It’s not even May, but one Eurovision 2017 star is already making history. Earlier today, the official music video for Francesco Gabbani’s “Occidentali’s Karma” — Italy’s entry for Kyiv — passed 86 million views on YouTube.
Not only does this give Francesco and his gorilla the honour of having the most watched video of the 2017 season, it also means that “Occidentali’s Karma” is officially the single most viewed Eurovision song of all-time on the Google-owned video sharing platform. Namasté alé indeed!
Since it was first uploaded to Francesco’s Vevo channel on 9 February 2017, the video has seen its view count rise exponentially. This could be down to a number of factors.
As with the song itself, the clip is packed full of scientific and philosophical references, encouraging repeat viewings as fans try to find each and every one.
Then of course there’s the simple fact that “Occidentali’s Karma” is ridiculously catchy.
Francesco Gabbani Occidentali’s Karma (Official Music Video)
Francesco inherits the YouTube crown from his fellow countrymen Il Volo. The Eurovision 2015 trio only took the record in January, almost two years after the music video for “Grande Amore” was published on their Vevo channel.
At the time of writing, the clip has 85.9 million views.
Il Volo “Grande Amore” (Official Music Video)
Alexander Rybak lies in third place with “Fairytale”. Up to 2017, the grand final performance of Norway’s 2009 winning entry was consistently the most watched Eurovision video since it was first uploaded almost eight years ago.
It has currently amassed a tally of 81.3 million views.
Alexander Rybak “Fairytale” (Eurovision 2009 Grand Final Performance)
Eurovision stars with 100 million views
While Francesco is riding high when it comes to views for a Eurovision entry, he has a little way to go before he enters the exclusive 100 million club.
In 2015, Turkey’s 2009 singer Hadise became only the second Eurovision alum to pass the milestone with her single “Prenses”. She joined Switzerland’s 1988 winner Celine Dion, who had previously reached 100 million views with her Titanic mega-hit “My Heart Will Go On”.
However, a plethora of past acts have joined the two divas in the interim. These include Alexey Vorobyov (Russia 2011), t.A.T.u (Russia 2003), Serebro (Russia 2007), ABBA (Sweden 1974), Bonnie Tyler (UK 2013), and Olivia Newton John (UK 1974).
All of the above mentioned acts hit 100 million YouTube views with non-Eurovision songs. At this rate, Francesco will be the first act to have a Eurovision song with over 100 million views on the site.
N.B: None of the above statistics are consolidated. All the view counts mentioned relate to individual videos.
Does this YouTube success cement Francesco Gabbani’s status as Eurovision 2017 favourite? Will “Occidentali’s Karma” take us to Italy in 2018? Let us know in the comments below or react using the wiwibloggs app.
@ Rado
You should shame yourself for your ignorant comment!
If you don’t like the song it is ok, I accept this, but you can not say “song about nothing” cause actually it has the best lyrics, the most genius one.
So please, get informed before writing this stupid words!
@michele: It may very well be that time for one of the Big Five to win; and Italy has been the most consistent this decade. He will be challenged by Alma from France, though; so, if I were Francesco, I wouldn’t take the competition for granted.
@Rado
THANK YOU
i dont think Esc after Ukraine come back at east(Bulgaria?) or more in Sweden.Is time to Big 5!
William. Pls stop always talking about Italy. We have many artist and better songs in this competition then this Italo Disco. I dont like this simply and ordynary song about nothing. Pls no more PR.
Please read my blog. Let me know your thoughts on this years contest!
Mario’s Eurovision 2017
https://eurovision2017blog.wordpress.com/
@Eve: This past week, I spent 6 days listening to every last one of these songs (among them, 14 for the very FIRST time), and watched every music or contest video available, and even though I saw this video weeks before I evaluated every entry, I went looking for reasons as to why a performer or his/her song/video didn’t deserve the high grade I gave them. For Francesco, I couldn’t find very many. And to top it off, this song and its video had just the right amount of COMEDY to make the entire package worthy of its top spot… Read more »
@Milla YESSSSSS!!! I couldn’t have said it better!! 🙂
To all haters – don’t lie that Italy song is watched only by Italians because he wins Sanremo! I listened it every day, such a good and positive song, and my friends too, and we are not from Italy! I googled now last year winner (”Stadio” if I found well), it has 10 mil. views! What are we talking about? Try with something new than ”gorilla, overrated, only Italians, blah, blah..” because all your arguments are invalid! You can say ”I don’t like the song”, that’s fair enough, nobody force you to like it, but discrediting artists with such poor… Read more »
Wow! now the juries better do their job and make sure Italy wins LOL joking. This year will be VERY interesting since the favorite to win is a Big 5 country…
Many people I know who love this only do because of Harambe… I mean the “regular” Gorilla. Surprised EBU hasn’t caught that commercializations property in his song… hmm…
Okay, the juries are not snubbing Italy. If you guys can’t remember, Italy WON the jury vote in 2011. Yes this song has current hype but most likely the staging will be its downfall. For sergey, if we would’ve toned down his staging last year, some jurors would’ve changed and voted for him. The fact is we won’t know any real viable results until the dress rehearsals for the final. Jamala and Dami were both skyrocketed after their semi final so we are better off to wait.
