The Cranberries have become the first ever Irish band to have a song reach a billion views on YouTube.
The official video for the band’s classic 1993 hit ‘Zombie’ currently has 1,024,267,544 views at time of writing and is rising fast.
It puts them ahead of an impressive list of Irish musical talent. Most notably U2, who while being one of the biggest rock bands of all time, not just in Ireland but across the world, don’t have any one song with as many views as the Cranberries’ Zombie.
They are also way ahead of any single song from great Irish stars such as The Corrs, Snow Patrol, The Pogues, Enya, Van Morrison, Sinead O’Connor, Ash, Westlife and Boyzone.
To put the Cranberries’ achievement into context, Beautiful In White by Westlife has 244 million views, Snow Patrol’s Chasing Cars has 221 million views and Sinead O’Connor’s Nothing Compares 2 U has been viewed 165 million times.
U2’s Beautiful Day has 133 million views, just ahead of Enya’s Only Time which had 129 million, while The Pogues’ Christmas classic Fairytale of New York currently has been viewed just over 59 million times.
The band posted on their YouTube page: “Achieving this milestone will make ‘Zombie’ the first ever music video by an Irish band to reach one billion views on YouTube, taking its place in a select group of iconic rock music videos released before 2003 to hit that mark, including Queen’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ and Guns N’ Roses’ ‘November Rain’.”
It will certainly give current Irish stars such as Fontaines D.C. and The Murder Capital a monumental target to reach towards.
Zombie was written by the Cranberries’ late, great frontwoman Dolores O’Riordan after an IRA bomb attack in Warrington, England killed two children.
Do your bit to help the band out by taking a look at the video below.
Written by Michael Kehoe @michaelcalling
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