A member of a military drill team is dancing as everybody else is standing stiff at attention. "Con los terroristas," a female sings over an electronic beat. A deep voice then commands everybody to "do the Harlem shake" and chaos ensues as the entire drill team begins to flail their arms. One member is on skis while another falls out of a window.
This is the effect of Baauer's "Harlem Shake," a meme that is the latest YouTube craze and spreading to colleges across the U.S. The man behind the song, 23-year-old Brooklyn producer Harry Rodrigues, has just reached No.1 on Billboard's Hot 100 chart.
The 35-second audio clip of Baauer's single has everybody making their own rendition of the signature dance first started by YouTuber Filthy Frank. There's even an Exorcist version that shows doctors frantically running up a flight of stairs to find a possessed Regan doing the Harlem Shake.
Though the viral video trend began a few weeks ago, the song was released eight months ago in May 2012. The single was released through Jefree's, a division of electronic artist Diplo's Mad Decent Label for free. Baauer experienced little to no airplay; however, this week the single was downloaded 262,000 times compared to the 1,000 downloads it sold during the first week.
Baauer's No. 1 presence on the Billboard charts has caused the methodology for calculating the chart: you guessed it, YouTube plays. Previously, the chart was determined by radio play, on-demand audio streaming, online radio streaming and the Nielsen SoundScan download sales reports.
YouTube has secured its spot as a major player in the music industry thanks to Baauer's huge hit as well as the "Gangnam Style" craze that holds YouTube's record for most plays with an astronomical 1.3 billion views.
Spin magazine's coverage of the phenomenon is well reported, using numbers and statistics to show just how big this craze has actually become. Philip Sherburne's anecdote he uses to describe Rodrigues' luck is not only original but also colorful. "It's like he scored big on a scratch-and-win card and pocketed all but a single dollar, which he invested in a Megabucks ticket — and then won that, too."
If the "Harlem Shake" has taught us anything, it's that it only takes one guy with a tight pink jumpsuit to turn a man's dream into a reality.
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