Cups (song)

"Cups (Pitch Perfect's 'When I'm Gone')" is a song that was performed by the American actress and singer Anna Kendrick in the 2012 film Pitch Perfect and released as part of an extended play (EP) titled More from Pitch Perfect. The song is based on the 1931 folk song "When I'm Gone", which was written by A. P. Carter. In the late 2000s decade, British musicians Heloise Tunstall-Behrens and Luisa Gerstein, performing as Lulu and the Lampshades, incorporated "When I'm Gone" into a cup-tapping routine. In Pitch Perfect, Kendrick's performance features a children's clapping game known as the cup game and uses coordinated tapping, clapping, and cup-passing as percussion. Republic Records released a remix titled "Pitch Perfect's When I'm Gone" as a single on March 26, 2013; it was accompanied by a music video directed by Jason Moore, on April 12, 2013. In the video, Kendrick appears as a waitress imagining customers around her joining in the cup-clapping routine. The song peaked at number six on the US Billboard Hot 100, giving Kendrick her first top-10 single in the United States. It also reached the top 30 in Canada, Ireland, the Netherlands, and New Zealand.