Play Hard

"Play Hard" is a song by French DJ and record producer David Guetta featuring vocals from American singers Ne-Yo and Akon. It was released on 15 March 2013 as the third single from the 2012 re-release of Guetta's fifth studio album, Nothing but the Beat (2011). This is the third collaboration between Guetta and Akon since "Sexy Bitch" in 2009 and "Crank It Up" in 2011. All three artists co-wrote the song along with Frédéric Riesterer and Giorgio Tuinfort, both of whom produced the song with Guetta. It features a prominent synthesizer riff sampled from the 1998 song "Better Off Alone" by Dutch Eurodance project Alice Deejay; as a result, Sebastiaan Molijn and Eelke Kalberg are credited as songwriters.

"Play Hard" peaked at number six on the UK Singles Chart, thus becoming his fourteenth top 10 hit in the UK as a lead artist. It also charted within the top 10 of the charts in several other countries including Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Luxembourg, Poland, Scotland, Slovakia, South Korea, Spain and Switzerland; as well as the top 20 in Australia, Denmark, Finland, Iceland and New Zealand.

Music video
An official music video was uploaded to Guetta's official Vevo channel on April 22, 2013. The video uses the New Edit version of the song. Directed by Swede Andreas Nilsson, it generated controversy for its stereotypical portrayal of Mexico. The video and an advertisement from Neon Mixr feature the popular dancers, Les Twins. The video has over 1.1 billion views as of August 2023.

Sampling controversy
The song prominently samples the synthesizer riff of the 1998 song "Better Off Alone" by Dutch Eurodance project Alice Deejay. Therefore, Sebastiaan Molijn and Eelke Kalberg, the writers of the song and members of the group, are credited as songwriters. However, the song's sample was the subject of plagiarism. In 2016, Julie Sprankles included the song on her list "31 songs you didn't know were (allegedly) plagiarized" for the magazine SheKnows, saying that the song "heavily" samples "Better Off Alone". In her listing, she also stated that the song made her consider the question: "How much sampling is too much sampling?".