Almost exactly eight years to the day after its April 10, 2014, release, the video for David Guetta, Showtek and Vassy’s “Bad” has hit a billion views on YouTube, the video platform announced Wednesday (April 20).
This accomplishment marks Dutch electronic duo Showtek and Australian singer Vassy’s first entry to the channel’s Billion Views Club. Meanwhile Guetta, The Energizer Bunny of dance music, has already has clocked three videos with a billion views via “Titanium,” “Hey Mama” and “Play Hard.”
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
“Bad” is peak EDM-era fare, with a bouncy mainstage melody given oomph from a massively propulsive chorus made by the song’s co-producers Showtek, whose hardstyle origins can be heard on the very large, very woozy beat. The comic-book style animated video features a zombie apocalypse (featuring dancing zombies à la “Thriller”) with one of these walking dead then falling in love with a woman on a motorcycle who drives him away from the violent threat of a hostile military.
“Bad” hit No. 11 on Hot Dance/Electronic Songs in 2014, with the song ultimately spending 26 weeks on that chart. The song currently has nearly 492 million streams on Spotify, with the success of the single helping Guetta become the third-ever artist to reach a billion streams on the platform in 2015.
In regards to the billion YouTube streams gleaned by Guetta’s megahit “Titanium,” last October the producer told Billboard that “the video is a cheap video, because we didn’t think it was going to be such a big smash. I don’t know how many views has, but it’s probably around a billion views for a video that cost, like, almost nothing.”
Revisit the “Bad” video below: