Empire Of The Sun’s 2008 hit “We Are The People,” featured on Walking On A Dream, has joined Spotify’s Billions Club. The song marks the Australian duo’s third song to achieve the landmark, following the title track from Walking On A Dream and “The Spins,” a collaboration with the late Mac Miller.
The band discussed the track as part of Vevo’s Footnotes series back in May, shortly after the song received a boost thanks to a viral resurgence on TikTok. The band’s Lord Littlemore (Nick Littlemore) had an idea why the song found renewed success with a different audience: “It is pure of heart,” he explained in the video.
Littlemore and his bandmate Emperor Steele (Luke Steele) told Vevo that the song was partially inspired by their need to bring more innovation to the modern music world. “At the time it felt like the landscape of music had lost a lot of its mystically. We are dreamers and trippers and we wanted to lean into that,” Littlemore explained. Added Steele, “We spend a lot of time searching, gathering, asking for the songs that are meant to be sung, I think that comes through to the listener.”
For the “We Are The People” video, the band traveled to northern Mexico to shoot the video in the Icamole Desert. “We then traveled to the Lost Gardens of Las Pozas in Xilitla,” Steele said. “Incredible, magical, enormous butterflies, waterfalls, surrealist sky-high sculptures: this untouched paradise was made for us and this song.”
When the shoot ended, Littlemore and Steele made friends with people who lived in the area, and some of that footage made its way into the video. “They were holding the Day of the Dead and it was a beautiful syncopated celebration between us all,” Steele added.
The song has been certified 7x Platinum in the band’s home country of Australia, while in New Zealand the song is 3x Platinum.
Shop Empire of the Sun’s music on limited edition vinyl and CDs.
