Blowing past four billion views on one of the world’s most popular websites is just the latest in a long string of historical accomplishments for Fonsi and Yankee’s biggest hit to date, and it probably won’t be the last. “Despacito” is currently tied as one of the two longest-running No. 1 hits in U.S. history (with Mariah Carey and Boyz II Men’s “One Sweet Day”), and while it is still living inside the top 10 on the Hot 100, it doesn’t look like it stands any chance of bouncing back and collecting a seventeenth turn at the top.
Impressively, it is the original version of “Despacito” that has now collected four billion plays on YouTube, and not any remixed edit, including the one that features Justin Bieber. That revamped cut is the one that helped the Latin single vault to the top of the charts in many English-speaking countries, and though it was massively popular, the Canadian pop star never made time in his schedule to film a proper video, which seems like an obvious promotional effort. It turned out that such a clip wasn’t needed in the end, and the fact that one doesn’t exist is perhaps the reason why the original take is still performing so well.
For the record, the upload that introduced the world to Bieber’s version of “Despacito,” which only features a picture of the cover of the single, has still managed to rack up over half a billion views, and it’s only a matter of time before it breaks one billion, so it's not as if it's being ignored entirely.
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