Not often do you see the government of a country endorse a song by an artiste from another continent. This just goes to show how popular and widely influential Fireboy DML’s song Peru has become in such a short space of time.
Recently, it broke into the US Billboard Hot 100 at No. 79. A truly amazing accomplishment.
This comes after the record peaked at No. 2 on the UK Official Top 40. On January 24, 2022, the official UK charts announced that Fireboy is set to top the Official UK Top 40 soon with Peru Remix (the remix of the global sensation which featured Grammy-winning English superstar Ed Sheeran).
The official Instagram account for the charts wrote that, “Fireboy DML & Ed Sheeran are currently in the lead for this week’s Number 1 single, according to the Official Chart: First Look.”
Fireboy and Peru even shot a music video for the remix. The video was released on 24 December 2021. It was directed by Gabriella Kingsley, and shot in London, United Kingdom. The music video reached 1.9 million views, less than 24 hours after its release.
The song was nominated at the 7th annual African Entertainment Awards USA for Song of the Year. The government of the Republic of Peru endorsed the version with Sheeran, encouraging its citizens to listen to it.
The long road to the song’s success can be traced back to when the song was sent to SiriusXM’s show The Heat as they were the first to play it on 5 December 2021. Since then, the song continued to get more and more exposure until it caught the ears of Ed Sheeran.
The rest, as they say, was history. We already witnessed Wizkid and CKay break into the US Hot 100 recently before this recent Fireboy success. Hopefully, they’ll be the first of many to come from Africa.
And essentially, what all this means is that Nigeria could be earning as much as it’s getting from music exports as in oil and gas.
In the 1960’s United Kingdom finances were boosted by earnings from its top musicians such as Beatles and Rolling Stones when Beatlemanis swept through the Europe and the United States, rolling in dollars in their billions in the process.
