Elton John's "Sacrifice" video passes 1 billion views on YouTube
Elton John's "Sacrifice" video passes 1 billion views on YouTube
Elton John's music video for "Sacrifice" has reached 1 billion views on YouTube. Billboard reported the milestone on 4 November 2026. It is the first Elton John video to reach that number, and it joins YouTube's billion-views club, the group of clips that have been played a billion times on the platform.
A view is counted each time someone starts a video, so a billion views means a billion starts. The clip has been available since its 1990 release. By 2020, when the video was 30 years old, it had passed 300 million views, according to Elton John's Facebook page.
The song is a 1989 single from "Sleeping with the Past," Elton John's 22nd studio album. The single climbed to No. 18 on the Billboard Hot 100, the weekly US chart that ranks songs. The album peaked at No. 23 on the Billboard 200, the weekly US chart for albums, which counts sales and streams together.
The video stars Chris Isaak and Yasmeen Ghauri and was directed by Alex Keshishian. The official upload is on the @EltonJohnVEVO channel, the music label channel that hosts the artist's official videos on YouTube.
In the UK, the song topped the Official Singles Chart on 23 June 1990, according to Elton John's official website. It also won the Ivor Novello Award for Best Song Musically and Lyrically, a British songwriting prize.
The song has also travelled beyond recordings. In 1995, Elton John performed it live at Estadio do Flamengo in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
For fans who have played the clip for years, the new number is a simple marker. For everyone else, it is a reminder that a single released in the late 1980s is still being pressed to play, one stream at a time.
