When it hit the airwaves and the Internet back in 2012, the song “Gangnam Style” by South Korean rapper PSY, changed many things. This was most obvious with the video uploading website YouTube, which was forced to upgrade its view tracker to keep up with the number of views the “Gangnam” music video got (beating Justin Bieber’s “Baby”). For a time it would seem like no other YT video could ever topple PSY’s international breakout song in terms of views; he already got a “Diamond Button” award from the vid-sharing giant for getting 10 million subscribers.
But if “Gangnam” can topple one video, it can also be beaten by another. And it has. There’s a new most-viewed video on YouTube.
Gangnam beaten
It was something of a momentous occasion earlier this week when rapper Wiz Khalifa’s song “See You Again” (featuring Charlie Puth) finally surpassed the formerly-daunting record views set by PSY’s “Gangnam Style” since five years ago. While the once-insufferably contagious K-Pop dance hit is currently clocking at past 2.894 billion views, the “See You Again” official music video has since zoomed past it with 2.9 billion, accumulated ever since it was first uploaded to the site in 2015.
The rapid increase in views of Khalifa’s theme song for “Fast and Furious 7” is remarkable considering there was a three-year gap between this and the earlier release of “Gangnam Style.” In fact, YouTube has recorded that “See You Again” managed to catch up to – and then surpass – the K-Pop tune by means of a much higher per-day view.
In 2017 alone the music video was averaging over 3 million YouTube viewers in a day. The rapper and his collaborator were extremely pleased by the incredibly massive amount of support their song has gotten on the video-sharing site.
Emotional theme song
“See You Again” played during the end credits of the seventh installment of the “Fast and Furious” franchise, which is now on its eighth film.
The 2015 movie had been extremely poignant for being the final cinematic appearance of action star Paul Walker, who was killed in a car crash in the middle of production.
Pittsburgh-based Wiz Khalifa is happy that his song was able to “inspire and impact so many lives” when asked about “See You Again” beating “Gangnam Style.” Charlie Puth was more direct in his references, talking about how he had first signed up on YouTube in 2007 and dreamt of having one of his videos get 10,00 views and up. "Now a decade later, it feels incredible to be a part of the most-viewed video on YouTube," he summed up.
