When The NATIVE reviewed Oriadé in August, Emmanuel Esomnofu picked one song to outlast the rest. “I suspect ‘Already Falling’ will do best in the long run,” he wrote, hearing a rough edge on an album he found a little too polished, a place where “the drums sometimes lose themselves.” Davido had sung it live for the first time at the ORIADÉ Royal Night in London, and within weeks of release it entered the Official UK Afrobeats Songs Chart at No. 9.
Three months on, the song has its video. The Meji Alabi-directed clip went up on Davido’s YouTube channel at 5 p.m. WAT today, and it arrives with a horse-drawn carriage pulling him up a forest road to a French chateau, a troupe in burgundy dancing in the courtyard, and an oil portrait of a Black royal couple that he stops to admire indoors. A woman is fitted for a gold-and-black gown, she drives him through the woods in a red convertible, and it ends by a lake at dusk with Davido on one knee and a ring out of a red box. The last shot puts the two of them back in the gown and agbada, holding the pose from the painting.
The chateau is Château de Chanteloup, Martell’s estate in Cognac, and the cognac house puts its name on screen eleven seconds in. A bottle of Martell XO is poured in close-up a minute later and turns up again on the bar during the party scene. Billboard reported that Davido filmed the video there as part of a new Martell collection: a VS bottle with his illustrated face on it, out now in the US, and a limited XO launching only in Africa, both designed with the Ghanaian artist Prince Gyasi. Davido first signed with Martell in 2021, and the brand renewed him for a third term at its Afrobeats Live launch in Paris in June 2025. “I’m grateful to work with partners who have a shared goal of pushing African culture forward,” he said in the release.
Classic and Sensei built the beat on log drums and a shaker that never lets up, with soft pads underneath, and Davido sings the hook in long, easy runs: “If I give you my love, will you take it from me? … I’m already falling.” Peruzzi co-wrote it and sings in the background. The other names in the writing credits are George David Weiss, Hugo Peretti and Luigi Creatore, the trio behind Elvis Presley’s “Can’t Help Falling in Love,” and on the lyric sheet the backing voices answer him with that song’s lines, “wise men said” and “only fools rush.” It cuts off on Sensei saying his own name.
Last night, a little after eight, Davido posted “FREE AGENT …. Time for the real RUN …. ACTIVE” on X, three months after Oriadé came out through Sony Music UK as what he has called his last album with the label. A day later, he is still working that album. “Already Falling” is its fourth video since release, after “B4 B4” with Mayorkun and FOLA on August 9, “Tell Everybody” with Leon Thomas on August 17 and “On The Road” on September 18.
The difference this time is whose name is on the bottle in the frame. The label deal may be finished. The cognac deal is in its third term, and it got the proposal scene.