Arguably one of Major Lazer's biggest songs, Lean On featuring Mø and DJ Snake turned four years old over the weekend. With one of the most recognisable dance hooks this decade, the song has become one of the dance trio's biggest ever selling hits, with over 1.2 billion streams on Spotify alone and 13.1 million digital sales.
To celebrate Lean On's birthday, we thought we'd collate four really wild facts about the song.
instead of Mø, it could've been rihanna
Major Lazer reportedly shopped the song around to both Rihanna and Nicki Minaj as a slower reggae track, who both turned it down. In the end Danish singer Mø took it on and we frankly can't imagine the song with any other voice or accent. Diplo told Spin, it was "a blessing in disguise. [Mø] sounds better than anybody was going to sound on that record. All we want to do is make the records feel like classics, even though they’re feeling progressive and strange to a normal ear".
it's the seventh most streamed song on spotify
Back in 2015 when it came out, Lean On became Spotify's most streamed song, beating out Ed Sheeran's Thinking Out Loud. In the years since it's been overtaken by songs like Drake's One Dance and Ed Sheeran's Shape Of You, but it still remains the seventh most streamed song on Spotify with 1.2 billion streams (and growing).
the video was inspired by their tour of India
The song has a distinctly Indian flavour and to match, the group decided to shoot the music video in an old palace in India, utilising Indian music video directors, crew and dancers. Diplo told Run The Trap, "India is special and its beauty absolutely humbled me. 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. Major Lazer has always been a culture mashup and to us, India feels like some kind of special creature with one foot in history and one firmly in the future. The experience is something we’ll never forget.“
The video was a massive hit with over 2.5 billion views on YouTube and is the 15th most viewed video on YouTube.
an elephant fell asleep on the music video's set
Though the video looks flash, it was actually made on a pretty tight budget with not much pre-planning. One thing the gang did plan was to have an elephant in the clip but as India Today reports, it didn't all go to plan.
"Originally we had plans to use an elephant in the video but after we went over on another shot and it was time to use the elephant, it had fallen asleep! We thought the trainer was just milking us for more money, but alas, the elephant was sound asleep. I tried to find an ATM to get some elephant money out, but the trainer said 'no elephant, if I wake him up he will kill everyone'," explained Diplo in a Facebook post.
He adds the video "was literally improvised and made up in a few hours... Actually like 24 hours. We shot from sunrise to sunrise the next morning, it was so tiring that the dancers & everyone on set were sleeping between the takes".
