Katy Perry’s Dark Horse becomes 3rd music video to hit 1billion YouTube views!
She joins PSY and Justin Bieber
Katy Perry’s fantabulous ‘Dark Horse’ video has become the third video in pop history to smash the 1billion views barrier.
Less than 16 months after it was uploaded to YouTube, the Egyptian themed video surpassed the landmark over the weekend.
There are only two other videos in the illustrious 1billion club – Justin Bieber’s ‘Baby’ (1.176billion views) and, of course, PSY’s unstoppable K-Pop juggernaut ‘Gangnam Style’ (2.352billion views).
Katy Perry’s ‘Roar’ is the fourth most-watched ever with 955million views, while her (alleged) arch nemesis Taylor Swift is hot on her heels with ‘Blank Space’ (925million views).
Clearly elated at the news, Katy told her 71million Twitter followers: “Guys. Wut. Dark Horse has reached 1 BILLION views?! I seriously love ur eyeballs & ur fingers for dem clicks...heads back to the trap house”
Shortly after its premiere in February 2014, ‘Dark Horse’ was digitally edited after thousands of people claimed one scene was blasphemous.
Over 65,000 people signed a petition calling for the video to be removed, claiming a scene of a doomed man wearing a pendant with the Arabic word for God on it was offensive.
Shazad Iqbal from Bradford, who started the petition on change.org, explained: “Blasphemy is clearly conveyed in the video, since Katy Perry (who appears to be representing an opposition of God) engulfs the believer and the word God in flames.”
He added: “Using the name of God in an irrelevant and distasteful manner would be considered inappropriate by any religion.
“We hope that the video itself depicting such images is removed. Such acts are not condoned nor tolerated, we hope YouTube will remove the video.”
Rather deleting the video, the scene in question was digitally edited removing the burning pendant from the man.