The phenomenon called ‘Despacito’
Climbing up the charts — anything but Despacito
Two days ago, Charlie Puth & Wiz Khalifa’s tribute to Paul Walker ‘See You Again’ displaced the half a decade old worldwide phenomena Gangnam Style as the most viewed Youtube video of all time.
If I were Charlie Puth and gave a damn about this, I would be a little worried, because ceteris paribus, this position at the top is likely to be short-lived because homing in from a current number 5 is Luis Fonzi and Daddy Yankee’s foot-tapping Spanish number Despacito.
The ‘short’ in ‘short-lived’ is likely to be really short. ‘See You Again’ is clocking ~3m views a day currently while ‘Despacito’ is going at ~20m (reading these number off a small chart displayed at the bottom of the video. The internet tells me that I can import all data in a JSON, and I’m all like bye-SON).
Simple math tells me we have 23 days before ‘Despacito’ reaches the top.
Youtube also gave me total viewing time for all but 2 videos in the top ten. Assuming the gaps to be the average of the others, the world has spent a total of 141k years watching just these 10 videos. For perspective, it took only 20,000 man-hours to build the entire Empire State building. So, these folks could have spent this time to build over 62,000 such buildings.
It probably is too late to be sorry.
Despacito — In a league of its own
This song was published a mere 180 days ago. The next most recent entry in the top 10 list is ‘Sorry’ with 630 days. What makes Despacito such a huge hit? I am no expert, but that doesn’t stop me from making a conjecture.
It’s different — The song is in Spanish, and is one among the 3 non-english videos in the top 10 — Gangnam Style (Korean) and Masha and the Bear (Russian) being the others. So, it can be safely said that half or more of the audience does not understand anything beyond the title ‘Despacito’ (it means slowly — now my sub-heading for this post makes sense, right?).
In a way, that adds to the charm.
The song opens with a breath-taking Puerto Rican landscape set to a string introduction. Then we are introduced to an equally breath-taking Latina. Everything up till here is amazingly exotic. Then, there is a short stringed build-up, and just when you think the crescendo is going to rush into a mad beat like most songs these days, the song kicks off with a melodic raggae beat, as groovy as 88 bpm could be. Si, despacito!
Clever marketing — Even then, Despacito was only the second fastest to the 1bn views mark (beaten by Adele’s Hello). Here the production company played a master-stroke — two months into the original launch, a salsa version featuring Puerto Rican musician Victor Manuelle was released. Another month down, and around the time the original hit 1bn views, a remix version featuring Canadian singer Justin Bieber was released. Although this version has cannibalised a lot of views for the original, the traction it created in the English speaking world catalysed the original’s progress to the 2bn milestone.
Hummable — The song is composed with the very standard Bm-G-D-A progression, which makes it easier for amateur musicians to emulate, spawning thousands of covers. In my own case, I discovered the original song via a cover by one of the artists I follow.
Then there’s the varying tempo which keeps you engaged (the time spent watching the song in total vs the number of views tells me that the viewer watches 70% of the song on average, which is pretty darn good). The groovy beginning falls into a prolonged Desssspaaciiito!, which then mingles with Daddy Yankee’s rap antics, and culminates with bongo-playing folk chanting the song in a bar. All of it is very urban, yet very earthy.
Only time will tell if Despacito can repeat Gangnam Style’s dominance at the top of the Youtube list, or will we see another sleeper artist come and rock the boat once again.
Till then, I’ll leave you to savour the original, if you have been living under a rock all this while.
