When it comes to music it’s hard to tell what will become a hit, or what will cause it to become a hit. Case in point the South African song Jerusalema. Jerusalema was first released in December of 2019, and although it was a hit in its native country at the time, it didn’t make much of a splash in the rest of the world until mid 2020. The song, recorded by producer Master KG with vocals by Nomcebo, went viral thanks to a social media driven challenge known as the #JerusalemaChallenge where people across the globe would create videos of themselves dancing to the music. Since then a remix featuring Nigerian singer Burna Boy has been released which has hit US Billboard charts, and the song would become the most Shazamed song in the world. But how did it get to that point?
Jerusalema played on South African radio stations over the holiday season in 2019, and with its religious-leaning lyrics sung in Zulu it made a lot of sense why it became a local hit. The upbeat, disco-like tempo took it further than that however, and in February 2020 a video of an Angolan dance studio’s members line dancing to the song while carrying their food and eating started to go viral on YouTube and TikTok. Soon others started dancing to the beats, including a Zimbabwe bridal party, a German flash mob and more. Each instance was accompanied by the hashtag #JerusalemaChallenge or #JerusalemaDanceChallenge. These videos made the song itself more popular that anyone ever thought it would be.
Burna Boy’s version of the song has reached number one on the charts in ten countries, and the song has been streamed on Spotify more than 66 million times. The original video on YouTube by Master KG has had over 140 million views. Now that’s quite a hit for a song that came out of nowhere.