Sia, Sean Paul’s ‘Cheap Thrills’ Is Certified 8X Platinum By The RIAA

Dancehall superstar Sean Paul and Australian singer-songwriter Sia have gained one more accolade for their 2016 song Cheap Thrills.

The single was certified 8x Platinum on Wednesday (January 12) by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) after it reached the sales and streaming equivalent of 8,000,000 units sold in the United States.

Produced by Greg Kurstin, Cheap Thrills ascended from No. 3 to the No. 1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100, unseating Canadian rapper Drake’s One Dance which featured WizKid and Kyla, and which had held the top spot for 10 weeks.  The song, which formed part of Sia’s seventh studio album, This Is Acting, was later nominated at the 59th Annual Grammy Awards for the Best Pop Duo/Group Performance Award.

“It’s so great to see the success that Cheap Thrills has had, and continues to have all around the world.  It was a song that we definitely liked.  Sean always wanted to do a song with Sia and we were really happy when it went to No. 1,” Sean Paul’s manager Steve “Urchin” Wilson told DancehallMag.

Cheap Thrills was Sia’s first Billboard No. 1 song, and also marked Sean’s fourth top song, and his first chart-topper in 10 years.  The success of Cheap Thrills gave Sia the distinction of becoming the first woman over 40 years old to top the Billboard Hot 100 since Madonna topped the Hot 100 with Music in 2000.

The song’s lyric video, released in February 2016, has over 1.6 billion views on YouTube.

Interestingly, it was originally written for Rihanna’s Anti album, whose Diamonds, Sia had also co-written.  However, it was rejected and Sia had ended up recording it herself for her own This Is Acting album which entirely featured songs she had originally written for other superstars and which were ultimately rejected, according to Billboard.

Cheap Thrills is not the only Sia song nearing a Diamond certification.

On January 12, 2022, Chandelier, from her sixth studio album 1000 Forms of Fear, was also certified 9X Platinum for sales exceeding 9,000,000 units in the United States.

Meanwhile, on November 5, 2021, Sean Paul and Sia, who have still not met face-to-face, released visuals for their second collaboration Dynamite.

Wilson said they were hoping to capture the same success with the new single, which is expected to appear on Sean Paul’s upcoming Island Records album dubbed Scorcher.

“We’re just glad to get a chance to be able to do another song with her, which is Dynamite, which is out right now.  So we’d love to see that duplicate the success,” the manager said.

The Temperature deejay, today, announced the release of two Dynamite remixes.

One version features British rapper Miss Lafamilia, while the other sees a Nelsaan spin.

The official music video for the original has racked up over 4.5 million views on YouTube in just over two months.