The Prayer

When the Coronavirus aka COVID-19 aka SARS-CoV-2 hit the world in early 2020 as a pandemic with over two million infected people and over 150,000 deaths (as of April 19, 2020), people were ordered to stay at home except to buy groceries or see the doctor and most of the world economy was shut down.

With the schools closed, fourteen year old Savanna Shaw, who had not been active on social media, asked her father if she could have an Instagram account to communicate with her friends who were stuck at home. He said yes and they soon posted their first video on YouTube on March 6, 2020 of the two of them singing "The Prayer" as a duet. In less than a month it had over 4 million views and they posted more videos.

"The Prayer" is a song by Canadian singer Celine Dion and Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli. It was written by David Foster, Carole Bayer Sager, Alberto Testa and Tony Renis.

"The Prayer" was originally recorded in two solo versions for the 1998 film Quest for Camelot, in English by Dion and in Italian by Bocelli. A duet between Dion and Bocelli later appeared on their respective studio albums, These Are Special Times (1998) and Sogno (1999), and was released as a promotional single on 1 March 1999.

"The Prayer" won a Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Song in 1999 and a Grammy Award for Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals in 2000. It received positive reviews from music critics and entered adult contemporary charts in Canada and the United States in 1999.

In 2008, a live version of "The Prayer," sung by Josh Groban and Celine Dion on Dion's February 15 CBS-TV special became Groban's highest charting single, when it entered the Hot 100 at #70. His previous highest ranking had been the #73 peak of his "You Raise Me Up," in April 2004.

On the 2019 series of America's Got Talent: The Champions singer Marcelito Pomoy, who can sing in both female and male "voices", sang "The Prayer" as a "duet" on his first appearance. He advanced through the Semi-Finals to the Finals where he came in second.