Flo Rida's "Right Round" dominated the Billboard Hot 100 for six consecutive weeks in 2009. What most people don't know is that one of its songwriters was Bruno Mars — before the world knew who he was. One night in a car, throwing out '80s ideas with a friend, he helped write what would become his first major hit as a songwriter.
An '80s Sound Born in a Car
In 2009, Bruno Mars and Philip Lawrence were sitting in a car, listening to beats and "throwing out '80s ideas." With them was Flo Rida's A&R man Aaron Bay-Schuck, who heard the shuffle beat and immediately thought of Dead or Alive's 1985 classic "You Spin Me Round (Like A Record)." "It was almost something we had accidentally written in the car one night just hanging out," Lawrence later recalled.
Bruno Mars described the song as the first "big hit" his songwriting team, The Smeezingtons, had the chance to write. He had just signed to Atlantic Records that year, and the world still didn't know his name. But a song shaped by his hand already had something different about it.
Kesha's Voice, and an Uncredited Feature
There's another hidden layer to this song: the female rap section was performed by Kesha. She too was unknown at the time, and when the song was first officially released, her name didn't appear in the credits. Only after Kesha became a superstar with "Tik Tok" was the credit belatedly corrected. "Right Round" in 2009 was genuinely a gathering of stars-in-waiting — none of them yet famous, all of them about to be.
"It was almost something we had accidentally written in the car one night just hanging out."— Philip Lawrence on writing "Right Round"
Upon release, the song debuted at number one on the Hot Digital Songs chart with 636,000 downloads — instantly breaking the record set just the previous week by Eminem, Dr. Dre, and 50 Cent's "Crack a Bottle" (418,000 downloads). It then held the Billboard Hot 100 for six consecutive weeks.
Bridging the '80s and the Digital Age
The song's core strategy was sampling Dead or Alive's "You Spin Me Round," combining club music energy with a synth-pop hook from the '80s. In a chart landscape dominated by R&B and hip-hop, it created an instantly distinctive sound. Combined with the rising tide of digital downloading, "Right Round" became a symbol of the new era of music consumption.
Bruno Mars has gone on to write countless hits since. But the fact that he helped shake up the charts — before anyone knew his name, just throwing out ideas in a car one night — remains one of pop music's great backstories. Great things often start in the most ordinary moments.