I have a feeling the juries will fix the result …. AGAIN …..
It’s a good and clever song… But NO masterpiece here. If you want a masterpiece really timeless and breathtaking, you have ONE this year… Portugal.
I am learning portuguese right now due to this amazing song.
Love from Qabala, Azerbaijan
It’s so sad that this society has so much wickedness. It is another thing someone does not like a song or a singer and another thing to insult or offend a song and a singer. If you don’t like the Italian song or Francesco it’s ok. But, why you should be so rude?
This record proves the big success of the song and Francesco. If you have difficulty to accept this, it’s your problem.
In my opinion, Francesco Gabbani is very talented and his song is awesome. He deserves and it deserves the win.
12 points from Greece!
It’s a good news for him, at least there is a curiosity. I don’t mind if Italy wins, it will be cool to see one of my neighbours to host the contest. Lots of love from France, Belle Italie. Muah ! <3
Such snobbery about Italy. This is a clever, fun and subversive song with a serious message…..it is going to PILEDRIVE its way to victory because there is NOTHING to compete with it. Get over it. It will not be remembered as an ESC GREAT in years to come, but it is sure winning hands down in 2017.
To over-haters: Why don’t you spend a minute and take a walk within the comment section of his clips (more or less half of them are commenting from abroad) and Watch some of the “My top 42” (plenty of them are even from outer Europe) etc… Often quite high on lists. Italy has one of the oldest population in the entire world and one of the lowest (maybe) interactivity from adults, so… 2+2=4 Even the youngest web-addicts can’t play it For the Whole population…
Don’t make false allegations, please.
Then… Whatever happens… It’s ok.
I hope it becomes Vevo certified soon!
Honestly, the EBU should be worried that there aren’t Vevo certified videos for Eurovision songs yet, and the two videos that are on their way to that, owe their success to San Remo. They need to get their pulse on what is relevant in the music industry.
Because of the cooperation between the private broadcaster Pro7 (Stefan Raab) and the ARD in 2010 Lenas official ESC Video was released officially in the channels of both partners.: Unitil now ‘Satellite’ got on these two official channels “TV total” (upload 2010-3-17 ) and “Eurovision TV” (upload 2010-3.24) in total 94 Million view. (It was uploaded as well by the YT Channels of other bradcasters. The official video reached f.ex.on the BBC-channel – if I remember it right – over 14 Million view.) So – at least in this very moment – Lena seems to be still in front of… Read more »
Why are fans so impressed because the song has quotes? Are you serious? Quotes?
Internet is full of quotes ready to be put in a blender.
To be or not to be / Singing in the rain / Everything flows (Panta Rhei)
What the hell…totally effortless.
Funnily enough, I prefer the way he performed it at Sanremo with the a capella beginning. I guess if you were ere to aggregate views, he’d easily surpass 100M (maybe even 200M). ???? A lot of the commenters have been saying it’s mostly Italians, but let’s not forget the Eurovision viewing audience is roughly 200 million people–there’s almost no excuse for any song that makes the Grand Final of any given year to get at least a tenth of that (bar 2016 since the lives don’t seem to be available outside Europe), but a lot of times it doesn’t happen.… Read more »
This is just overrated
This song is not that great and I don’t get the hype about it :/ It’s even a bit annoying sometimes
Bulgaria should be the winner
Come on guys and girls. Leave the poor guy alone. It’s a decent tune. Clever words and he has left it in a beautiful language (Italian) He was never aware of how popular it would be. So stop being horrible or unkind. If it’s overrated let it be but overrated means that it’s pretty popular with a lot of people. Let’s hope the juries are not carried away with the ‘let’s sort him out’ and try and surprise Europe or the world with a dark horse. It’s a catchy tune, clever words, charismatic, fun and uplifting
Okay. Now it got to the point when it’s fricking overrated.
