‘November Rain’ becomes the first rock song to pass one billion YouTube views

26 years ago, Guns N’ Roses released a suitably epic (and eye-wateringly expensive) video clip for the nine-minute ‘November Rain’, a single plucked from the previous year’s Use Your Illusion I album.

The clip has just ticked over one-billion YouTube views, marking the first type a rock song has achieved this feat. In addition, the song is also the first ’90s video clip to do so. The closest to this latter stats are Zombie by The Cranberries, (739 million) and  Smells Like Teen Spirit (727 million).

According to Times Now, the video clip averaged 560,000 views a day in 2017 – an impressive feat no doubt bolstered by the group’s hefty touring schedule over the past few years.

We still can’t explain why the guy dives over the wedding cake once it starts raining though…

Or why Slash left the church mid-ceremony to wander out into the desert to play a blistering guitar solo. Actually, scratch that last one – it makes perfect sense!

This article originally appeared on The Industry Observer, which is now part of The Music Network.