Jepsen, though, nimbly sidesteps some of these all-too-familiar traps—so to the extent that these things can be predicted, the 26-year-old British Columbia native could be our latest, best hope for a real YouTube-to-superstar success story.

"THE MOST CATCHIEST SONG I'VE EVER HEARD"

"Call Me Maybe," recently named Billboard's 2012 Song of the Summer, will probably one day be presented in textbooks as a hallowed case study in the principle of Internet "virality." Though the single, released by Canadian label 604 Records, had been driving YouTube traffic and earning play on some Canadian radio stations since September 2011, it became a global cultural phenomenon almost literally overnight when Bieber, a fellow Canadian who's called the song "the most catchiest song I've ever heard," tweeted about it. He and a few Disney-friendly pals posted a goofy "Call Me Maybe" lip-sync video to YouTube on Feb. 28; Bieber's expansive flock of loyal followers then clicked, squealed, and shared, driving up the lip-sync video's traffic exponentially. And when the official video surfaced two days later, that, too, went viral worldwide, as evidenced by the visible bump in its weekly interest chart on YouTube's Trends blog.

Jepsen signed with Justin Bieber's label, Schoolboy Records, and the song rocketed up the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart to hold the No. 1 position for nine weeks. The song went on to dominate YouTube and Billboard charts throughout the spring and summer, and on its way there, it was repurposed in countless different ways as a wacky photo caption and inspired a craze of lip-sync videos like Bieber's. Sports teams, friend groups, college students on spring break, and other "Call Me Maybe"-obsessed fans began uploading their own silly renditions of the now-ubiquitous track.

To date, according to YouTube's Trends blog, the official video has more than 250 million views—but fan videos mentioning "Call Me Maybe" have been seen nearly a billion times.

And that figure is perhaps the most telling of all. The fact that the official pop song and the fan-video meme both took off so explosively at the same time highlights one way "Call Me Maybe" is different from its predecessors: It's a funny meme, but it's also a great song.

The "Call Me Maybe" meme is one of the first in recent memory that's been fueled by the surprising fact of how likable a song is. Gawker's Emma Carmichael called it "a flawless pop song" after the official video debuted in March: "Resistance is futile, people," she wrote. "As much as I want to hate this song, I have listened to it seven times today (maybe more like 10 times) and I am not yet sick of it."

Some of the most popular viral fan videos of "Call Me Maybe," too, are driven by the cheeky humor of seeing people we'd never expect to love girly bubblegum pop songs sing and dance to a girly bubblegum pop song. When the Harvard baseball team released an instantly beloved road-trip video tribute to Jepsen's hit in May, CBS News' Jim Armstrong mused, "It's not how you picture varsity Harvard athletes in their downtime." It's probably not how you picture Division I rowers, Today show hosts, the U.S. Olympic swimming team, Darth Vader, or President Barack Obama spending their downtime, either.