Today, BABYMETAL just passed 100 million views on their catchy song “Gimme chocolate!!”. In the five years that it has been up on YouTube, the video garnered over 770,000 likes and almost 100,000 comments!
Regardless if you’re only focused on western metal or just Japanese metal, you have most likely still encountered the name “BABYMETAL” at one point. If you’ve been able to avoid the name all this time, good thing you’re here, because you’re in for some sweet treat with BABYMETAL’s music video, Gimme chocolate!!.
Gimme chocolate!! was first introduced to the world when the group released it along with their debut self-titled album on February 26, 2014. Due to the surprising success of the song internationally, it was later released as a stand-alone digital single in 2015. It is by far BABYMETAL’s most successful music video to date, with the music video MEGITSUNE trailing behind with “only” 56 million views. While still an impressive number, the gap is immensely big.
As with all of BABYMETAL songs, the group recruits various brilliant music composers to help them out. In this case, Gimme chocolate!! was provided by the electronic punk musician Ueda Takeshi, the front-man of the band AA= (“all animals are equal”). Ueda typically writes songs with punk and grungy sound and with Gimme chocolate!!, he stuck to his roots and was still able to incorporate the kawaii-ness (cute-ness) of the girls and giving it a catchy tune!
There are many reasons why this song is so popular, but one way that possibly helped the song reach higher numbers was due to their performance on American television, on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert. BABYMETAL’s performance took place on April 5, 2016. During that week, the program attracted about 2.2 million viewers. This allowed people who normally wouldn’t listen to Japanese music to gently discover what it had to offer. Of course, the surprising element of three jumpy girls dancing and singing to metal is still what catches people off guard, a quirk that allowed them to stand out.
As of recently, BABYMETAL has unfortunately turned from a trio to a duo unit. However, they’re still continuing their quest for world domination so we can’t wait to see what’s next!
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