A tune loved by children and hated by adults, released in South Korea in 2016, has finally made it into the UK Top 40. What is the secret of its slow-burn success?
P ity me, for I had not heard of Baby Shark until this weekend, when several people I spoke to at the End of the Road festival mentioned it. They hadn’t actually heard it, just heard of it from friends with small kids. Specifically, how said friends were feeling the urge to slaughter said small kids if they played Baby Shark one more time. But if people who have never even heard it are talking about it, then clearly a primer is needed… What is it?
The phenomenon everyone is talking about is a nursery rhyme-like song and video, produced by a South Korean kids’ entertainment company called Pinkfong. The Baby Shark song and dance video has had more than 1.6bn views on YouTube, by the simple expedient of creating something that sounds as if it was designed specifically to make adults want to yank their own teeth out with rusty pliers. In the video, a succession of cute kids do little dances while naming different sharks – baby shark, mommy shark, daddy shark and so on – before running away to safety. Where did it come from?
Not South Korea, originally.
