Guns N’ Roses become first rock band to hit 1 billion YouTube views (for a 27-year-old film clip)

Guns N’ Roses hit a milestone over the weekend normally only achieved by pop artists.

Their music video for November Rain – which is 27 years old, mind you – became the first-ever music video by a rock band to clock one billion views on YouTube.

While there are now over 100 music videos to achieve the one billion mark, (Dua Lupa’s New Rules was #100), most of the videos in the Billion Views Club are primarily recent releases – following Gangnam Style’s unprecedented success pushing the millions into the billions in 2012.

As a result, there aren’t many older titles on YouTube most-watched list, making this new achievement for GNR that much more impressive.

According to Forbes, it’s the first music video from the ‘90s to hit over a billion streams. In fact, it is the first video created before the YouTube-era to ever reach the milestone. 

The band also holds the title for biggest ‘80s hit as well, for Sweet Child O’ Mine which has almost 695 million views.

The video in question is one of the most expensive music videos ever made, directed by Andy Morahan and costing roughly US$1.5 million to make.  

That doesn’t come close to the US$5m the band splurged on the clip for their 1994 hit Estranged, also directed by Morahan.

It’s estimated that the video was racking up an average of 5600,000 views per day in 2017, with 82% of views coming from Brazil, Mexico and Argentina.

GNR played 13 shows in South America – including dates in Argentina and Brazil – as part of their Not In This Lifetime reunion tour. The tour is currently the fourth highest-grossing tour of all time, garnering 480 million so far.

The race to beat YouTube’s most-viewed video is still on, currently held by 2017’s Despacito from Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee.

It’s sitting pretty at 5.32 billion views in the 18 months since its release.

The band are currently on tour across Europe.

Check out the entire nine-minute clip: