Finnish rapper Käärijä’s song Cha Cha Cha has become a worldwide phenomenon after gaining massive recognition through the Eurovision Song Contest. Last Friday, the song entered the top 10 on UK’s Official Charts at number 6, a landmark for a Finnish artist.

Käärijä’s Cha Cha Cha started gaining attention already before the ESC semifinals and final, which were held in Liverpool on week 19. In the finals held on May 13th, Cha Cha Cha became 2nd, losing the number one spot to Sweden’s Loreen, who gained the 2nd Eurovision win of her career with Tattoo. Käärijä’s 2nd position was not a bad achievement: it is Finland’s second best Eurovision success of all time, only topped by monster rockers’ Lordi’s infamous Hard Rock Hallelujah, which took the first prize in 2006. Also, Käärijä was this year’s people’s champ, amassing a whooping 376 points from the audience vote – the second biggest amount of all time in ESC.

But real party – a crazy party, to adapt a bit of Käärijä lingo – came after the song contest. Streaming numbers for Cha Cha Cha started ballooning on ESC week, and mere two days after the competition, the song was number 7 on Spotify’s global chart. Cha Cha Cha had climbed to the number one spot in six countries (Sweden, Finland, Iceland, Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania), number two in six countries (Austria, Belgium, Norway, Ukraine, UK and Poland) and top 5 spots in countries such as Israel, Switzerland and Germany.

On Friday May 19^th, these massive streaming numbers finally landed the song on UK’s Official Charts’ top 10 with milestone numbers: Cha Cha Cha was UK number 6 for the week. This was Finland’s third highest entry on the UK chart, the highest ones being Darude's Sandstorm and Bomfunk MC's' Freestyler both #2 in the year 2000 and The Rasmus' In the Shadows at #3 in 2003! Last time we have seen a Finnish artist on the UK top 10 singles' chart was in 2005, when gothic rockers HIM hit the chart with Wings of a Butterfly at number 10.

The same weekend also brought the news from across the Atlantic, that Cha Cha Cha is now also making waves in the US – a famously non-Eurovision country – where the song has landed on Spotify’s, admittedly, quite obscure “viral” chart at number one. At the moment, the song also holds number one place on Spotify’s “Global Viral” chart – as well the "viral" charts in whopping 30 other countries. Phew!

At the time of writing, Cha Cha Cha has been streamed more than 47 million times on Spotify, which is the highest number for a song performed in Finnish language. The ESC finals performance (watch it below) has gained nearly 9 million views on YouTube.

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