FROM THE VAULTS: "Down" by Jay Sean ft. Lil Wayne

[Intro]
Hello, everybody. I'm finally putting my You
Tube videos up all in one place. People have been telling me I needed to do that for a long time so that's what I'm gonna do and I'm gonna do a little intro on all of them. You see, I'd been kicking around the idea of doing reviews, I'd seen, The Nostalgia Critic and Angry Video Game Nerd, I'd seen them do it for a long time and a huge fan. And I'd never found a good reason or, the motivation to actually try it and then I had the idea to do the pop song reviews. And I'd been writing, reviews of songs in my blog – which is long gone by now, you can't find it – but I'd been doing reviews on my blog for a long time. And, I was scared of showing my face, then I had this great idea of this image of this silhouette guy sitting at his piano – he can play piano and I just loved the image of it so I couldn't stop myself from doing it. I was just so excited by it and this is the first episode, the humble, very humble beginning of Todd In The Shadows. This was so much harder than I thought it was gonna be and I'm not sure why I picked such an innocuous song to start off with – who's really bothered by "Down" by Jay Sean? And I started on it, I figured it would be easy, and I found out I couldn't figure out how to do anything: I didn't know how to act, I didn't know how to write, I didn't know how to edit, I didn't know how to film, I didn't know how to frame – I still [laughs] don't know how much I've really learned about this since I've started but, eh, you had to start somewhere. I started with this for some reason. It's rough but it was a start, so – "Down" by Jay Sean, enjoy.

[Review]

[Todd playing "Down" on the piano]

Hello, friends! If you'll just give me a moment, I'd like to indulge in one of my favorite past-times: over-analyzing cheap pop songs. So, there's one song I wanna look at in particular – you may have heard it – it's Jay Sean's "Down."

[Clip: "Down" by Jay Sean featuring Lil Wayne]

Now, maybe you don't pay attention to the pop charts but I do and this song is everywhere – I mean, it's on the pop stations, it's on the country stations, it's on the gospel stations, the Rush Limbaugh stations, and it's an impressive feat for a song that's only a word long.

See? He even rhymes "down" with "down!" Although I can't be too surprised it's a hit song right now – I mean, it sounds like everything else on the radio, I mean everything else.

[Clip: "Low" by Flo Rida featuring T-Pain]

[Clip: "Right Now (Na Na Na)" by Akon]

[Clip: "With You" by Chris Brown]

I've never heard a song that sounds this much like everything. I mean, it even has the now-required cameo from Lil Wayne, who always sounds like he's going through puberty.

Uh... did Lil Wayne just lose control of his metaphor there? I always thought if you say a girl's zero degrees frozen, that means she wasn't into you. I don't know. Also, why is he dressed like the guy from The White Stripes?

Did he just say "She's my Miss America" and then salute a British flag?

[Todd shrugs]

Ha! That's clever... "down like the economy." I don't have a job. Thanks for the reminder, Lil Wayne.

Here's an interesting fact: Jay Sean is the first major pop singer of Sikh descent.
Yeah, that's right. Just goes to show you that the pop charts are an all-inclusive place, open to all creeds and all colors and all cultures as long as they sound like everything else.

I'm kinda amused that the guy's named Jay Sean. He just had to have a name as generic as his song. I mean, it's Jay Sean! You know Jay Sean, I know Jay Sean, everyone knows Jay Sean! Jay Sean's a star, we live in a Jay Sean era of music. Jay Sean, Jay... we've already got a bunch of Jays.





And we've already got a bunch of Seans.





We certainly don't need a Jay Sean. Hey, wait a minute, is this the same guy that did "Tipsy" a few years back?

[Clip: "Tipsy" by J Kwon]

"Everybody in the club gettin' tipsy, yeah!" [Todd sighs]
No, I am informed that this is, in fact, J Kwon. J Kwon, not Jay Sean. [Todd sighs]

I mean, I don't even hate this song. I kinda like this song a little. It's just something you don't think about – it just goes through you. You don't wake up in the morning wanting to hear "Down" by Jay Sean. It's not something you can connect to. I mean, "Are you down?" is not really a very romantic sentiment. "Do you agree, agree, agree, agree, agree, agree? Are you comfortable with the terms of this proposal?" I mean, if you're going to be repeating one word over and over again, why is it "down?" Why isn't it something like "love" or "yours" or "forever" or... uh, forever. Hey, hold on, lemme check something here.

[Todd plays the piano and sings]

Down, down
Baby, are you down, down, down, down?
It's like I've waited my whole life for this one night
It's gon' be me, you—

Oh, my God! It's "Forever" by Chris Brown!

[Clip: "Forever" by Chris Brown]

"Down" by Jay Sean is the same as "Forever" by Chris Brown! I mean, the melodies are a little different but, mostly, it's the same song!

I mean, they got the same tempo, they got the same chord structure, they're both about whisking away on a magic, flying carpet to the eternal dance floor of love. There's not a major difference! This is great! This is just great because "Forever" was Chris Brown's only good song, and now we don't even have to listen to that anymore 'cause we've got Jay Sean's "Down" to replace it so we can just delete this guy from the cultural memory banks forever. Awesome. See, Jay Sean, you do have a purpose: you're the new and improved Chris Brown.

[On-screen text]
NOW WITH 31% LESS DOMESTIC ABUSE!

That's great, I'm glad you're around.

[Todd plays the piano and sings]

Down, down, down, down, down
Down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down...