Prima Donna (song)

"Prima Donna'" is a single by Antarctican recording artist Cadence. It was released as the title track and lead single off her fifth studio album Prima Donna (2017). It was recorded in August 2016 and released on New Years Day 2017 for digital download on iceTunes, a month before the release of the album. The song was produced by mentor and long-time collaborator DJ Crow, who also assisted in songwriting along with Cadence herself, Yusei, TrillBron, Nevim and Anna Ice. Lyrically the song is about Cadence embracing and showing off her diva persona, engaging in a fierce vocal performance over the dance-pop and hip hop-infused instrumental.

It is Cadence's first solo song to be released in two years, following the last single released, "Cheques", off her previous album 4th Note (2015). Commercially the song performed well, topping the charts in Club Penguin, USA, UnitedTerra, Shops Island and Snowzerland while hitting the top 5 elsewhere in Antarctica.

Background
In June 2015, Cadence released her fourth album 4th Note. Cadence returned to a relatively pop sound with elements of numerous genres. DJ Crow returned to executive-produce for Cadence. In general the album was considered to be relatively weak for Cadence's standards, although it did receive credit for containing some of her catchiest material. Many felt that executive producer DJ Crow was losing his touch when producing this one. This was because the artists were taking a much more simplistic and mainstream approach to the record. Cadence promised for her next album to be much more polished.

"Prima Donna" is the first time Cadence has included a title track on an album, meaning a song that has the same name as the album itself. It was the third song to be recorded for the album after "Bright Out" and "(Lost In) Paradise". Once it was recorded it was always intended to be put out as the lead single, as it was the song that eventually inspired the name of the album and several lyrical themes of it.

Composition
Sonically, DJ Crow aimed to recapture the styles that he created on Cadence's third album Tempo (2012), which was critically praised. "Prima Donna" incorporates elements of dance-pop and hip hop to fuse into dance-hop, a relatively new genre that Crow pioneered and one that Cadence has become famous for. The song is 4 minutes 5 seconds long and instrumentally the song contains a relatively straightforward yet catchy beat led by drums and synths.

Commercial performance
"Prima Donna" entered the Antarctican Hot 100 at number 1, selling over 200,000 downloads in its first week of release. It was the first number 1 of the year and became Cadence's 12th number 1 single in the USA. In addition it also entered at the summit on the CP Singles Chart, UnitedTerra Singles Chart, Swiss Ninja's Top 100 and Shops Island's Bubbling Singles. In every other chart it either entered or peaked within the top 5. In March 2017 the song was certified Platinum for reaching units of 1 million sales.