Chainsmokers’ ‘#SELFIE’ is addictive
Share and share alike for catchy tune, video
The Chainsmokers’ #SELFIE was viral from its inception.
The thumping track from New York DJs Drew Taggart and Alex Pall, in which a self-absorbed clubgoer obsesses about which Instagram filter will make her look tan, is one of Spotify’s most shared songs. The video (17 million plays) gets a million and a half YouTube views per day.
Like the smartphone photo of the song ’s title, it’s made to share.
“The video inherently had this viral concept built into it, which certainly helped get it off the ground,” says Pall, 28.
#SELFIE, which features uncredited spoken vocals by Alexis Killacam, has sold 180,000 downloads, according to Nielsen SoundScan. On Sunday, versions of #SELFIE were at No. 4 and No. 34 on Spotify’s Viral 50 chart. In a seven-day period ending Thursday, the band added socialmedia fans at double the rate of the previous week, says analytics company Musicmetric.
“There’s a little bit of selfie in all of us,” says theAudience CEO Oliver Luckett, whose socialnetworking company has shepherded the song ’s rise to Internet meme. “Guy or girl, everybody relates to that emotion of vanity and making fun of it.”
The video features selfies from EDM producer Steve Aoki, David Hasselhoff and Ian Somerhalder, as well as social-media stars Acacia Brinley (1.2 million Instagram followers) and Nash Grier (6.5 million on Vine).
It got another huge boost after Ellen DeGeneres posted her starfilled selfie from the Oscars. Taggart and Pall posted a 15-second clip of the photo’s staging, with the song ’s hook, on Facebook.
The track has garnered comparisons to Baauer’s Harlem Shake but may be even more interactive: Downloadable audio allows fans to post their creations.