"Downtown" is a song composed by Tony Hatch which, as recorded by Petula Clark in 1964, became an international hit, reaching number one in Billboard Hot 100 and number two in UK Singles Chart. Hatch received the 1981 Ivor Novello award for Best Song Musically and Lyrically.

The song has been covered by many singers, including Dolly Parton and Emma Bunton.

Tony Hatch had first worked with Petula Clark when he assisted her regular producer Alan A. Freeman on her 1961 #1 hit "Sailor". In 1963 Freeman had asked Hatch to take over as Clark's regular producer: Hatch had subsequently produced five English-language singles for Clark none of which had charted.

In the autumn of 1964 Hatch had made his first visit to New York City in search of material from music publishers for the artists he was producing. He recalled: "I was staying at a hotel on Central Park and I wandered down to Broadway and to Times Square and, naively, I thought I was downtown. Forgetting that in New York especially, downtown is a lot further downtown getting on towards Battery Park. I loved the whole atmosphere there and the [music] came to me very, very quickly". He was standing on the corner of 48th Street waiting for the traffic lights to change, looking towards Times Square when "the melody first came to me, just as the neon signs went on."

Hatch envisioned his embryonic composition "as a sort of doo wop R&B song" which he thought to eventually pitch to The Drifters: He had scored his biggest success to date with The Searchers' "Sugar and Spice" modeled on The Drifters' hit "Sweets for My Sweet", and had also produced a cover of The Drifters' "Up on the Roof" for Julie Grant. It has been said that Hatch gave Julie Grant the opportunity to record "Downtown" which Grant turned down, but this does not accord with Hatch's statement that he played "Downtown" for Petula Clark within a few days of conceiving the melody and only completed the song's lyrics after Clark had asked to record it. Hatch has also said that prior to Clark's expressed interest in "Downtown", "it never occurred to me that a white woman could even sing it."

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