Free (Ericka Streets song)

Free is a single by Ericka Streets, released on 11th June 2006 as the lead single from First Call for Global Success. It is known for being Streets’ most successful single, and is often referred as her signature song.

Background
Free was the first song Streets wrote for the First Call for Global Success album in September 2003. The song was written entirely by Streets herself, who claimed that writing the song took over a month.

Free was produced by independent producer Young Seedee. Talking about the song’s instrumental, Streets said ''”I approached Young [Seedee] in February of 2004. I literally just said hi, showed him the lyrics of the song, sang the song to him and asked him to make a song out of it.” Young Seedee said in another interview ”I was shocked when I was told that Ericka Streets wanted to see me. When she asked me to produce the song for her, I was stressed out. I told her to give me two weeks, so she came back a fortnight later and... yeah, that’s it. I didn’t ask for much in return. I wasn’t expecting the song to get anywhere near as popular as I thought it would.”''

Music video
The music video takes place in the studios for Kickstart and Pop and Don't Stop. According to Streets, the video was recorded from September to October 2005, on a very low budget. Before the video premiered on Z Bop in April 2006, an unedited version was leaked on YouTube in January that year.

Critical reception
Free received generally negative reviews from critics, who criticised Streets’ singing and songwriting talent.

The other language versions recieved near-exclusively negative reviews from critics, who criticised Streets' pronounciation and accent. To these reviews, Streets replied, ''“I cannot speak those languages. They are too hard for me”''. The Russian version was especially critiqued, due to Streets only singing “about ⅓” of the song.

Other languages
Due to its international popularity, Streets recorded versions of the song in Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian, German, Dutch, Russian, Japanese, Vicnoran, Mandarin and Cantonese. However, only the first verse and chorus were translated into those languages. It should be noted that Russian, Mandarin and Cantonese were not sung fully by Streets, due to her finding the languages “far too hard”.

In popular culture
The song was referenced in Zara Dawson's parody of "Let It Go", titled "F*ck It All".

Track listing

 * 1) "Free"
 * 2) "Free" (instrumental)
 * 3) "Free" (extended mix)

Lyrics
Main article: Free (Ericka Streets song)/Lyrics

[undecided] version
In 2013, [undecided] decided to cover the song.