The YouTube music video for classic Toto hit ‘Africa’ has reached one billion views and counting.
Having achieved the same feat on Spotify three years earlier, the 1982 track has now reached the milestone with the video sharing platform.
According to calculations, it appears that people have collectively spent a total of 2,372,685 days watching this video.
‘Africa’ joins a list of household names whose tunes have added their names to the exclusive club.
Back in February, AC/DC’s Back in Black hit one billion views on YouTube.
Other artists also include Guns N’Roses with November Rain, Maroon 5 with Sugar, as well as the late Amy Winehouse with Back To Black.
Other artists to have surpassed one billion YouTube views also includes Red Hot Chili Peppers, and The Police.
David Paich ‘fascinated’ by Africa
Back in 2018, Africa co writer David Paich revealed that he had always been “fascinated” with the song.
“As a kid, I’d always been fascinated by Africa”, he said.
“I loved movies about Dr. Livingstone and missionaries. I went to an all-boys Catholic school and a lot of the teachers had done missionary work in Africa. They told me how they would bless the villagers, their Bibles, their books, their crops and when it rained, they’d bless the rain. That’s where the hook line – ‘I bless the rains down in Africa’ – came from”.
However, other people have been quick to criticise the track, with the Rolling Stones even branding it “mind-blowingly racist, which might be why MTV barely played it”.
While Stereogum even called it: “almost shockingly racist”.
Check it out for yourselves below.
