Rowdy Baby Is The First South Indian Song To Hit A Billion Views On YouTube

Maari 2's 'Rowdy Baby' took the internet by storm and became a viral sensation after the film's release in December 2018 and, more importantly, after the song released on YouTube in January 2019. Bursting with outlandish imagination in its colour, costumes and choreography, the song sees Dhanush and Sai Pallavi dance their heart out to Prabhu Deva's signature choreography and composer Yuvan Shankar Raja's infinitely catchy ear worm.

'Rowdy Baby' clocked in hundreds of millions of views on YouTube ever since its release but, as of this week, it has officially crossed the 1 billion views mark making it the first South Indian song to do so. To put that into perspective, the video was at 850 million views in June this year, and has garnered a further 150 million in less than six months to take it over the one billion mark.

To celebrate the milestone achievement, both actors took to Twitter to share their thoughts.

Sai Pallavi is no stranger to going viral with a number of her songs becoming online sensations. 'Vachinde' from her Telugu film Fidaa stands at close to 300 million views. There's even has a 1-minute video of her dubbing for Fidaa which has 20 million views. In an interview to Film Companion earlier this year, the actress spoke about the massive response to Rowdy Baby and what went into creating it.

Sometimes I just call Dhanush sir and we talk about it. He knew that people would like it but we never knew it would become so big. It's crazy (laughs). And we owe it all to Prabhu Deva master because he choreographed it. We did three full days of rehearsal but when we turned up on set, he actually scrapped all the moves and gave us new steps on the day because he said 'in this location, these steps don't gel so let's try something else'. The way he does it is he'll choreograph steps and say 'the step is ready. Pallavi learn it and we'll shoot'. It was so much pressure. So whatever you see in Rowdy Baby is just pure fear and for some reason, I would shiver every time Dhanush sir would get it right (laughs). He's a phenomenal dancer. That guy's like a ball of energy and the whole time we shot the song I was just praying that I'd be visible on screen.