.'" Antonoff said about the rumors that he had heard about the song. "And I don't think I'll ever hear this song," added Antonoff. "And at this point, I don't want to."
In 2013, Bhasker told MTV News that he gave the beat to the duo with no intention of them wrapping on it.
"Everything gets changed at the last minute, he noted. "I was working with them on Watch the Throne when I met Nate [Ruess], and I said, 'Maybe you guys want to mess with this,' and he really liked it a lot. In the end, it didn't quite fit on [Watch the Throne] because it's a big pop song on an album they wanted to have an undergroundness and counter-culture sensibility."
Eventually, the song became a huge hit for fun., it launched at the No. 1 spot of the Billboard Hot 100 and has since been certified Diamond by the Recording Industry Association of America. It won the Grammy Award for Song of the Year at the 55th Grammy Awards and was even nominated for Record of the Year and Best Pop/Duo Group Performance.
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