Never Say Never
by Justin Bieber (featuring Jaden Smith)

Album: The Karate Kid Soundtrack (2010)
Charted: 34 8
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Songfacts®:

  • This is the official theme song for the 2010 remake of The Karate Kid. The song is performed by Justin and the 11-year-old son of actor Will Smith, Jaden Smith., who stars in the role made famous by Ralph Macchio in the original classic 1984 movie.
  • Justin and Jaden, together with Adam Messinger, Nasri Atweh, Thaddis "Kuk" Harrell and Omarr Rambert penned the song. Messinger, and Atweh frequently write together and their other credits also include "Up" and "That Should Be Me" on My World 2.0. They also co-wrote Chris Brown's 2009 single,"Crawl." Harrell was the vocal producer on the Canadian pop singer's debut release, "One Time."
  • Unlike Justin's other songs, which tend to be about puppy love, this tune has an inspirational message: "I never had the strength to take it higher, until I reached the point of no return. Gonna give everything I have/It's my destiny/I will never say never," he sings.
  • This was the fifth single released in tandem with a Karate Kid movie to reach the Hot 100. The previous four to do so were:

    1984 "The Moment of Truth," Survivor, #63

    1986 "Glory of Love," Peter Cetera, #1

    1986 "Earth Angel," New Edition, #21

    1986 "This Is the Time," Dennis DeYoung, #93.
  • Justin recorded a short video for the unplugged version of the song, which was included on his acoustic album, My World's Acoustic. The clip features the teen star singing from a baseball diamond and he told MTV News that he wanted to make the video for the World Series as he's a big sports fan. "For 'Never Say Never,' it's kind of like a really inspiring song, so I think that, you know, for people watching it, I guess it's really inspiring. I mean, I love sports," explained Justin.
  • After spending five weeks on the Hot 100 in June and July 2010, the song was reworked to radio as an accompanying single for Justin's 3D documentary concert film Never Say Never. As a consequence, it returned to the chart in early 2011.
  • Jaden's lines reference his father when he puns, "raised by the power of Will." He also makes references to Luke Skywalker and Kobe Bryant.
  • The song was re-released as the lead single from Never Say Never – The Remixes, which accompanied Justin's concert film Never Say Never. The album debuted at #1 on the Billboard 200 issue dated March 5, 2011. Justin also had albums placed at #8, 18 and 31 in that week's chart, making him the first artist to place four albums in the Top 40 concurrently since Garth Brooks in 1993.
  • This was originally conceived as a far more sultry song, titled "Sexy Together." It was originally demoed back in 2010 by former NLT boy band member Travis Garland in the beginning stages of his solo career with the strikingly different lyrics. "We're so sexy together, when we touch hotter than summer weather. No one else does it better, and know that everybody wants what we got, we're sexy together."

    Garland recalled to MTV News: "The story behind that is that was a song I wrote with a production team called the Messengers it was called 'Sexy Together' and I actually cut the song. Eventually decided it wasn't right for me and I wasn't going to use it, so I said go ahead and shop it for somebody else, and so they ended up just rewriting my lyrics and then selling it to Justin Bieber for his movie."

Comments: 1

  • Siahara Shyne Carter from United States (2010) I was only 10 years old. That time and JB is so Famous in Youtube

    Never say Never is also Karate Kid's Theme Song? If I'm right
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