Songfacts®:

• This was the first song recorded by British R&B artist Jay Sean after he'd signed with the American Hip-Hop oriented record label Cash Money Records.
• This tune features Lil Wayne. Sean told MTV News that he recorded this song in 90 minutes, after which he received a call from Ronald "Slim" Williams, the CEO of Cash Money Records. He recalled: "Slim called me up and was like, 'Yo, man, there's something wrong on the second verse that just doesn't sound right.' I was like, 'Really? What?' He played the song. All of a sudden I heard Wayne's Auto-Tune stuff, and I'm like, 'OK. What's going on? Right! That's Lil Wayne on my song right now!' That day was brilliant."
• Sean penned the song during a late night recording session in Miami's Hit Factory Studio. He told Billboard magazine: "The news was on, everything was depressing and we were like, Look at this man - everything's so down in the dumps. Why don't we write a song to take everyone's mind away from being down?" He added: "Wayne heard it, fell in love and dropped a verse on it."
• When "Down" replaced the Black Eyed Peas' "I Gotta Feeling" at the top of the Billboard Hot 100, Jay Sean became the first male British urban artist to have a #1 single in the US. He was also the first solo artist of South Asian descent to top the Hot 100.
• Sean told MTV News that he heard the news heard of his American #1 record in London, when he was about to do an interview for radio. He added: "It's been the only time in my career where when I found out, I literally couldn't breathe properly. I was so excited. I was so happy."
• The song was co-written by former American Idol contestant Jared Cotter who met Sean when he was hosting Fuse TV's The Sauce.
  
  Cotter told DesiHits the story of the song: "We thought the album was done but they needed one more track, so we flew down to Miami and were just brainstorming. We were watching the news and Jay said how horrible everything is in the world. I had this line in my phone: 'I love you, even if the sky is falling down' and when I said that it just clicked. Jay just said 'down down down down down!' It was written and recorded in less than two hours and two months later it was on the radio. It's a good song but you never realize how massive something is gonna be. You never realize what a hit it's gonna be, that it's gonna make history."