"Thank U, Next" Breaks YouTube Records

Ariana Grande’s first number one single, “Thank U, Next,” broke YouTube records the day it was released. Previously, the most viewed video on YouTube in its first 24 hours was “Idol,” released by the K-Pop group BTS with 45 million views. Grande’s video garnered 50.3 million views within the first 24 hours of its release. It had a maximum of 829,000 viewers watching simultaneously, and so many comments were posted to the video that YouTube was overloaded and comments were delayed being posted.

The video pays homage to early 2000’s movies such as Legally Blonde, Bring it On, 13 Going on 30, and Mean Girls. Grande stars as the lead role in her rendition of each movie: as Elle Woods, Torrance Shipman, Jenna Rink, and Regina George, respectively. She recreated these movies with three of her former Victorious co-stars, Elizabeth Gillies, Matt Bennett, and Daniella Monet, as well as a slew of recognizable YouTubers. (Enter Troye Sivan and Colleen Ballinger.) She also had the help of two very recognizable actors, Jonathan Bennett, who played Aaron Samuels, and Jennifer Coolidge, who played Paulette in Legally Blonde.

Grande went so far in her video as to recreate the sets almost exactly from each iconic movie. In her behind the scenes video of “Thank U, Next,” Grande showed each set and the details that her set crew implemented to make as accurate of a recreation as possible. Grande’s choreographers even recreated the dance move made known by “Legally Blonde”, the bend-and-snap. The choreographers confessed in the behind the scenes video that they wanted to avoid copyright problems, so they changed the move slightly and gave it a new name: the thank-you-next.

I implore you to watch this video yourself to see the care that Grande put into the details of this video. If you care nothing about that, you should at least watch it because it’s entertaining. The song is catchy, and the movies that Grande connects it to are some of the most popular movies from the 2000’s. I’ll be thrilled to see what Grande comes out with next.

By Caroline Parrish