Sigur Ros Takes Over YouTube

Anyone who visited YouTube today may have been a bit confused and asked themselves who or what is Sigur Ros? Today, Heima, the 97-minute documentary from the brilliant Icelandic band Sigur Ros, became the first feature-length music DVD to be available on YouTube. Sigur Ros also took over all of the Featured Videos space on the homepage as seen in the screen shot below.

My first reaction to this news is to be a bit shocked. Sigur Ros, while a beautiful band and one of my favorites, does not seem like the logical choice for something like this. That’s why this is so awesome. All Sigur Ros songs are sung in Icelandic and their music is a bit more ethereal than most popular bands. I guess I would expect a huge company like YouTube/Google to choose a more well-known or accessible band like Radiohead or Coldplay. Or, maybe I was expecting something lame like Fall Out Boy or Good Charlotte.

Tons of credit goes to YouTube for highlighting such a fantastic band. The web and sites with huge audiences like YouTube in particular, have the ability to expose us to mind-numbingly stupid videos or to introduce people to great music. I’m glad to see, for this time at least, that YouTube chose to promote art that is deserving of it.

Hopefully this will turn some people on to Sigur who have never listened to them before. I would also hope this would motivate people to actually buy the Heima DVD, which is amazing and comes with a little photo book and great packaging.

The one Sigur Ros show that I went to 2 years ago at the Borgata in Atlantic City is still the best show I’ve ever seen. Their music is amazing and seeing them live makes for an incredible experience. Even my car being stolen that night didn’t ruin it for me. Here’s the full-length version of Heima.