Rednex’s ‘Cotton Eye Joe’ smashes Youtube record
Rednex’s song ‘Cotton Eye Joe’ has inspired a viral event that has seen the band smash a YouTube record.
The band took to YouTube to announce that their music has received 3billion views in 26 days, thanks to a meme that reworks their hit. A sound called ‘Gedagedigedagedago’, which is a garbled version of the first lyric from ‘Cotton Eye Joe’, has spread across the social media platform with videos that have garnered millions of views using it. Danish singer Razi Irawani kicked off the trend in 2023, where his video went viral on TikTok.
However, the song went viral again this year thanks to a chicken nugget and wing singing the song, which has garnered 23million views. Since then, numerous other memes have developed with the chicken nugget – one video has created an animated series around the wing and nuggest, whilst another video speeds up the sound by 999 times.
Pat Reiniz – Rednex founder and ‘Cotten Eye Joe’ producer – said of the trend: “A paradigm shift is happening where we’re asking: how is music success best measured?
“This event was created thanks to millions of video creators generating 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 various counts in charts and measurements and even poses the question, ‘Is the basic use and concept of music itself changing?’”
Previously, Adele‘s ‘Hello’ was the fastest song to hit 1billion views in just 87 days.
Commenters have remarked upon the absurdity of the song’s renewed virality, with one user saying: “1994: banger. 2024: brainrot remake”. Another said “People in 1989 : we’ll have flying cars in the future. The future : a singing chicken nugget”, whilst one other user wrote: “These videos are soooo cursed but I can’t stop watching them”.
Previously, the band put themselves on sale on eBay back in 2009. Rednex put themselves on auction with a starting bid of over £1billion and said: “Buy your own pop band! For the first time in the history of the entertainment business there is a pop band for sale….And we don’t mean for sale as in, ‘Hire them for your next festival’. No, we mean completely for sale as in: it’s all yours!”
We tracked down what was happening to Rednex and countless other 90s one-hit wonders in this feature piece – check out where your favourites are here.
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Alex Rigotti
NME
