Creating viral songs that are popular beyond boundaries should ideally be difficult and uncommon but welcome to the Anirudh Ravichander era. Music composer Anirudh became a national sensation with the Kolaveri Di... song in his debut movie 3. Since then, it has always been onwards and upwards. His recent song Arabic Kuthu... from actor Vijay’s Beast has the internet on fire. The song has crossed 100 million views in just 12 days and has set a new milestone of becoming the fastest South Indian song to achieve this feat, surpassing actor Dhanush's Rowdy Baby that took almost 17 days to reach the same figure.
This peppy dance number is a unique fusion of Arabic and Kuthu (a Tamil folk genre) styles drawing the audience’s attention with its simple yet catchy lyrics. Just like the tune, the lyrics is also an interesting Arabic Kuthu fusion featuring Arabic phrases like ‘Halamathi Habibo’, ‘malama pitha pithadhe’ and rhyming verses in Tamil like “Jolly Jolly Vekkathula Mayangura Doli” and more. The song gets only better with visuals of actor Vijay and Pooja Hegde grooving to the tune.
The sensational hit Arabic Kuthu is the first Indian song to trend on Spotify's Global Top 200 Chart worldwide within 48 hours of its release. It also secured the "Spotify debuts number 2 on Daily Top 50 India chart" within 24 hours, garnering a phenomenal 50 million views in 4 days and 70 million views in one week. The virality of Arabic Kuthu is also partly attributed to the hook step challenge on Instagram reels where fans and celebrities including Samantha, Jonita Gandhi and Anirudh himself hopped on the bandwagon tapping their feet to this groovy music.
Prior to the release of Arabic Kuthu, the Beast team had put out a quirky promotional video that documented the song’s making. Director Nelson and lyricist Sivakarthikeyan have also deployed their previous experiences of working on television as a show director and standup comedian turned host in marketing the song. The conceptual promotional video where they are seen with music composer Anirudh Ravichander shows them bantering with Vijay over a call. The song has proven to be a global hit just like how the makers cheekily aspired it to be in the promotional video. Bankrolled by Kalanithi Maran of Sun Pictures, Beast is expected to release in April.
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