![]() ![]() If you remember the man at all, you remember him for “Down,” a remarkably unremarkable piece of music. Today, Jay Sean’s name rings no bells, at least in the US. You couldn’t hang a career on a song like “Down.” ![]() But “Down” was always fated to be Jay Sean’s one big moment on the US charts. Through some fluke of timing and canniness, Jay Sean was able to do something that none of them could manage. Plenty of artists much more famous and distinctive than Jay Sean - Jamie Foxx, Taylor Swift, Miley Cyrus, Jay-Z, Jay Sean’s ascendant labelmate Drake - had seen their hits stall out at #2, failing to dislodge those unstoppable BEP smashes. As a result, “Down” became the song that finally ended the Black Eyed Peas’ six-month reign of terror atop the Hot 100. Jay Sean and his collaborators definitely understood what the market wanted, and they supplied it. Plenty of great songs started off as anonymous work-for-hire pieces. The sleek emptiness of “Down” isn’t a bad thing, necessarily. In the context of “Down,” even Lil Wayne, a certifiable freak, almost becomes faceless. It’s like someone expressly set out to make the most pleasantly bland and forgettable piece of uptempo, life-affirming late-’00s pop music that anyone could imagine. If Jay Sean sounds like anyone, it’s probably Akon, a singer who managed to make his own blankness into a commercial selling point in the years just before Jay Sean recorded “Down.” The frictionless, anonymous qualities of “Down” seem intentional, maybe even studied. Listening to “Down,” you get absolutely no hint of personality from Jay Sean - no backstory, no distinct viewpoint, no sense of where he might exist in the musical continuum. “Down” is an anodyne piece of work, a song that resists context. It’s also got lyrics that couldn’t possibly mean less. It’s got bright, giddy synth-strings and hammering 808s, but it’s not quite club music. It sounds a bit like a late-’90s boy-band record, with its streamlined hooks and its pleading tone, but it’s got levels of Auto-Tune that would’ve sounded positively experimental in the late ’90s. “Down” isn’t really R&B or dance-pop, either. “Down” came out on Cash Money Records, and Lil Wayne is on it, but it’s got nothing to do with the New Orleans bounce that built the Cash Money brand or even with the bugged-out arena-rap that Wayne was making at his commercial peak. “Down,” the only real American hit from the British singer Jay Sean, is effectively a song with no genre. Book Bonus Beat: The Number Ones: Twenty Chart-Topping Hits That Reveal the History of Pop Music. The easy, fast & fun way to learn how to sing: 30DaySinger.In The Number Ones, I’m reviewing every single #1 single in the history of the Billboard Hot 100, starting with the chart’s beginning, in 1958, and working my way up into the present. It was also the best-selling single by a British and European male artist in North America since Elton John's "Candle in the Wind" in 1997, and the first by a British Asian artist since Freddie Mercury in 1980. The song also made him "the first UK urban act ever to top Billboard's Hot 100", and the first British act to have reached number one in the United States and not in the United Kingdom with a song since Seal's "Kiss from a Rose" in 1995. This made Jay Sean the first British act to score a Billboard Hot 100 number-one single since Coldplay's "Viva la Vida" in 2008, and the fourth British act overall in the 2000s decade. ![]() "Down" hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in the issue dated 17 October 2009, unseating I Gotta Feeling by The Black Eyed Peas after their 14-week reign at number one. The track was released to US radio on and digital retailers on 30 June 2009. The song went on to sell six million copies in the United States and received a large airplay on radio worldwide. "Down" is the seventh-best selling single of 2009 and has been certified Platinum in several countries. The single features American rapper and label mate Lil Wayne and is produced by J-Remy and Bobby Bass. In other markets, including the United Kingdom, the song serves as Jay Sean's lead single from his third studio album. The song was released in North America as his debut single from his first album there, All or Nothing. "Down" is a song by British singer Jay Sean. ![]()
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