Nearly 13 years after what might be described as both the weirdest and most annoying song to ever go viral was released, the video for Crazy Frog’s “Axel F” has joined a pretty exclusive club. The video has crossed the one billion views threshold on YouTube.
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The video, which was uploaded to YouTube on June 16, 2009, features the song “Axel F,” which is an electronic version of the theme to Beverly Hills Cop with the song itself named for Eddie Murphy’s character in the film, Axel Foley. The original “Axel F” itself was released in 1984. The Crazy Frog version, released in 2005, became one of the most successful singles of the year, debuting at number one in the UK. You can check out the video above.
If you happened to miss the Crazy Frog years and are a little confused, here’s a quick primer. Crazy Frog was originally known as The Annoying Thing and is a computer-animated character first created in 1997 by Swedish actor and playwright Erik Wernquist. The character was marketed by ringtone company Jamba! (later called Jamster) and created to appear alongside a sound effect that was meant to sound like a two-stroke engine revving. It was that engine imitation by Swedish student Daniel Malmendahl that inspired the creation of Crazy Frog.
The creation was an early viral sensation, getting the attention of Jamba! who then licensed the creation and began to market Crazy Frog in 2004. Soon after, the character began to appear in video games — specifically the PlayStation 2 game Crazy Frog Racer — before eventually branching out into music, leading to the “Axel F” remix video that itself spawned an entire album, Crazy Frog Presents Crazy Hits.
The video that just crossed the one billion views mark on YouTube is actually not the original Crazy Frog “Axel F” video, however. The original video debuted in 2005 and featured an anatomically correct Crazy Frog, leading to complaints that the video was inappropriate for children that resulted in the video being edited.
As for the video’s One Billion Views Club status, Crazy Frog’s “Axel F” makes the list at number 99, just ahead of Pharrell’s “Happy” and just below Pitbull’s “Timber” featuring Kesha. And while Crazy Frog may just barely have made the One Billion Views Club, the odd little video does have one outstanding distinction. The video is the second oldest video to break one billion views, just behind 2007’s “I’m a Gummy Bear (The Gummy Bear Song)”.
It all just goes to show that if it’s weird enough, eventually anything can hit a billion views on YouTube.
