"Maybe" is the second single from

Jay Sean Kamaljit Singh Jhooti (born 26 March 1981), known professionally as Jay Sean, is a British singer and songwriter. He debuted in the UK's Asian Underground scene as a member of the Rishi Rich Project with " Dance with You", which reached No. ...

's second album '' My Own Way''. It was originally scheduled to be released on 7 April 2008 but was postponed. The digital download was available on

iTunes iTunes is a media player, media library, and mobile device management (MDM) utility developed by Apple. It is used to purchase, play, download and organize digital multimedia on personal computers running the macOS and Windows operating s ...

from 20 April 2008 and for wider release on 20 April 2008, the song physically came out on 28 April 2008. The song reached the top 20 on the UK Singles Chart, peaking at No. 19 on the week dated 4 May 2008. It was also Sean's most successful song in

East Asia East Asia is a geocultural region of Asia. It includes China, Japan, Mongolia, North Korea, South Korea, and Taiwan, plus two special administrative regions of China, Hong Kong and Macau. The economies of Economy of China, China, Economy of Ja ...

, where it reached No. 7 on the

Japan Hot 100 Singles The ''Billboard Japan'' Hot 100 is a record chart in Japan for songs. It has been compiled by ''Billboard Japan'' and Hanshin Contents Link since February 2008. The chart is updated every Wednesday at Billboard-japan.com ( JST) and every Thursday ...

chart. It also reached #1 on the Japanese Airplay Charts. A

Hindi Modern Standard Hindi (, ), commonly referred to as Hindi, is the Standard language, standardised variety of the Hindustani language written in the Devanagari script. It is an official language of India, official language of the Government ...

version sung by Sean was released as part of ''My Own Way'' in India. A

Mandarin Chinese Mandarin ( ; zh, s=, t=, p=Guānhuà, l=Mandarin (bureaucrat), officials' speech) is the largest branch of the Sinitic languages. Mandarin varieties are spoken by 70 percent of all Chinese speakers over a large geographical area that stretch ...

cover version by

Coco Lee CoCo Lee ( zh, c=李玟; 17 January 1975 – 5 July 2023) was a Chinese-American singer, songwriter, and actress. She is one of the best-selling artists in Asia and widely regarded as a significant figure and a diva. Her career began in 1993 i ...

has also been released in China.

Background

Speaking in March 2008 to noted UK R&B writer Pete Lewis of the award-winning

Blues & Soul ''Blues & Soul'' is a British music magazine, established in 1967 by John Abbey. ''The Independent'' has noted ''Blues & Soul'' as being the equal of magazines such as ''NME'' and '' Q''. ''Billboard'' magazine has called ''Blues & Soul'' "a r ...

, Jay Sean explained how the song first came about: "I'd been listening to some old skool R&B in my car when I first happened to come up with the melody! As soon as it came into my head, I went to the studio. And, once I got in there, I literally told the producer 'Don't speak to me! Let me just hum this melody to you quickly before I forget it!'... And, once I'd started singing, he straightaway began playing some guitar around it. So it was all very organically written, there was no 'Oh, what a cool beat - where's the sample from?'. Instead of being based on production, it was purely about the song, the melody and the lyrics."Jay Sean interview by Pete Lewis, 'Blues & Soul' April 2008
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History

"Maybe" was originally planned to be released in the United Kingdom on 7 April 2008 followed by the album ''My Own Way'' on 14 April 2008. However, for unknown reasons both the single and album release dates were pushed back to 21 April 2008 and 12 May 2008 respectively. Later, a

version of the song was also released on YouTube. It's also known as ''Shayad''. On 14 August 2009,

album ''East to west'' contains a cover versions of Jay Sean's "Maybe", called "Love Right Now". Jay Sean has become #1.

Formats and track listings

Music video

On 22 February 2008, the video was exclusively available to watch on

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. On 7 March 2008 the music video premiered on the music channel The Box and

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Charts

References

{{authority control 2008 songs 2008 singles Jay Sean songs Contemporary R&B ballads Songs written by Jay Sean 2Point9 Records singles Songs written by Alan Sampson