You can’t go anywhere this week without hearing 17 year old Sean Kingston’s smooth reggae track Beautiful Girls. Unfortunately – due to its lyrical content - also known The Suicide Song.

Beautiful Girls takes the bassline from Ben E. King’s Stand By Me and marries it with a cool, syncopated beat and some nice orchestration (especially at the end).

According to Kingston, the inspiration for the song is an old girlfriend who cheated on him with a close friend:

I was dating this girl for two years and she ended up cheating on me with one of my best friends, like a real close best friend. … Basically in the story of the track I am talking to her.

In keeping with the style of the song, the video for Beautiful Girls alternates between a modern, urban setting and an old style 60’s diner setting.

Nice track, and one of the stand-out songs of the summer despite the use of the dreaded vocoder!