The video for Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody”—the iconic 1975 single, not the 2018 feature film—became the first pre-1990s video to top 1 billion views on YouTube.
YouTube said in a blog post that the “Bohemian Rhapsody” video is “generally recognized as the first-ever promotional music video,” and it set the standard for the genre.
The song was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2004, and Rolling Stone readers tapped the vocal performance by the late Freddie Mercury as the best in rock history.
YouTube marked the milestone with the release of a newly remastered HD version of the video on the band’s channel, as well as the ability for fans to view the song’s lyrics in languages including English, Spanish, Italian, French, Japanese, Polish, German, Indonesian Bahasa, Korean, Czech, Russian and Turkish.
Queen, YouTube Music, Universal Music Group and Hollywood Records also teamed up on You Are the Champions, an initiative that allows fans...
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