7 Seconds

The single came out in Europe on June 7, 1994 on Columbia and Chaos, with "Mame Bamba" on the B-side. Cherry, N'Dour, Cameron McVey and Jonathan Sharp (Jonny Dollar) are the credited writers, with McVey and Dollar producing at Power Play in New York; the radio edit runs about 4:10. N'Dour sings in Wolof and French and Cherry in English; sources differ on whether N'Dour also sings in English. Cherry told her site it is about the first positive seven seconds in the life of a child just born, before it learns of the world's violence, and told the Independent in 2004 that the tune grew on its own, completely out of proportion; Wikipedia quotes N'Dour that we did it as an experiment.

It reached 1 in France, where it stayed 16 weeks in a then-record run, and also in Wallonia, Finland, Iceland, Israel, Italy and Switzerland, 3 in the UK, Germany and Australia, 2 in the Netherlands and 98 on the Hot 100. It is gold in the UK, with 420,000 copies, France, Germany and several other countries. Songfacts reports about 3 million sold worldwide and World Music Central about 2 million. Stephane Sednaoui directed the black-and-white video in New York. It won the 1994 MTV Europe Music Award for best song, NME ranked it 40th of 1994's best, and it is in 1001 Songs You Must Hear Before You Die. Lover's covered it in 1994 and Thomas D in 2010 as "Million Voices (7 Seconds)".

Setlist.fm shows it as his most played song, at 30 performances, and he played it at Kings Theater in Brooklyn on April 27, 2025. Our upload is presumably the album version.