12 points from Austria
Oh come on! It’s not like it’s the best song ever! Many of these views are from Italians no doubt. And I can’t get over the silly theater he puts on and the face expressions he makes. It’s acting! Nothing true about it what so ever! I will never get why he’s so popular. Sorry. If it wins.. it’s a shame. But he probobly will because there seem not to be much competition elsewhere. And that says it all how poor it is this year. Many of the other so called favourites will probobly fail live at Eurovision. Belgium for… Read more »
And deservedly so. I’ll be voting for Italy in May, 12 points from the UK 🙂
@Wim
What are u saying? Italy has a large population yes, but not many Italian songs can achieve these numbers xD
Stadio who won Sanremo last year only has 10M
And yes look at 2015 and how Italy broke the scoreboard in the televoting. Juries should be careful this time and not sabotage Italy again. I’m sure.EBU doesn’t want more problems
More modern songs? XD. Occidentali’s Karma has the “Hit factor” and people can listen to it on repeat. Other modern songs can’t say the same 🙂
86 million views, and he hasn’t even won yet.
If the juries purposely ruin his chances like they’ve been doing the past two years it will be an outrage.
@Comi I think that will happen too, i think it will be like Spain-2016!
i think italians have a sophisticated sense of music and even if the ones watching his video are solely italians, i think that’s a good enough achievement.
@ Alex, I’m not sure of that. Please wait until we are in kiev and than you can judge Blanche on here preformance. She already improved in Israel and once we are in Kiev, watch out for Blanche. Italy and Belgium will fight for the victory. It has to be happen in kiev, not during a promotion.
That’s not so difficult to reach such numbers of viewers. In Italy itself living almost 60 million people. Let’s see that 2/3 of the italian citizens are older than let’s say 15, and they come back and back to view the video, yeah than your numbers go up and up. Don’t forget how popular the San Remo festival is in Italy. And it’s not because you have the most video viewers that he will also win next month. Look at 2015. I just have more and more the feeling that italy also will miss the victory this year, like in… Read more »
Now that Belgium disappointed in the live performances, Italy will easily win both juries and televoting, but even if they don’t win the jury, they will win the public with a large margin.
Bulgaria will do very well also but the guy does not have stage charisma as Francesco
Think about all the viewers that don’t read these news, what will they say? A man with a monkey, dancing like a monkey, singing in Italian, sounds nice but what is all about?…Why would viewers want to vote for him?
Levina was promoting in Georgia because Russia’s friends are free now (without Julia to vote for). Levina will do better than Francesco, mark my words.
I think he’s overrated and I hope he doesn’t win he’s not even in my top 20, I’m prepared to put a fake smile on though, he’s a good singer i just cant get into the song, I’m just hoping jury’s vote for more classy songs
@Comi: I’m afraid too… Hope never dies.
He’s definitely going to win.
Oh and don’t get me wrong, I like the song, it’s around my top 10, but I just have that feeling.. 😀
Oh wow, good for him. I still have that weird feeling that he will flop so hard, idk.
@Eve:
Well said, I agree… 😀
It is the tiny red line that turns him from most beloved to most hated, ah ah ah!
Let’s hope other contestants will look up to him and realize they all need to be more creative and unique when sending all those boring ballads and 90’s disco entries to Eurovision. This will stand out in Kiev and I’ll be very happy if Italy wins. Eurovision in Rome, wouldn’t it be just awsome!
First Time that I like favorite. Heard Italian Tourists Singing it in the Streets of Vienna and felt Good. Catchy, ironical,…
I just want a good song to win for once
– – – – – – – – – – R O M E 2 0 1 8 – – – – – – – – – –
This time last year almost nobody cared about Jamala in Amsterdam. I saw all the interviews with Jamala from Amsterdam 2016, and the journalists were just polite…well, how do you feel, how people from your country think about you…bla…bla…bla. No favorite. hahaha
Well deserved. Will win by miles, especially a rather weak year like this. Can’t see ANY big competitor… Italy 2018 for sure!
I was just about to say that “Grande Amore” had the most views on Youtube! 86 million views for “Occidentali’s karma”?? That’s insane! He slayed! I hope he also slays in May! Personally, I’ve probably watched this video around five times! And I’m not Italian! It makes my day! However, same with Il Volo in 2015 and they didn’t win!! (the contest itself, as they actually won the televote!) Hope this won’t happen again and Francesco takes the trophy back to Italy! And it’s time the contest comes south! I believe that after such emotion last year, we need sth… Read more »
Ok, I adore him, my winner too, but please stop with this hype, you don’t do him a favour with this!