Remember when this was everywhere?

[WhatUQuant]

Despacito dominated YouTube for years

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJQP7kiw5Fk

For a long time this was the biggest video on YouTube. It helped push Latin music into global mainstream and shows how music videos still dominate views

[Cheeky Kernel]

This was everywhere when it dropped

[QueueDay]

Music videos always win because of replay value

[NinaVrina]

Gets me in holiday mood

[Maxximus]

Still holds up honestly

[NightOwl]

Pretty much my experience. I have started just watching twenty minutes of gameplay before buying anything.

Might go back to it.

[Red Builder]

From what I saw that checks out. It is worth looking at who benefits from a particular framing before accepting it.

Curious to see how this develops

[Red Builder]

Couldn't agree more. Fair enough really.

Nice one

[Piston]

It is wild thinking about how long Despacito sat at the top. It genuinely felt like it would never leave YouTube trending.

Everywhere you went, that intro guitar was just there in the background of life.

It is one of those cultural moments that you only really appreciate in hindsight.

[Northernah]

I remember being annoyed at it at the time, but now it just feels like part of internet history.

Like you cannot talk about 2017 without mentioning it.

It was unavoidable in a way that music rarely is anymore.

[BlueFalcon]

Hot take: it was not even a bad song, it just got overplayed into oblivion.

If anything, the backlash made it more famous.

The internet has a funny way of turning repetition into meme status.

[Daresh84]

People forget how big YouTube used to be as the main music platform for casual listening.

Before playlists and algorithm radios took over everything, songs like this just dominated the homepage.

Now everything is fragmented into micro trends.

[CodyRhodes99]

I think what made Despacito stand out was how global it went.

It was not just a Western hit, it was everywhere at once.

That level of shared experience is rare now.

[Connor97]

Honestly I miss when one song could just define a summer.

Now it feels like everything is competing in tiny pockets of attention.

Nothing sticks in the same way anymore.

[RayOfLight32]

I still hear it in random places like shops or gyms and it instantly takes me back.

That intro is basically a time machine at this point.

Whether you liked it or not, it is hard to ignore.

[HiggsField41]

It is funny how people acted like it was the peak of pop music collapse or something.

Meanwhile it was just a catchy reggaeton pop track doing normal pop track things.

The internet just exaggerated everything about it.

[Gaz90]

What I find interesting is how streaming changed this completely.

Back then a single viral song could dominate globally.

Now even massive hits feel shorter lived.

[Hitman04]

My parents still recognise that song instantly, which says a lot.

It crossed generations in a way most modern tracks do not.

That is probably its real legacy.

[RayOfLight99]

There was also that remix with Bieber that pushed it even further.

That version basically cemented its global reach.

It turned an already huge track into a meme-level phenomenon.

[TeddyWhelan]

I think people underestimate how much YouTube repeat culture contributed to its dominance.

Auto-play and looping basically amplified it endlessly.

You did not just hear it once, you heard it constantly.

[GhostRider41]

At the time it felt like it would never end, but now it almost feels nostalgic.

Like a snapshot of early streaming culture before everything got hyper fragmented.

Strange how fast that era disappeared.

[Golden Tara]

If you play it now, it still holds up surprisingly well as a dance track.

It is just burned into people's brains from overexposure.

That is more a platform problem than a song problem.

[DotEXE]

I think Despacito was one of the last truly universal internet songs.

After that, everything started splitting into niche audiences.

We have not really had a single global track moment like that since.

[Wizard35]

That song was unavoidable. Shops, taxis, random YouTube autoplay at 2am... it just kept finding a way back into your ears

It was one of those tracks where even people who claimed to hate it somehow knew every word.

[Sentry39]

Feels like that era had more shared moments. Everyone hearing the same song at the same time, whether they wanted to or not.

Now it is all playlists and algorithms, so the overlap is smaller.

[Plateau45]

Gangnam Style had a similar moment before it, but Despacito felt more polished and mainstream.

It was less of a novelty and more of a global pop takeover.

Kind of impressive when you think about it.

[Owl19]

Not convinced it was the last universal hit. Blinding Lights came close.

Different vibe, but it was everywhere for a long stretch.

Maybe not quite the same cultural saturation though

[SuperPosition52]

There is something funny about how people got tired of it, then a few years later it comes on and suddenly it is nostalgic.

Time heals even the most overplayed songs

[Darren_20]

Radio played it into the ground. Every station, every hour, like there was a quota to meet.

At some point it stopped being a song and became background noise.

[SerialScroller60]

The YouTube numbers were wild. It felt like watching a high score climb in real time.

People kept refreshing just to see it tick higher

[Matthew97]

Part of its success was how simple it was. Catchy hook, easy rhythm, nothing complicated.

Perfect for repeating endlessly without people switching off immediately.