The concept of “Perfect Isn’t Pretty” is a universal truth, whether you’re a world-class Olympian or an individual endlessly devoted to your craft. To achieve success requires investing countless hours, leaping nearly impossible hurdles and defying critics to become one of few successful elite. In order to mirror our athletes’ narrative in the music world, we chose to pull back the curtain on the difficult process of writing and producing a song. We created the rare opportunity to collaborate on an ideal song for our film, pairing world-renowned singer-songwriter Sia, with Grammy Award-winning producer, Ariel Rechtshaid, rap legend, Pusha T, and to reflect the global impact of the film, Brazilian marching band powerhouse, Olodum. In a companion piece to the anthem, each artist elucidated their own struggles as they fought for success and found that perfection wasn’t always pretty.

As Gillette began work on this campaign, our first step was to research what music would sound like two years in the future as ideation began nearly 18 months prior to the Olympic games. After speaking with some of the world’s most successful songwriters, artists and managers, we discovered that Sia was working on a new album. When she read the brief, she let our team hear a demo she had written while recording her new album. The lyrics worked perfectly and, after a few tweaks, we were able to license a vocal stripe which was given to Ariel Rechtshaid, fresh off a Grammy win, to work his magic. Olodum recorded abroad and we got the chance to incorporate their efforts into the overall sound. The song was released by Sia as an official remix to coincide with the launch of our campaign.

When “Perfect Isn’t Pretty” launched, top music industry publications like Billboard, UPROXX, Pitchfork, Paper Mag and Fuse quickly picked it up with praise for the never-before-heard remix of Sia’s “Unstoppable.” With over 3.5 billion PR impressions and 255 million social impressions globally, the film crossed over into trade publications with a highlight on the music collaboration. To help support and amplify the track, Sia pushed out communication on her social channels to millions of her followers. With headlines such as “The Sia Song in Gillette’s Olympics Commercial Could Totally Have Been The Rio Anthem,” the positive responses showed that not only did the track help promote the campaign but it clearly resonated with the Olympics overall. With this masterfully produced track, we anticipated “song please” requests in the comment section of YouTube so we made the track available on Spotify, Apple Music and Soundcloud for streaming and download.