Cute animal choral video is viral hit

19 February 2013, 14:16 | Updated: 19 February 2013, 14:26

Choral music and a video of fluffy animals? What's not to like? 'The 9 Cutest Things That Ever Happened' has received more than 1.2 million views on YouTube in two weeks, dividing opinion among audiences.

An Australian choir has taken the internet by storm with their choral take on 'The 9 Cutest Things That Ever Happened', a video which sees the group of singers describe a selection of animal pictures in full harmony. Composer Gordon Hamilton took inspiration from the online list of the 50 cutest things that ever happened, choosing a top nine including a baby elephant who spent a day at the beach, 'Boo' the Pomeranian dog, and a basset hound race.

He said: "It was the poetic, pseudo-religious cadence of the photo captions that suggested to me the (mis)use of Anglican chant, or harmonised recitative: a chord is notated and the text sung quite freely to a natural speech rhythm. So there is a feeling of incanting a psalm."

After just two weeks, the video has received more than 1.2 million views on YouTube, prompting an almost equal number of thumbs up and thumbs down responses.

This is not the first time the singers have used the internet as a musical starting point. Their recent video Toy Story 3 = Awesome (The Facebook Song) takes social media as inspiration, setting a string of amusing Facebook posts to music.