Scorpions video for Wind Of Change hits one billion views on YouTube

From Loudersound.

Scorpions‘ video for their massive hit single Wind Of Change has been viewed more than one billion times on YouTube.

The milestone has been reached 13 years after the video was uploaded to YouTube in 2009, and 31 years after its release as a single in 1991.

Wind Of Change appeared on the German band’s 11th album, Crazy World and the single has sold more than 14 million copies — making it one of the best-selling songs of all time.

It became synonymous with the fall of the Berlin Wall, although it was in fact written about the band’s experience of playing the Moscow Music Peace Festival in August of 1989 in front of 300,000 fans at Lenin Stadium alongside Ozzy Osbourne, Motley Crue, Cinderella, and Skid Row.

The song’s promo video features some footage of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, meaning it will forever be linked to that seismic event.

Discussing that link, Scorpions singer and Wind Of Change writer Klaus Meine told Classic Rock last year: “We grew up in the shadow of the Berlin Wall, in a way.

“The divided country and the Berlin Wall, this was just a fact, it was a reality of our lives being German citizens. In the early days, when we played shows in Berlin, you had to go through the transit autobahn, and the first checkpoint – Helmstedt – is just 100km away from where we grew up.

“People were getting killed, getting shot when they tried to make it from the East to the West and, of course, it’s a different story from the English perspective, or British perspective, or American perspective.

“This was our reality. And this was after the war, when the country was divided into all these different zones, and when the wall came down, it was such an emotional moment, in European, in world history.

“You never can write a song for, for a historical event like this, it’s impossible. But Wind Of Change, for so many people, brings back the memories of this historical moment in time.”

Scorpions released their 19th album, Rock Believer, last year.

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