Review
Genre and Mood
Lilly Wood and The Prick wrote the song, and Robin Schulz turned it into a global hit with Prayer in C (Robin Schulz Radio Edit). The track fuses deep house, dance and folk roots, and its mood is melancholic, energetic and deeply bittersweet: a sad song you dance to with your eyes closed. It is a clear example of how a remix can change a song’s meaning without changing a word.
Song Summary
The lyric is bleak, a prayer about a world in trouble, sung by Nili Hadida in a cool, almost resigned voice. Robin Schulz keeps that voice and the looping acoustic guitar riff, then sets them over a bouncing deep house beat and a warm bassline. The contrast between the dark lyric and the bright, propulsive groove is what makes the remix so addictive. Schulz’s touch is light: he adds space, a gentle swing and a warm low end, and resists the temptation to overload the arrangement. The guitar riff, simple and instantly memorable, does the rest.
Musical Breakdown
The radio edit is concise and focused, building around the guitar riff and the vocal hook.
Intro
The plucked guitar riff opens the track, quickly joined by a soft kick and a rounded bass that set the bouncing tempo.
Verse 1
Hadida’s voice enters, cool and melancholic, telling its dark story over the steady groove.
Chorus
The hook arrives with the full beat and the guitar riff looping above it, sad and catchy in equal measure.
Main Section
An instrumental stretch lets the riff and the deep house groove take centre stage, the moment the track was clearly built for the dance floor.
Outro
The riff and beat fade together, leaving a lingering sense of melancholy.
Concepts in Focus
This is the remix as transformation. The 2010 original is a stripped-back folk-pop song; Schulz kept Hadida’s vocal and the guitar figure and replaced everything around them with a house beat and bassline. The words are the same, but the song now lives on dance floors and summer radio, and for most listeners the remix simply is the song. Compare The Avener, Ane Brun – To Let Myself Go, part of the same mid-2010s wave of folk voices on deep house beats.
The track’s identity is its riff: a short, plucked acoustic guitar phrase repeated almost throughout. Because it is simple and slightly melancholic, it can loop for minutes without tiring, and it gives the track a hook before any word is sung. Listen to how the beat and bass are arranged to leave that riff in front.
This version is the radio edit, about three minutes long: a quick start, fewer repeats and the hook early, the shape radio and streaming playlists prefer. A longer club mix would spend more time on drums-only intros and outros for DJs; the edit gets straight to the riff and the voice.
Artistic Context
Lilly Wood and The Prick is a French duo of singer Nili Hadida and multi-instrumentalist Benjamin Cotto, who wrote the song together. The original “Prayer in C” appeared on their 2010 album Invincible Friends. The German DJ and producer Robin Schulz first shared his remix as a free download, which upset the song’s copyright owner, Wagram Music, before it was officially released on 6 June 2014 on Tonspiel and Warner; it later opened his debut album Prayer.
Impact and Reception
The remix became one of the biggest dance hits of 2014. It reached number one in France, Germany, the UK, Austria, Belgium and Denmark among others, topped the US Hot Dance/Electronic Songs chart and reached number 23 on the Billboard Hot 100, and was certified diamond in Germany and triple platinum in the UK. It made Robin Schulz an international name and became a template for a wave of similar summer remixes. It is here for that balance of sadness and sunlight. Let the guitar riff pull you in.
