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Rita Ora‘s latest hit “Praising You” is a reworking of Fatboy Slim‘s 1999 global hit “Praise You.” But Rita says it took her about a year to get Fatboy Slim — born Norman Cook — to agree to let her do it.
Speaking to Glamour UK, Rita says she was eight years old when “Praise You” came out, and she associates it with good memories. “My parents were good at throwing parties,” she recalls. “They’d have friends come over and I remember this song playing. It was just the happiest song ever.”
Then, about a year ago, Rita met Cook at the U.K.’s famed Glastonbury Festival, and told him, “I love you, I’d love for us to do something together one day.”
“It was 2.30 a.m….I wouldn’t say it was the best place to have a business conversation,” Rita continues. “I got his number and basically stalked him..I was like, ‘Please, if anyone can pull this off, I think it can be me.’”
“I know he’d been asked for years by other people,” she notes, but believes Cook said yes because “we built a genuine connection.”
“I wrote a song with ‘Praise You’ in mind and sent it to him; he came back and said he loved it,” she explains.
Rita also built a “genuine connection” with her new husband, Oscar-winning director Taika Waititi: They were friends for five years before they took their relationship to the next level.
“We were worried we would ruin what we had,” she tells Glamour. “But it was amazing.” They married last summer in a top-secret ceremony attended only by Rita’s sister, Taika’s two daughters and her parents on Zoom.
“I wanted to keep it private because my life and my career aren’t, she explains. “It was a dream.”
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