Love Goes Down

The Defamation of Strickland Banks is a concept album about a sharp-suited British soul singer who finds fame before getting sent to jail for a crime that he didn't commit. This is the record's opening track and it is one of the bitter-sweet love songs that the fictitious singer has success with before his fall.

Plan B explained to Digital Spy why he decided to write the album from the viewpoint of a character rather than from personal experience. He said: "I wanted to make a record that told a story from start to finish, so I invented the Strickland Banks character and thought, 'Why not do this story about a soul man who has something f---ed up happen to him?'"

Ben Drew, aka Plan B, wrote this song before he came up with the Strickland Banks concept. He recalled to The Arts Desk: "I wrote 'Love Goes Down' around the time I went on tour with The Roots [2006]. I played it with the band during soundcheck and instantly everything worked, every chance we got we'd play it so we started writing a few more songs like it. I'd be like, 'This'll never work, no one will hear these songs. I could sell 'em to Craig David but they're not really his style either'. I couldn't imagine anyone singing them but me. The politics of music means that I create something really good and nobody gets to hear it because it'll ruin the way they see me. I've written so many songs nobody hears because they don't fit my image. I invented Strickland Banks and knew something dark had to happen to him in order for it to fit in the Plan B world, a soul record that didn't compromise, just like my hip hop."