About

Despacito is a song by Puerto Rican pop artist Luis Fonsi featuring Daddy Yankee. The song and a remix version featuring Justin Bieber grew to become immensely popular during the summer of 2017 and inspired numerous parodies and remixes.

Origin

"Despacito" was released on January 13th, 2017^[1] along with its music video, (shown below) which has gained over 4 billion views and 22 million likes (as of October 2017), making it the most viewed and liked YouTube video of all time.

"Despacito" became the fifty-fourth video to reach 1 billion views on April 20, 2017; the twelfth video to reach 2 billion views on June 16, 2017; the first video to reach 3 billion views on August 4, 2017; and the first video to reach 4 billion views on October 11th, 2017, doing so within 272 days.

Spread

The song debuted in the United States at number 2 on the Hot Latin Songs chart. It also debuted at number 88 on the US Billboard Hot 100. On February 18th, 2017, the song hit number 1 on the Hot Latin Songs chart and remained there for 22 weeks. In the United States, the song has gone 34x Platinum. On April 17th, a part-English remix version featuring Justin Bieber singing in Spanish for the first time in his career was released, contributing to the song growing popular in English-speaking countries. The audio of the song was uploaded to YouTube that day and has gained over 100 million views (shown below).

On May 24th, 2017, TMZ published a video of Bieber attempting to perform the song but instead of singing Spanish, was caught singing "Blah" (shown below). Bieber was harshly criticized for the performance.^[2]

Parodies

The song has inspired numerous popular parodies, with some garnering tens of millions of views on YouTube. The most popular, posted by oRni on January 17th, 2017, gained over 34 million views (shown below, left). Another popular parody called "ESE GRINGO," posted by werevertumurro on February 13th, gained over 28 million views (shown below, right).

The song has also inspired several popular remixes. One of the most popular, posted by the Trap Music channel, has over 7.6 million views (shown below, left). A remix by artist ThatBehavior and posted on the Chill Nation channel gained over 1.2 million views (shown below, right).

Hack

On April 9th, 2018, it was announced that "Despacito" is the most-watched YouTube video of all time, reaching more than 5 billion views and becoming the first video to do so.^[3] However, due to a hack that targeted various Vevo accounts, including Shakira, Taylor Swift and Drake, the video was removed. When users searched for the video, a shot of several masked figures pointing guns at the camera is shown instead (shown below).^[4] The image is taken from the Spanish television series Money Heist (also known as La casa de papel).

On April 10th, Twitter ^[5] user @gvarisco isolated the problem and tweeted screenshots of the hack. They said, "This is the first time I get to see a @YouTube account compromised ( @LuisFonsi's) and a title changed on his 5-billion-views' hit, '#Despacito'." The post (shown below, left) received more than 100 retweets and 140 likes in 24 hours.

Later that day, he tweeted^[6] a similar hack in the video for the Shakira song "Chantaje" (shown below, right) He wrote, "Uhm! @Vevo @Vevo_Media you better check what's going on. Something is wrong."

The video was reinstated with the correct view count shortly after. Vevo said of the hack:

“Vevo can confirm that a number of videos in its catalogue were subject to a security breach today, which has now been contained. We are working to reinstate all videos affected and our catalogue to be restored to full working order. We are continuing to investigate the source of the breach.”

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References