Joy Crookes is extending the second life of Feet Don’t Fail Me Now by bringing Ravyn Lenae into the track, turning a five-year-old album cut into a fresh collaboration at the exact moment its streaming numbers are accelerating again.
Originally released on Crookes’ debut album Skin, the song has recently reached a new lifetime peak of one million daily streams and passed 315 million total streams.
Its resurgence also shows how catalogue tracks can keep moving long after their original campaign has ended. Inclusion in FIFA 22 connected the song with football culture, while its renewed streaming momentum has now created room for a new version rather than a conventional reissue.
Ravyn Lenae joins the record following the success of Love Me Not, which reached No.5 on the Billboard Hot 100 and achieved 2x Platinum status, as well as the release of her third album Blue Island.
The collaboration adds another voice to a song whose original tension sits between fear, complicity and the decision to speak.
Crookes explains:
It’s written from the perspective of someone who finds it easier to remain complicit out of a fear of being cancelled… I hope the song encourages people to be a bit braver, whilst the [cancel culture] themes are clear in my head the chorus is universal – ‘man I guess I was scared, feet don’t fail me now, I got to stand my ground and though I’m down for trying, I am better in denial so I hush don’t make a sound’. Open up a dialogue, speak out, make mistakes – that’s okay and that’s how progress happens.