The third official identity of a global hit
“Sia feat. Nicky Jam Cheap Thrills Remix” refers to an authorized Spanglish adaptation released on June 17, 2016. It is neither a bootleg nor a mislabeled version featuring Sean Paul. Apple Music’s single page identifies the performers, date and copyright owner: Monkey Puzzle Records under exclusive license to RCA Records.
That release arrived six months after Sia’s original solo single and four months after the featured remix with Sean Paul. The order is important. Sia and Greg Kurstin first issued “Cheap Thrills” as a solo recording in December 2015; Sean Paul’s authorized version followed in February 2016 and became the principal configuration promoted to English-language radio. Nicky Jam’s remix then entered the campaign as a separate, Latin-facing adaptation while the song was already climbing internationally.
The label’s own metadata is unambiguous. The rights-holder upload on Sia’s official YouTube channel calls it “Cheap Thrills (Remix)” featuring Nicky Jam and was published on June 17. An additional label-supplied YouTube release carries the same date and copyright notice. These sources establish official status without relying on the numerous unofficial lyric videos and user reposts that subsequently circulated.
What changed—and what did not
The underlying composition was written by Sia Furler and Greg Kurstin, with Kurstin producing. The remix’s official metadata credits Sia and Nicky Jam as performers and identifies Furler and Kurstin as composer-lyricists. Shazam’s catalog entry likewise lists the June 17 release, Monkey Puzzle/RCA imprint and Kurstin production.
Nicky Jam’s Spanish material is a localized interpolation of the song’s party-night premise rather than a literal translation of every Sia line. He announces the recording as a Spanglish version, takes over the opening verse and adds rhythmic interjections around Sia’s familiar refrain. His section retains the central idea of dancing without money while changing the delivery from Sia’s clipped pop melody to conversational reggaeton phrasing.
The instrumental is not rebuilt into a wholly new club track. Kurstin’s pulse, bass framework and bright percussive accents remain recognizable. That makes “remix” accurate in the record-business sense—a new vocal configuration of an existing master concept—even though listeners expecting a radically altered tempo or beat may hear it as a bilingual feature edit.
It should also be distinguished from the Sean Paul version. Nicky Jam does not replace Sean Paul inside the same credited recording; the two guest editions exist separately. The Sean Paul remix includes his dancehall passages and received the dominant global single campaign. The Nicky Jam release supplies different vocals for another market conversation. Combining their credits would invent a three-artist version that was not the standard commercial single.
Why Nicky Jam made sense in June 2016
Nicky Jam was not a decorative crossover choice. By 2016, the American-born, Puerto Rico-raised artist had completed one of reggaeton’s most remarkable career revivals. His collaboration with Enrique Iglesias, “El Perdón,” had become an international success, and “Hasta el Amanecer” dominated Billboard’s Hot Latin Songs chart for an extended run. Billboard Brasil’s retrospective chart account documents how “Hasta el Amanecer” controlled the chart during the same year.
That momentum gave RCA and Monkey Puzzle a performer who could redirect “Cheap Thrills” toward Spanish-speaking audiences without making the adaptation sound like a translation exercise performed from outside Latin pop. Jam’s grainy, rhythmic singing also complements Sia’s vocal texture. Both performers favor audible friction over spotless tone, although they deploy it differently: Sia strains upward into a pop belt; Jam keeps his phrases lower and nearer speech.
As interpretation, the pairing changes the song’s social setting. Sia’s solo recording can sound like an interior pep talk before going out. Sean Paul makes it a dancehall exchange. Nicky Jam turns it into something closer to a bilingual radio invitation, addressing movement and attraction directly. The original anti-luxury premise remains, but the perspective becomes more communal.
A remix released during the song’s ascent
June 17 was strategic timing. “Cheap Thrills” was already a major European hit and approaching its American summit. The Official Charts archive records a No. 2 British peak and a lengthy chart residence. Weeks after the Nicky Jam remix appeared, the Sean Paul configuration reached No. 1 in the United States, giving Sia her first Hot 100 leader as a primary artist; Official Charts reported that milestone in July.
Those achievements should not be reassigned to Nicky Jam’s recording without version-specific chart evidence. Closely related remixes can contribute to a song’s combined chart consumption under certain methodologies, but the commercially identified U.S. No. 1 was Sia featuring Sean Paul. The Nicky Jam remix’s significance is cultural and strategic rather than a claim to the headline chart credit.
The timing also reflects how streaming-era campaigns extended a hit through multiple linguistic and regional entry points. Rather than waiting for an English-language single to decline, labels could introduce new guests while audience interest was at its height. The Nicky Jam version appeared as a one-track digital single, allowing playlists and radio programmers to choose it without replacing the album version.
Spotify’s release metadata preserves the June 17 date, while a French public-media catalog independently records the same publication day and Sony/Monkey Puzzle/RCA provenance in its library entry. The agreement across store, streaming, library and label-supplied video records leaves little basis for older pages that assign June 11 or describe an indeterminate leak. Regional storefront visibility or advance promotion may explain those stray dates, but June 17 is the documented commercial release.
The production’s bilingual resilience
“Cheap Thrills” accommodates guest versions because its harmonic and lyrical architecture is unusually modular. The refrain is short, immediate and repeated often enough to survive the substitution of a verse. Its underlying rhythm already draws from Caribbean pop vocabulary, yet the production leaves broad spaces where a guest can establish a different cadence.
Nicky Jam uses that room economically. He does not attempt to imitate Sia’s soaring line or compete through vocal volume. Instead, his opening makes the remix identifiable within seconds, and his ad-libs keep him present after Sia returns. The method resembles a relay more than a duet: one performer changes the record’s route before handing its central hook back to the other.
There is a legitimate cultural question around global pop’s habit of recruiting Latin artists to regionalize an established hit. Such releases can reduce collaborators to market signals. Here, however, the musical fit is more convincing than the corporate logic alone would suggest. Jam translates the song’s governing attitude—pleasure without wealth—into his own rhythmic language and supplies enough new performance to alter its character.
A small release with a precise place in the story
The Nicky Jam remix never displaced the solo album track, the Maddie Ziegler performance film or the Sean Paul single in public memory. It also did not receive a bespoke narrative music video; the relevant official media is an audio presentation. Those limitations should be stated rather than converted into an inflated “lost hit” story.
Its value lies in what it documents. In June 2016, “Cheap Thrills” was becoming less a fixed master than a flexible international pop framework. One composition could support Sia’s solitary performance, Sean Paul’s dancehall intervention and Nicky Jam’s Spanglish recasting while remaining instantly recognizable.
The remix is therefore not unreleased, leaked or fan-made, and it is not the Sean Paul hit under an alternate credit. It is a concise, officially licensed branch of the campaign—released at exactly the moment English-language pop and reggaeton were discovering how profitably, and sometimes how naturally, they could share the same beat.