Queen’s iconic music video for “Bohemian Rhapsody” has now officially passed 1 Billion views on YouTube, making history as the first pre-1990’s video to reach one billion views on the platform.
The accompanying video for their 1975 single, “Bohemian Rhapsody” is generally recognised as the first ever promotional music video, kick-starting and setting the gold-standard for the genre for decades to come. Today it continues to inspire and entertain millions of fans around the world, more than forty years after it was first created.
Speaking from the band’s current sold-out North American tour, founding Queen members Brian May and Roger Taylor said,
“We are honoured that Bohemian Rhapsody has just hit one billion views on YouTube. We want to thank you all and celebrate with our amazing fans all around the world by creating three new music videos to our songs, all featuring you! Whether you are a musician, singer, dancer, visual artist or you just want to have some fun. Go to www.youarethechampions.com to find out more and we’ll see you on the road somewhere.”
To celebrate this monumental achievement, a newly remastered HD version of the video is available today, for the first time ever and exclusively on the band’s YouTube channel. Fans can now see the video restored in all its glory, as it was originally intended. Additionally, fans will now be able to access the song’s lyrics in multiple languages including English, Spanish, Italian, French, Japanese, Polish, German, Indonesian Bahasa, Korean, Czech, Russian & Turkish whilst watching the video.
To further honor this significant milestone, Queen — in partnership with YouTube Music, Universal Music Group and Hollywood Records — have announced the launch of “You Are The Champions’, a unique new campaign that will give fans an exclusive chance to become a part of Queen history with a starring role in three brand new user generated videos for three of the band’s most celebrated tracks.
As part of the campaign, musicians, singers, and instrumentalists can take on “Bohemian Rhapsody”. Dancers will be able to give their own interpretations for “Don’t Stop Me Now” – with a special instructional video created by Polly Bennett (Rami Malik’s movement coach from Bohemian Rhapsody) and finally, visual artists will get the chance to design any word or phrase from the lyrics of “A Kind of Magic”.
Fans can visit YouAreTheChampions.com to find out more and add their submissions! The finished videos will be published later this year on the bands official YouTube channel.
