Voted by the British public as the fifth greatest music video of all time for The 100 Greatest Pop Videos (2005). Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" was voted fourth, a-ha's "Take On Me" was third, Peter Gabriel 's "Sledgehammer" was second and Michael Jackson 's "Thriller" was voted first.
Pepsi pulled commercials using this song because of the content of the video, mainly the burning crosses.
John Landis described this video as "really blasphemous, really funny, subversive in the best sense of the word and sexy, it's like cleavage with a crucifix".
35 years later, the song surged in new popularity after it was used for the trailer of Deadpool & Wolverine (2024), which achieved the long-awaited return of Hugh Jackman to the iconic X-Men role after Wolverine's death in Logan: The Wolverine (2017).