Rednex's country party track "Cotton Eye Joe" entered a new chapter of its sonic life this past month. A music video that lay relatively dormant now has garnered over 3 billion views in less than a month. The video's traction was spurred by a Tik Tok trend started by Danish singer Razi Irawani, who goes by the username @razioff on the video-sharing platform.
Last summer, he posted a clip garbling the words to "Cotton Eye Joe," dubbing the sound "Gedagedigedagedago." The gibberish is the misunderstood version of the lyrics: "If it hadn't been for Cotton-Eye Joe/I'd been married long time ago/Where did you come from, where did you go?/Where did you come from, Cotton-Eye Joe?" The flurry of syllables that replace the words are a tongue-in-cheek mocking of Göran Danielsson's murky cadence.
In the video, Irawani sings into a microphone while sporting a country-esque outfit of a cowboy hat, plaid shirt and acoustic guitar. He makes unintelligible noises throughout the "song." As of April 23, the video has over 2 million likes and nearly 30 million views. In February, Irawani reposted his original video with the caption: "When your sound is going viral." This reboot earned him 1.8 million views.
The trend has now returned in full force.
A video aptly titled "'Gedagedigedagedago" was posted to YouTube two months ago by user MegaBen. It has since accrued 23 million views. The video features separate shots of a chicken nugget singing the garbled "'Gedagedigedagedago" sound, followed by a chicken wing singing the distinguishable version of "Cotton Eye Joe." The two chicken dishes both have animated faces drawn onto them and dance along to their singing; at the end of the video, they unite to sing "Cotton Eye Joe" together.
MegaBen's channel has since become a breeding ground for Gedagedigedagedago memes. Spin offs including "Ocean Gedagedigedagedago" and "Cotton eye joe Real vs Fake" are raking in hundreds of thousands of views. Each video features a unique twist on the Gedagedigedagedago sound, often mixing in other existing sounds and memes. The memes soon translated to views on the actual "Cotton Eye Joe" music video.
Rednex founder and producer of the country tune, Pat Reiniz reflected on the trend.
"A paradigm shift is happening where we're asking: how is music success best measured?" he said. If numbers are something to go by, Rednex's impressive three billion views are an incredible success.
Reiniz continued, saying that the "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's no secret that Tik Tok sounds and memes are a powerful means of gaining streams on a song. Reiniz sees this as a "challenge for the music industry" that asks the question "Is the basic use and concept of music itself changing?"
Rednex broke the world record, previously held by Adele's song "Hello," in 26 days, making them the most played artist in the world. "Cotton Eye Joe"'s impressive view count is reportedly thirteen times greater than the current Global No. 1 hit on Spotify.
