Despacito is the only music video here anywhere near nine billion views, roughly two billion clear of Shape of You in second place. The counters themselves tell a story: in December 2014 PSY's Gangnam Style overflowed YouTube's 32-bit view counter, which maxed out at 2,147,483,647, forcing Google to switch the field to 64-bit. Ed Sheeran appears three times (Shape of You, Thinking Out Loud, Perfect) and Maroon 5 twice. The release years stretch from Crazy Frog's Axel F in 2005 to two 2018 entries, and nothing released after 2019 has broken in — attention had already moved to short-form video. If kids-channel uploads were not excluded, Pinkfong's Baby Shark Dance would tower over the whole list: in January 2022 it became the first YouTube video ever to pass ten billion views.