Most insanely popular music videos don't hide the reason they are insanely popular. They are either by an insanely popular artist, or feature twerking butts, or feature any number of things people want to see.

Some insanely popular music videos, for one reason or another, don't really wear the reason for their popularity on their sleeve. It's more of a mystery. One of the best examples of this kind of video is "Somebody That I Used To Know" (2011) by Gotye featuring Kimbra, directed by Natasha Pincus.

I think it's fair to call this video "viral". Although "Party Rock Anthem" and a few others beat it for views in 2011, it was a video by a virtually unknown Belgian-Australian singer-songwriter featuring another virtually unknown New Zealand singer-songwriter. It did not have "top five music videos of the year" written all over it, but here we are.

It doesn't hurt that the track, "Somebody That I Used To Know" is an excellent song, but if I had my guess, I'd say that if you asked 10 people to picture that song in their head, they'd see Kimbra and Gotye standing there covered in paint.

A little background on the video may help us out. The painting they are standing in front of is based on a painting that Gotye's Dad (Frank de Backer) did in the 80s. The body painting was done by Australian artist Emma Hack, who actually paints people into backgrounds as an artistic concept.

Speaking of painting people into backgrounds, Emma Hack's non-commercial work is actually pretty stunning and detailed. Her work on this video works well, but it isn't anywhere near the level of detail and matching that she goes after in her own pieces. The visuals in the video are interesting, but I don't think the video rose to the level it did just on the concept of it being some sort of visual novelty.

So what was it about this video that made it so popular? I think one clue is the common thread of the other big videos that came out around 2011. We had videos like "On The Floor" and "What Makes You Beautiful" and "Rain Over Me" which were all good videos, but they lacked a very simple, strong, and easily describable concept. "Somebody That I Used To Know" was a video that you could describe to other people in a sentence or two, and I think that helped it more than anything to spread around.

In more recent years, music videos have gotten better and better at incorporating elements that are simple, relatable, and able to be parodied. Miley Cyrus has done it to great effect in 2013, as have Robin Thicke and Psy. You can ask people if they've seen the "video of Miley Cyrus with the wrecking ball" just like you can ask people if they've seen the "video with the people being painted".

One clue to support this is the fact that the numerous parodies of this song often mimic the video down to the smallest details, like the big breath that Gotye takes after Kimbra delivers her first line or Kimbra's shoulder movements.

One fun item I came across when looking up the Gotye info is that there is apparently an uncut version with nudity in it that has not been posted online yet - there is no such video, please see the comments. Thank you, whoever has been keeping that under wraps, for sparing us Gotye's painted junk.

Adam Fairholm is the co-founder and lead developer of IMVDb. You can find him on twitter at @adamfairholm.