Want a recipe to make a big splash with a music video on YouTube in 2019? Well, you could be BTS or Taylor Swift; you could buy a shedload of Google Ads; or you could round up a bunch of the biggest Latin American artists of the moment for a mega-collaboration. The latest example of Option 3 is ‘China’, a track that features Anuel AA, Daddy Yankee, Karol G, Ozuna and J Balvin performing together, complete with a melody that will give a nostalgic glow to anyone with fond memories of Shaggy’s 2000 hit ‘It Wasn’t Me’.
Anyway, the official video for ‘China’ went live on YouTube on 19 July, and already has more than 148m views. It’s also sitting pretty in second spot in YouTube’s global ‘top songs’ chart this week with 91.4m weekly views, behind only Shawn Mendes and Camila Cabello’s ’Señorita’ (which has 121m) and ahead of Lil Nas X’s ‘Old Town Road’ (70.1m).
The performance of ‘China’ is no surprise: all five of its stars are inside the top 10 of YouTube’s latest weekly ‘global top artists’ chart – and with the inclusion of Indian stars Alka Yagnik, Udit Narayan and Kumar Sanu, that means nine out of the top ten (Mendes is ranked tenth) are from Latin America or India.
The news came as video search-engine Pex published its figures estimating the top 10 music videos on YouTube in the first half of 2019: five of the top 10 involved Latin American artists, topped by Daddy Yankee and Snow’s ‘Con Calma’ with its 1.12bn views.