When newlyweds Jill Peterson and Kevin Heinz asked their wedding party to turn their wedding into a party the result was the latest YouTube hit “JK Wedding Entrance,” which featured the entire cast dancing down the aisle to Chris Brown’s “Forever.” Just five days after it was posted, the video was the most-cited clip according to Nielsen’s BlogPulse, and has recently passed the 10 million views mark after the “Today” show flew the crew to New York to recreate the entire event outside Rockefeller Center.
While it’s great news and great fun for the happy couple, the video also seems to have had a halo effect for troubled singer Chris Brown, whose February assault on then girlfriend Rihanna cloaked the singer in months of negative buzz. (Brown plead guilty and received five years probation and must serve 180 hours of community labor.) The wedding video now has a direct link to buy “Forever,” which, despite being released last year, is now in the iTunes top 10. According to Soundscan “Forever” digital downloads went from under 3,000 (week ending 7/19) to 50,000 (week ending 7/26) and sales of Brown’s album “Exclusive” are up %130 in the last week.
Brown’s own attempt at a viral video, a recently released apology video for the Rihanna “incident” which he calls “inexcusable,” has been viewed more than 2 million times. As BlogPulse shows, July buzz about Brown and “Forever” reach almost as high as blog discussion that occurred around the time of the assault.
