Josh Groban’s “You Raise Me Up” is an inspirational song that catapulted the singer, who was just 22 years old at the time, to musical stardom. The song also happens to have been covered to great acclaim by another vocalist who has become a viral sensation—only this singer is a French bulldog named Junior.
The musical pooch, who lives in Cologne, Germany, with his owners Walter Ledermuller and Emanuele Zaubert, has been taking the internet by storm with his carpool karaoke hits for years. Managing both to inspire and to entertain, Junior seems to enjoy singing along with the megahit just as well as any human.
While Junior’s vocal performance can’t quite rival the 79 million views of Groban’s original music video, the dog’s 29 million views are still impressive.
To their surprise, “Junior raised his head [and] howled to the music,” their website says. They recorded a simple video for the amusement of their friends and family, who knew the dog, but they soon found that many others couldn’t get enough of Junior.
“The video has been shared and liked from our friends. In 3 days the video reached on Facebook more than 3.2 million people,” the website says.
From that original video, the “Junior mania” stayed strong. And after the first big hit, the public wanted more. From his original success with the emotionally charged “Say Something,” Junior went on to conquer fans’ hearts with other top-of-the-chart hits, including Rihanna’s “Diamonds” and Adele’s “Hello.”
Junior has become something of a canine viral celebrity, racking up tens of millions of views for his various video performances and attracting hoards of fans from all over the world in the process.
While it’s possible that the dog will have a comeback performance sometime soon, if he does retire now, he can do so with the satisfaction of having more success than many human singers can hope to achieve.
