‘November Rain’ Music Video Tops 1 Billion YouTube Views, Making It The Most Watched ‘90s Music Video Of All-Time

“YOU’RE WELCOME, AXL!”

That’s what I would say to Guns N’ Roses frontman/enfant terible Axl Rose, if I ever saw him. I’d holler it at him from across a crowded city square if I had to. He would need to know that I contributed to the one billion (and counting) YouTube views for GnR’s music video for “November Rain.” That makes it the first music video from the 1990s to top one billion views.

For those of you needing a refresher course, “November Rain” was the third single released off of Guns N’ Roses’ album Use Your Illusion I, which was itself a two-part album that represented the apex of GnR’s time spent as king of the rock world. They were massive MTV superstars, and the Use Your Illusion era was their blank-check period, where they cranked up the bombast to eleven and let Axl Rose’s ego and Slash’s guitar solos run wild. “November Rain” the song was by turns contemplative and operatic, packed with background choruses and guitar solos and a 90-second instrumental overture to begin the song. Rose and his bandmates had nothing less iconic than “Bohemian Rhapsody” as its style inspiration.

The “November Rain” music video was itself the middle part of a trilogy, with “Don’t Cry” before it and “Estranged” (from Use Your Illusion II) after it, and if you’re thinking that sounds like a narrative video, then you are in luck. The late ’80s/early ’90s were the golden age of story-based music videos, and “November Rain” was a damn doozy. After meeting cute with his girlfriend (played by his IRL girlfriend, model Stephanie Seymour), Rose marries her in “November Rain,” a decadent ceremony featuring a mini-skirt wedding dress (hers), a claw pinky ring (his), and the most tongue ever on display in a wedding kiss. This is followed by an outdoor reception, and given the title of the song, you know it’s going to start raining eventually. Which is when shit gets really weird, and people start diving over tables, and wine bottles get knocked over in obvious blood metaphors, and then next thing we know, Seymour is a gorgeous corpse in a casket. Was there … a drive-by shooting during the rainstorm? Was the rain deadly to her somehow? If she was so allergic to the rain, why the outdoor reception?

And that’s just when things start getting good, because that’s when Slash steps up for the second of his two massive guitar solos. The concert-hall footage features the traditionally raucous Axl seated at a piano, while Slash stands atop it and wails, while a wild-haired conductor madly directs an orchestra, while equally wild-haired backup singers match Axl’s screams, while Axl himself scrapes the piano keys with both hands, while in the narrative, Stephanie Seymour casket is carried out of the church and lowered into a rainy grave.

The video is pure drama and the closest that heterosexuals have ever come on record to approximating the joys derived from RuPaul’s Drag Race. It is extra in the finest sense of the word.

And over the last decade plus, it’s racked up over a billion YouTube views. Much of the boost in recent years for Guns N’ Roses on YouTube has come from South America, which is where the reunited GnR have been touring heavily since 2016.

Now let’s get Madonna’s “Like a Prayer” up from that insulting 58 million views, huh?