As it does each December, YouTube has looked back at its biggest hits of the year, and in 2015, a dancing teenager stole the show. According to the video site, the top trending video of the past 12 months was the music video for “Watch Me (Whip/Nae Nae),” starring 17-year-old pop star Silentó.
The “Watch Me” video was always destined for digital greatness. It references other dance crazes that previously took YouTube by storm, such as the “Crank Dat” dance and the “Stanky Legg.” It also incorporated clips from the DanceOn network, which encouraged its partners to submit their own versions of the “Watch Me” dance routine. The result was a viral phenomenon; the main “Watch Me” video has more than 460 million views, and other renditions of the song have rolled up huge view counts of their own.
The rest of 2015’s top ten trending videos are a mixed bag. Music figures in half of the videos, three different late night TV programs crack the list, and a few homegrown YouTube stars–such as Roman Atwood and The Slow Mo Guys–show up as well. Here, courtesy of YouTube, is the official ranking, as well as a playlist featuring all the top videos.
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YouTube also dove into its end-of-year data by revealing the most-viewed videos within specific categories. Wiz Khalifa and Charlie Puth’s “See You Again,” which went from zero to one billion in 2015, was the year’s most viewed music video. In the world of gaming, a Clash of Clans commercial and Corridor Digital’s “Real GTA” video topped the list.
Trending videos, however, aren’t just for YouTube to uncover; the video site wants its viewers to keep discovering them, too. To that end, it announced a new “trending tab” that will allow users to see the hottest videos on YouTube during any particular moment. Look for it starting today on the YouTube homepage, and prepare to discover the videos everyone else is talking about.
