Red Hot Chili Peppers‘ ’Californication’ Joins YouTube’s Billion Views Club
Written by djfrosty on December 7, 2022
The Red Hot Chili Peppers‘ video for “Californication” has officially reached one billion views, YouTube announced Wednesday (Dec. 7).
The now-classic visual, which finds the quartet replacing their own avatars in an open-world video game as California is shaken by a massive earthquake, becomes the Chili Peppers’ first video to achieve the viewership feat. According to YouTube, the video has so far averaged 290,000 daily views in 2022.
“It’s the edge of the world and all of Western civilization/ The sun may rise in the East at least it’s settled in a final location/ It’s understood that Hollywood sells Californication/ Pay your surgeon very well to break the spell of aging/ Celebrity skin, is this your chin, or is that war you’re waging?” Anthony Kiedis croons on the opening verse as drummer Chad Smith’s character snowboards down a mountain shirtless in the video.
As title track off the rockers’ seventh album of the same name, the song was originally released in June 2000 as the fourth single off the studio set after “Scar Tissue,” “Around the World” and “Otherside,” and became their sixth chart-topper on the Alternative Airplay chart.
This year, Red Hot Chili Peppers returned from a six-year hiatus with not one, but two albums: April’s Unlimited Love and October’s Return of the Dream Canteen. Next year, they’re set to embark on a world tour filled with both festival and stadium gigs. They’ll be joined on the global trek by everyone from The Roots, Iggy Pop and The Strokes to The Mars Volta, St. Vincent, Thundercat, King Princess and more.
Revisit the music video for Red Hot Chili Peppers’ “Californication” below.