Lean On
by Major Lazer (featuring DJ Snake & )

Album: Peace is the Mission (2015)
Charted: 2 4
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Songfacts®:

  • The first single from Peace is the Mission finds Major Lazer teaming up with the French DJ and producer DJ Snake of "Turn Down For What" fame. The track features vocals by the Danish singer MØ, who is best known for crooning the hook on Iggy Azalea's "Beg For It" single.
  • The accompanying music video was filmed in India. We see Major Lazer, DJ Snake and MØ performing the track surrounded by Bollywood-inspired choreography. "India is special and its beauty absolutely humbled me," said Major Lazer's Diplo. "When we toured there as Major Lazer, it was mind blowing to see our fan-base and we wanted to incorporate the attitude and positive vibes into our video and just do something that embodies the essence of Major Lazer."
  • Diplo told Time that he initially sent the song to both Rihanna and Nicki Minaj's camps as a slower reggae track. Their rejection was, he said, "a blessing in disguise." "[MØ] sounds better than anybody was going to sound on that record," Diplo added. "All we want to do is make the records feel like classics, even though they're feeling progressive and strange to a normal ear."
  • Spotify announced in November 2015 that this had overtaken Ed Sheeran's "Thinking Out Loud" to become the most-streamed song of all time with 526 million plays worldwide.

    Eleven months later, Drake's "One Dance" exceeded the total play count of this tune to become the most-streamed song of all time on Spotify.
  • The song reached #1 in a number of countries including Australia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland Greece, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Slovakia and Switzerland.

    Diplo told Billboard magazine: "I think what made 'Lean On' special was that it was raw, uncut... it just took patience to get the sound right for you (almost a year) but the first idea never changed."
  • Diplo first encountered MØ in Amsterdam when the Danish singer rented out an AirBnB in order to meet him. "I felt like she was so ambiguous, having grown up singing pop and punk," he told Rolling Stone. "Her word choice and her metaphors are just so foreign from American songwriters who tend to overuse the same phrases."

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