The new champion is Wiz Khalifa and Charlie Puth's "See You Again," directed by Marc Klasfeld, and commissioned for the Furious 7 movie to pay tribute to the late Paul Walker.
Currently, the count is relatively close: "See You Again" has 2.896 billion views compared to "Gangnam Style" and its 2.894 billion views.
All these numbers are way above my head — maybe we can entice Nate Silver to dig into the data? — but either way: Congratulations world, you've spent a cumulative 44,000 years watching these two videos!
The YouTube view counter used a 32-bit integer, meaning that the highest possible number it could go was 2,147,483,647 — a staggeringly large number that PSY has now surpassed.
As such, YouTube has upgraded their counter to a 64-bit integer, which should be safe unless PSY's views go above 9,223,372,036,854,775,808.
"Party's Over, it ain't over
Try to make a bad memory, over and over...
Care to find a single piece of me, game over"
So it goes for PSY who's awoken from unprecedented success — 2 Billion YouTube viewers can't be wrong — in search of what comes next. Hence, we get PSY as ringmaster: He's strangely minimized in the still over-the-top "Hangover," sharing screentime and a bulk of the vocals with an always game Snoop Dog. That's not to say we don't get to see PSY being PSY and that this video isn't filled with memorable moments — many of which seem to be pre-looped for easy GIFability — but "Hangover" seems to have stripped-out the unique and inspired lunacy of "Gangnam Style" for something more modular and replaceable. And the fact the video ends with a teaser for his NEXT single/video coming this Summer doesn't really radiate confidence, does it?
PS: The video is already over 5 million views in just a few hours and seems destined to break more records. In other words: A hangover is just a few drinks away from being drunk again. Cheers.
The ground-shaking "Gangnam Style" video which broke all sorts of recording, including being the only YouTube video to surpass one billion views in December 2012 — a feat accomplished in only a few months — is still going strong...
Sure, the pace has slowed, but the views keep coming in, just recently crossing the 2 billion mark, remaining the most viewed YouTube video of all-time.
In celebration, YouTube has rolled out a fancy custom animation to keep track of the McDonalds-like numbers...
And in a smart move, PSY is set to premiere his new video on June 8 via Jimmy Kimmel Live.
You want to call "Gentelman" a flop; a misogynistic miscalculation that didn't come close to "Gangnam Style." But, it was a Top Ten hit around the world, including the US, and the video was the most watched on YouTube for 2013.
So, don't call it a comeback.
The follow-up to the follow-up is now under production — as reveald by PSY's twitter — this time featuring Snoop Dogg and PSY's fellow Korean, G-Dragon.
"Heating up his sizzling and scorching hot streak yet again, PSY's music video for "Gentleman" is currently YouTube's "Most-Viewed" music video of 2013 with over 572 million views. The cinematic clip for the infectious and invigorating international anthem continues to entice viewers daily. In addition, the music video is ranked #7 on YouTube's all-time most-viewed videos list. It's on track to hit 600 million by the end of the year. As a result it will become #5 of all-time."
Anyone who reads Videostatic knows how amped up we were about PSY's uber-viral hit, 'Gangnam Style.' The expectations are high for the follow-up clip 'Gentleman' and now it's finally here.
What if photos leaked from PSY's new video and nobody cared? We will start to find out on April 12, when new single "Gentleman" gets premiered and has the unenviable task of forcing journalists to remove "Gangnam Style" from its lofty "biggest one hit wonder of all time" perch.
And as someone who was early on PSYmania and got lots of hits: Here's to another smash.
And you thought we were done with this one? "Gangnam Style" is still the daily #1 video at YouTube, garnering another 250 million views since it reached its One Billion pinnacle and now it has a flipbook version that looks like artist/director Etoilec1 rotoscoped each frame onto a thick pad.
