Rednex, the Eurodance group responsible for the hit song ‘Cotton Eye Joe’, have set a YouTube record after their music received 3 billion views in only 26 days. The viral craze is thanks to a meme that has reworked their hit song into the sound of ‘Gedagedigedagedago’, which has been featured in videos that have received millions of views. Danish singer Razi Irawani kickstarted this trend back in 2023, which went viral on TikTok. The song went viral again this year after a video featuring a singing chicken nugget and wing was posted, garnering 23 million views. The popularity of the Rednex song continued to spark interest among people who created a series of memes based on the nugget and wing video.
The group’s founder and producer of ‘Cotton Eye Joe’, Pat Reiniz, acknowledges the new viral trend’s significance. “This event was created thanks to millions of video creators who generated billions of fragmented plays of Rednex’s music, rather than as a result of the traditional way of listening. It will be a challenge for the music industry to reflect these different counts in charts and measurements and even pose the question, ‘Is the basic use and concept of music itself changing?’” Previously, Adele’s ‘Hello’ was the fastest song to hit 1 billion views in only 87 days.
The absurdity of the Rednex song’s new-found virality has not gone unnoticed by fans as one user commented, “1994: banger. 2024: brainrot remake.” Another remarked, “People in 1989: we’ll have flying cars in the future. The future: a singing chicken nugget.” Despite the criticism, the meme’s popularity has continued to grow.
Rednex is known for breaking with pop music conventions and has done so again in the past. In 2009, the group posted themselves on sale on eBay for a starting bid of over £1 billion. During this period in music history, one-hit wonders of the ’90s era have been followed up to see what they are doing now in a feature piece.
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