For the first time since July 14th, 2012, Gangnam Style will not be the most-viewed video on YouTube. The viral video from South Korean sensation Psy took the No. 1 spot from Justin Bieber’s Baby over four-and-a-half years ago, before a single video on YouTube had over one billion views.

YouTube is a different world now, though. And while 68 videos currently have over one billion hits, it has taken so long for any video to even approach Gangnam Style. In fact, it sometimes felt like Gangnam Style‘s record was untouchable. After all, when the world was suffering from Hello fever in the winter of 2015, and Adele’s hit video pulled in one billion hits in only 87 days (the record for the fastest ever), it still couldn’t keep up its pace to catch Gangnam Style.

Now, though, with its incredible popularity this summer, See You Again has slowly been gaining on Gangnam Style. Some days it only gained a few hundred thousand views, and others it gained several millions. Still, the view totals crept forward and, eventually, Wiz Khalifa has passed Psy as YouTube’s biggest star. It’s impossible to know exactly when the pass occurred, because YouTube’s view counts aren’t updated instantly, but it was at some point on the afternoon of July 10th (Eastern time).



Gangnam Style‘s stay at the top of YouTube’s charts lasted close to five years, falling a few days short of an incredible milestone. If current trends are any indication, though, See You Again‘s stay at the top won’t last nearly as long. The new Spanish hit song Despacito has picked up an absurd almost 2.5 billion hits in under six months, and is showing no signs of slowing down at all.

The world of YouTube views is changing. Even a year ago, it was unthinkable that a video could earn billions of views in under a year. The number of views for so many videos is skyrocketing uncontrollably. It might be impossible to predict what videos are the most-watched in a year or two. But what we do know is that Gangnam Style four-and-a-half-year reign is over.

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