Sorry, Psy, you have been dethroned. The video for “See You Again,” by Wiz Khaflia with Charlie Puth, just replaced “Gangnam Style” as the most-viewed YouTube video of all time. The Khalifa song is now at 2.896 billion views — a hair above Psy’s 2.894. Even more impressive: Khalifa managed to rack up that view count in just over three years, while Psy needed just shy of five.
Maybe it was a bit of an unfair fight. “Gangnam Style” was a novelty song that ensnared the world’s attention back in 2012 before quickly being confined to the oblivion of kitschy nostalgia, alongside the likes of “Macarena” and the discography of Ray Stevens. “See You Again,” meanwhile, is a bittersweet ode to Paul Walker. The song was commissioned for the “Furious 7” soundtrack, playing at the end as a CGI version of the late actor — who died in a freak car accident late into filming — drives off into the sunset. The video is jam-packed with clips from the “Furious” movies, all but the third (“Tokyo Drift”) and the most recent (“The Fate of the Furious”) of which featured Walker.
It’s worth taking a gander at the list of most watched YouTube videos. It’s not a mixture of videos and classic viral phenoms, like the sneezing panda or “Chocolate Rain.” Neither of those crossed the billion mark. The 68 that have are almost all music videos. Of the 14 videos that have ever crossed the 2 billion mark, only one is not a song: an episode of the Russian animated TV series “Masha and the Bear,” called “Recipe for Disaster.” Only two more non-music videos represent on the top 80 list, and neither of them is the “Numa Numa” guy. In other words, big corporations still trounce the little guys, and it’s all thanks to you for not making them even more viral than they already were.
Meanwhile, congrats, Wiz! You are now Internet famous!
