Adele‘s smash hit “Hello” has reached another impressive milestone. On Wednesday (Aug. 24), YouTube announced that the black-and-white visual for Adele’s 2015 single has reached 3 billion views.
The video — directed by Xavier Dolan — still maintains the record for being the quickest to reach the 1 billion mark on the platform, and is also Adele’s first video to reach 3 billion views on YouTube.
At the time of the visual’s release, “Hello” was named the most explosive debut of any video, impressively racking up 50 million views in its first 48 hours. The stunning video netted as much as 1.6 million views in a single hour during its peak.
Following the release of the “Hello” video, YouTube trends manager Kevin Allocca said that track was “one of the most-watched music video debuts of all time,” and additionally revealed that Adele’s YouTube channel gained more than 400,000 subscribers in the weekend after the single’s release.
The track, written in collaboration with producer and songwriter Greg Kurstin, was released as the first single from Adele’s third studio album, 25, in October 2015. The song had an impressive run on the Billboard charts, spending 26 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100, with 10 of those weeks in the No. 1 position.
“Hello” also debuted at No. 1 on the Hot 100 and made several impressive feats after its debut: The track marked her fourth Hot 100 No. 1 and the 24th song to ever debut at No. 1 on the Hot 100.
“The song, to me, was the beginning of me trying to find myself. And I hadn’t figured out yet what it was that I had to do for that,” Adele explained the track’s meaning in an interview with Oprah Winfrey. “When I wrote it, it was a real ode to like, little me, older me, all of these things. It’s just a song about, like, I’m still here.”
Revisit Adele’s video for “Hello” below.
