“It really felt like a scene out of That Thing You Do! where they’re just seeing their song climb the charts,” Dost remembers. The immense success of “Young” - which also included a song of the year win at the 2013 Grammy Awards, where the band also won best new artist - came as an understandable shock to the members of Fun. It was a run that demonstrated how rapid and wide-reaching viral popularity could be at the height of the iTunes era in the early ‘10s, when a well-placed sync and/or a valuable co-sign could result in a relatively left-field pop song exploding from a curiosity to a phenomenon practically overnight.
The ascension of “Young” to the top spot of the Hot 100 spurring an epic 23-week run of mainstream newcomers dominating the chart Gotye’s slinky “Somebody That I Used To Know” and Carly Rae Jepsen’s bubblegum banger “Call Me Maybe” would claim the next 17 weeks.
