CNN Song of the year 2011 – Why this Kolaveri di ?

Can you guess CNN’s Song of the year 2011 ? You would probably think it was won by Justin Bieber or Adele or Pitbull or some other western pop songs. But, to everybody’s surprise a regional song has overtaken other top pop songs of the western world. The song is none other than the country’s latest sensation and youtube’s most viral song of the year – “Why this kolaveri di ?” of an upcoming tamil movie “3”.

This tamil – english lyrics song track was first streamed on YouTube by the movie songs rights holder Sony Entertainment and it went on to make records in just few days.

The Youtube video posing National Award Winner Danush singing the song has gathered over 30 million views so far and is now the top auto suggested video for the word “why” on the site. The film track has also spawned many hundreds of imitations and cover versions – fully tamil, telugu, bengali and other regional language versions and some foreign rendition. Bollywood star Mallika Sherawat is expected to perform to the track at a New Year’s Eve stage show in Mumbai.

You would have probably seen the original song @ youtube. Enjoy the song one more time here.

Well, the intention of the article is to find the reason behind a regional creation winning CNN’s top song of the year 2011. While there could many other genuine reasons for the song hitting the top list, I could think of only the following reasons.

– “Why this kolaveri di ?” is just not a tamil song. Its 99% english lyrics with tamil lingo and is well understood by majority of the song watchers. So, its yet another english pop song with some additional “Indian” touch.

– This teaser song streamed on youtube before the movie release irked the general audience

– Facebook sharing and Twitter mentions made the song very viral

– Media hyped the song on regular intervals starting with local regional newspapers, tv channels and to the national news channels

– Popular brand advertisements were made on “why this kolaveri” tag lines and there by more marketing for the song

– Top politicians (like Manmohan Singh), corporate tycoons (like Ratan Tata),  actors (like Big B) constantly spoke/mentioned about the song leading to more referrals

Any other reasons you could think of which made the song more viral and win this award ?