A real single behind a misleading digital trail
“Cry” was an official collaboration between Sigma—the British drum-and-bass duo of Cameron Edwards and Joe Lenzie—and Take That’s then-current trio of Gary Barlow, Howard Donald and Mark Owen. It was released by 3 Beat on May 20, 2016, a date confirmed by both the label’s distribution metadata and the Apple Music single listing. Take That’s own archive likewise places the partnership in May 2016.
That clarity matters because period forum posts and expired embedded players can make “Cry” look like a leak, web-only rarity or unofficial mash-up. It was none of those things. The recording received a commercial digital release, national-radio support and a label-issued video. Its billing varies by platform—usually “Sigma featuring Take That,” sometimes simply Sigma and Take That—but these are catalog conventions around the same authorized master.
The collaboration was unexpected without being arbitrary. Sigma had translated drum and bass into broad British pop with “Nobody to Love” and the Paloma Faith collaboration “Changing.” Take That, meanwhile, had continued as a trio after Jason Orange’s departure, retaining a gift for large-scale choruses. “Cry” met where those instincts overlapped: uplift, acceleration and a refrain designed for open-air crowds.
How the collaboration happened
The partnership did not begin as a calculated label stunt. Edwards told Official Charts that the acts had met roughly two years earlier at the BBC Music Awards and discussed working together, but their schedules failed to align. Later, a song with which Sigma had been involved reached Take That. The group recorded its own version and returned it to the duo, who approved what they heard.
That account also resolves a possible misconception about authorship. “Cry” was not merely an old Take That song given an electronic remix, nor a completed Sigma instrumental onto which a famous vocal was casually pasted. It evolved through contributions from both camps and a wider writing team. The published credits name Barlow, Donald and Owen alongside Edwards and Lenzie, Matt Furmidge, Dominic Liu, Sean McDonagh and Chiara Hunter. Sigma produced the master; Apple’s credits also identify Furmidge and Liu on keyboards and Rosie Danvers on strings.
Those strings are not decorative. They create the broad emotional horizon against which Sigma’s rolling rhythm operates. Barlow carries the most immediately recognizable lead, but Donald and Owen are credited vocalists, making this a Take That performance rather than a solo Barlow feature marketed under the group name.
The song also answered a practical need. According to Edwards, Take That wanted new material for their British Summer Time Hyde Park performance. That helps explain the record’s scale: it is arranged less like an underground club tool than a festival anthem, with tension accumulating toward a communal release.
What “Cry” sounds like
Musically, “Cry” compresses two established languages. Sigma supply quick breakbeat motion, electronic low end and the aerodynamic rise associated with mainstream drum and bass. Take That supply carefully stacked vocals, melodic reassurance and a chorus that turns emotional exposure into public spectacle.
The verses begin with drowning and surrender imagery, but the record does not remain submerged. Its production keeps pushing forward, converting vulnerability into momentum. That transformation is an interpretation of the arrangement, not a documented explanation from the writers, yet it accounts for the track’s peculiar emotional effect: the words admit collapse while the music refuses to stop moving.
The blend is smoother than the billing initially suggested. Sigma were already specialists in building pop records around distinctive singers, while Take That had repeatedly updated their production vocabulary after re-forming. Edwards described “Never Forget” as a favorite Take That song and connected its hands-in-the-air quality to Sigma’s own approach. “Cry” can be heard as an attempt to reproduce that collective rush through a 2016 dance framework.
Contemporary promotion called it a string-laden anthem combining Sigma’s beats with Take That’s vocals. That description appeared with the official 3 Beat video, published May 28. Filmed around Arena Essex Raceway, the visual emphasizes speed, machinery and physical impact rather than building a literal story from the lyric. Cars circle and collide while the performers occupy the same industrial environment—an efficient visual equivalent of two pop traditions meeting at velocity.
Release chronology and chart result
The sequence is straightforward. A preview appeared before release, and Official Charts reported the pairing as a forthcoming collaboration between acts with substantial chart histories. The digital single followed on May 20, 2016. The official video arrived eight days later. National airplay then placed Sigma in the unusual position of receiving support from both BBC Radio 1 and Radio 2, services that traditionally targeted different age profiles.
“Cry” entered the UK chart dated June 2 and peaked at number 21. The Official Charts song archive records eight weeks in the Top 100, plus peaks of number five on both the Singles Sales and Singles Downloads charts and number seven on the Dance Singles chart. Those component rankings reveal a record with a committed purchasing audience but comparatively modest streaming penetration: it reached only number 97 on the streaming chart.
That discrepancy helps explain why memories of the campaign can conflict. In sales terms, “Cry” performed like a substantial fan-driven release; on the combined singles chart, it stopped outside the Top 20. It was neither a blockbuster on the scale of the collaborators’ biggest hits nor an obscure promotional track. The precise description is a mid-level UK hit with strong download sales and broad radio compatibility.
Its place in both catalogs
Edwards said in 2016 that the track would definitely appear on Take That’s next album and might also reach Sigma’s second. In the event, “Cry” appeared on the deluxe edition of Take That’s 2017 album Wonderland. It did not become part of Sigma’s 2015 debut Life, despite later digital interfaces sometimes grouping recordings in ways that blur their original campaigns.
For Take That, the single bridged the trio’s III period and Wonderland. For Sigma, it extended a run of major-vocalist collaborations before “Find Me” with Birdy. Its chart peak was lower than Sigma’s two UK number ones, but “Cry” demonstrated something commercially useful: drum-and-bass production could move between youth-oriented and adult-pop radio without completely surrendering rhythmic identity.
The record’s most lasting interest is therefore structural. It joined a dance act and a veteran vocal group without treating either as a novelty guest. Take That sound like themselves; Sigma retain the pace and lift that defined their crossover work. “Cry” was an improbable meeting, but the documented chronology shows that it was planned, co-written, commercially issued and promoted by its rights holders. The dead embeds left behind by the 2016 internet are remnants of the campaign, not evidence that the song itself was unauthorized.