Her producer at SONY told Rudaw he knew the story of Helly Luv before organizing a meeting with her for the single.
“They called me from Erbil and asked me to do something, a new project, with Ardian Bujupi,” he said.
“And then I said of course because I knew the story of Helly Luv before. I knew the hard times of Helly because I’ve got a lot of Kurdish friends and they told me the hard story about Helly and the last few years.”
Luv won fame in 2013 for her first music video 'Risk It All' which was also filmed in Kurdistan. In that video, a veiled Luv in a sparkly dress threw a Molotov cocktail, draped herself over lions, and danced in front of Erbil’s citadel.
Luv was born Hellan Abdullah in 1988 in an Iranian refugee camp to Iraqi Kurdish parents. Her mother had been a Peshmerga fighter before she was married.
The SONY producer said Helly has a “very special” voice for a female vocalist and said it was the “best video project” he has done in his seven year career in music.
Kostas Karagiozidis, a producer and recording engineer, told Rudaw: “It was a pleasure to work with Helly together because she is a very humble person. And it was very easy and nice to work with her. She was always full of smiles.”
Karagiozidis says this track is something that brings the two unique voices together.
“To do something that fits her voice and Ardian’s voice,” he said. “So I had to bring those two together in a modern arrangement. And they worked pretty well together.”
Bujupi says he and Helly were friends even before embarking on this joint project.
“We kept in touch all the time,” he said.
