Nirvana’s ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ has passed the benchmark one billion views on YouTube.
‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ was posted to YouTube on 16 June 2009 taking 10 years and six months to achieve the pass the benchmark figure.
The video was a second time effort for director Simon Bayer, who won a MTV Video Award for Best Alternative Video for his efforts. Simon’s first video was Asphalt Ballet’s ‘Soul Survive’.
Simon went on the create The Rolling Stones ‘Anybody Seen My Baby’ and ‘Saint of Me’, Robbie Williams ‘Angels’ as well as videos for David Bowie, Smashing Pumpkins, The Strokes and Ozzy Osbourne. He has won awards for Metallica’s ‘Until It Sleeps’, Green Day’s ‘Boulevard of Broken Dreams’, My Chemical Romance’s ‘Welcome To The Black Parade’ and Justin Timberlake’s ‘What Goes Around’. He has also made ads for Nike, Mountain Dew and Chrysler.
‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ was filmed on a soundstage at Culver City, in LA. Look out for an appearance by Burton C. Bell, who would later become the frontman for Fear Factory.
Weird Al Yankovic would later parody the video with ‘Smells Like Nirvana’. Al’s video has 23 million views.
The first video to reach one billion views was ‘Gangham Style’ by Psy in 2012. It took three years for Justin Bieber to have the second billion viewed video with ‘Baby’ in 2015. Queen’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ was the first 70s video to pass the mark. Guns N Roses ‘November Rain’ was the first 80s video to pass one billion views.
The most viewed YouTube video is ‘Despacito’ by Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee with 6.58 billion since January 2017.
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