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It\u2019s nice to have friends in high places, as students and faculty of Toronto\u2019s non-profit Regent Park School of Music (RPSM) found out August 23, 2019. That\u2019s the day when Taylor Swift\u2019s new album Lover<\/em> dropped, and the RPSM team found out that one of the songs \u2014 \u201cIt\u2019s Nice To Have A Friend\u201d \u2014 samples one of their recordings.<\/p>\n Having a credit on a track of the fastest-selling album of the year has catapulted the student choir into pop culture history, and opened up a stream of royalty revenues that will be used to finance the school into the future.<\/p>\n The RPSM team, including 14 students, had no idea beforehand whether or not any of the tracks would be used.\u00a0 RPSM\u2019s executive director Richard Marsella, currently pursuing his PhD in music education at the University of Toronto\u2019s Faculty of Music, is quoted in a UofT publication<\/a>. \u201cWe’re all pretty overjoyed and processing what the heck this thing is.\u201d<\/p>\n How did a Toronto school choir end up in a pop superstar\u2019s sights? The story begins with another Torontonian, producer to the stars Frank Dukes, who is working on a project he\u2019s calling the Kingsway Music Library. As part of that, he spent three days with RPSM students recording music for an album called Parkscapes<\/em>. The end result was 11 tracks, including \u201cSummer in the South,\u201d the one sampled on Swift\u2019s song. The song features vocals, steel pan, harp, vibraphones voices, and cello.<\/p>\n