Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has appeared on Billboard’s charts, after featuring in Brad Paisley‘s new single ‘Same Here.’
Paisley’s ‘Same Here’ has entered the all-genre Digital Song Sales chart (dated March 11) at Number 7 with 5,000 downloads sold between February 24 to March 2.
The track, Paisley’s co-written first release on Universal Music Group Nashville’s EMI Nashville Records, also begins on Country Digital Song Sales at No. 3, according to Billboard.
Featuring a spoken section from the Ukrainian leader, the song benefits United24, a charitable program to restore Ukrainian homes destroyed during the ongoing Russian invasion (which began February 24, 2022, a year to the day before the song’s release).
“The label [was] so great about it, realizing this isn’t going to be the feel-good hit of the year and this isn’t going to be something that’s going to work long-term at radio, [that it’s] not going to research,” Paisley told Billboard, noting that there will not be a radio edit without Zelensky.
“I thought, ‘Would President Zelensky like to have the last couple of minutes and have a discussion with me on the ways we’re the same?’ This needs to exist in whatever form we can present it.”
Notably, other political leaders have used their platforms to appear on recordings, also resulting in Billboard chart placements.
In December 2015, the United States President Barack Obama, then in his second term in office, reached No. 10 on the (now-defunct) Billboard Twitter Emerging Artists chart as featured on JX Cannon’s “Pop Off.”
The track was built upon Obama’s G20 Summit speech in Turkey that November in which he mused, “If folks want to pop off and have opinions on what they think they would do, present a specific plan.”
