Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" Video Hits 1 Billion Views On YouTube [Watch]

Nirvana‘s iconic music video for “Smells Like Teen Spirit” has surpassed one billion views on YouTube.

The milestone marks only the second music video from the 1990s to reach one-billion views, trailing behind Guns N’ Roses‘ “November Rain”, which is the most-watched music video from that decade on YouTube with 1.2 billion views. Uploaded in 2009, it took “Smells Like Teen Spirit” only ten years to rack up its massive view count. Next up to reach the one-billion mark is the video for “Zombie” by The Cranberries, which is currently just shy of 980 million views, and was also uploaded to YouTube in 2009.

The video for “Smells Like Teen Spirit”, which was originally released as a single in 1991 from Nirvana’s Nevermind album, helped usher in a new era of mainstream rock culture, as ’80s hair metal was pushed aside for the zeitgeist of a new decade: grunge. This musical trend continued through the early-to-mid ’90s as Nirvana became the poster child for Generation X and other grunge mainstays like Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, and Alice in Chains rose to the national stage.

In addition to the one-billion views milestone, music video platform Vevo announced that the video was also the sixth-most watched rock video of the 2010s.

Watch the classic video for Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and help it reach the two-billion milestone.

Nirvana – “Smells Like Teen Spirit”

[Video: Nirvana]

[H/T CoS]