Bless the Rains: Toto’s “Africa” Music Video Hits 1 Billion Views on YouTube

Toto's "Africa" music video

Toto’s “Africa” video

YouTube

More than 40 years after covering the Billboard Hot 100, Toto’s “Africa” is still getting to brand-new landmarks: The 1983No 1 hit simply went beyond 1 billion sights on YouTube.

“Africa”– Toto’s only Hot 100 chart-topper amongst 4 leading 10 hits– is the band’s very first entrance in YouTube’s Billion Views Club.

The Toto IV solitary has actually lived a great deal of lives given that its 1982 launching, being accredited gold by the RIAA in 1991, after that coming to be an Internet meme in the 2000s, also bring about a fan-powered Weezer cover that brought the track back to the Hot 100, coming to a head atNo 51 in 2018. “Africa” currently stands at eight-times platinum, since a 2022 RIAA qualification.

While “Africa” really did not obtain any type of specific Grammy elections, its moms and dad task Toto IV won cd of the year at the 1983 event.

Trending on Billboard

The billion-view video happens inside a collection, where Toto’s David Paich is attempting to match a scrap of a web page to its missing out on publication. When he finds a publication labelled Africa, an African male tosses a spear that falls over the shelf, and a light establishes guide ablaze. Also in the video clip, the band carries out the track in addition to a large pile of publications regardingAfrica

While Rolling Stone‘s Rob Sheffield called the video “mind-blowingly racist” in its portrayal of African culture in a 2018 article, in Billboard‘s oral history of the song earlier that same year, “Africa” director Steve Barron seemed unaware of any backlash. “There should have been [backlash]. But I don’ t believe there was,” Barron stated at the time. “Because I look at the video, and I have now obviously traveled to Africa, and I’ve been to Rwanda, and I’ve been to Kenya, and… yeah, that is probably kind of a white guy’s, outsider view of the meaning of the song.”

Revisit the “Africa” video clip listed below:


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