The highly popular and slightly annoying children’s ryhme ‘Baby Shark’ has set a new record.
The Korean recorded track that was first uploaded in 2015, was sung by 10-year-old Korean-American singer Hope Segoine and has garnered more than 7B views on the online video sharing platform YouTube.
But it seems that the success of ‘Baby Shark’ took years before it actually went viral in 2019. According to a report on BBC, ‘Baby Shark’ existed much early than 2015. It reportedly originated in US summer camps in the 1970s. One theory says it was invented in 1975, as Steven Spielberg’s Jaws became an box office smash around the world.
The track’s success was further propelled by the #BabySharkChallenge that saw millions join in the choreographed dance.
“Nursery rhymes have always been sort of slow, very cute, but something that would help your children fall asleep – as opposed to Baby Shark,” Pinkfong’s marketing director Jamie Oh told the BBC in 2018.
“Pinkfong’s Baby Shark is very trendy and it has a very bright beat with fun dance moves. The animation is very vivid. We call it K-Pop for the next generation.”
The company is turning the song into a movie and a musical, and aspires to make Baby Shark “another classic for kids music, like Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”, Oh added.
Latin pop singer Luis Fonsi held the previous record with his 2017 release ‘Despacito’. According to an article on The Sauce, the reggaetón track by Luis Fonsi had reached 456 million views by January 2019, pushing its all-time total to 6.3 billion.
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