Florida Georgia Line’s record-breaking “Meant to Be” collaboration with Bebe Rexha just earned another milestone. The song topped one billion streams on iHeartRadio, an almost unheard of accomplishment.
“Y’all this is wild!!” FGL gushed. “Thank you so much for listening and to iHeartRadio for playing the song. This song means so much to us.”
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“Meant to Be,” which became the longest-running No. 1 song, almost didn’t happen.
“We were just out in LA writing,” Hubbard recalled. “[We] reached out to some different artists and she hit us back at last minute and said, ‘Yeah I’ll come to the studio tonight.’ I don’t even think she knew we were going to write a song. I think she just thought we were going to hang out and meet and maybe schedule time to write. But me and the boys were ready to write.
“So we wrote that song in a couple of hours and she sang down the demo,” continued Hubbard of the song, which he wrote with Rexha, David Garcia and Josh Miller. “We left with the song pretty much the way it is on the radio, so it was a pretty awesome night. I think as songwriters that’s kind of what you live for. You know, there’s a lot of days that don’t unfold that way and don’t come that easy and sometimes the songs sort of falls out of the sky and it’s those writes that you kind of live for.”
Collaborating with Rexha inspired both Hubbard and Brian Kelley to consider other artists outside of their genre on future projects.
“Bruno Mars would be somebody that’d be amazing to spend a couple of days with in the studio and try to create something from nothing,” Brian Kelley acknowledged. “I think Rihanna would be cool. That’d be interesting. Be cool to hear our voices together.”
Perhaps “Meant to Be” inspired Florida Georgia Line to collaborate with another pop star, Jason Derulo. The soulful singer joins Hubbard and Kelley on “Women,” from their latest Can’t Say I Ain’t Country album. Rexha also joined Florida Georgia Line on Can’t Say I Ain’t Country, singing a country radio version of “Meant to Be.”
Florida Georgia Line is nominated once again for Vocal Duo of the Year at the 2019 ACM Awards. “Meant to Be” also earned three nods, for Single of the Year, Music Event of the Year and Song of the Year.
The 2019 ACM Awards will air live from the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas on Sunday, April 7 at 8 p.m. ET on CBS.
Photo Credit: Getty images/ Gustavo Caballero
