songs that weren't a bands biggest hit, but have gone on to be their legacy song and biggest iTunes seller

McCartney really is too big of an act to have one "legacy song," I think, even without considering that his tombstone will probably be engraved with his Beatles big ones first and foremost. And yeah, it's not surprising that a Christmas song and a movie theme pick up a lot of listens.

But "Maybe I'm Amazed" actually is a pretty big song for him, and in a way fits the spirit of the thread... not as huge as his other hits at the time, but clearly more of a "concert staple" and more oft-covered than, I would guess, bigger hits like "My Love," "Ebony & Ivory," "With A Little Luck," or "No More Lonely Nights." Maybe not "Silly Love Songs" or "Mull of Kintyre" though. Still, dude has dozens of hits, so it's tough to say that any one of them stands at the top, either expectedly or no.

"I Can See For Miles" was the Who's biggest US hit (#9), but "Baba O'Riley" (not a single in the US) and "Who Are You" (#14 in Billboard) are their top iTunes songs.

"I Can See For Miles" might start moving up the list--it's the theme for the new CSI: Cyber show.

I can't wait for CSI: Dogs.

Talking Heads. Their biggest charting US single is Wild Wild Life. Biggest in UK is Road To Nowhere. Their signature/legacy song is clearly Once In A Lifetime, which never even charted.

I feel like there's a thread somewhere where we talk about the fact that lots of people today think of Talking Heads as "that band who did This Must Be The Place."

There was a time in the 90s when I feel like I all I knew/heard by them was 'Burning Down the House,' but now that you mention it, I guess it's been a while since I heard it at all.

"Once in a Lifetime" is definitely the only song by them that I know.

feel like a Tuomas would dig I Zimbra

Came across a potential candidate for this thread today: Weezer's most popular song on Spotify by a wide margin is "Island in the Sun," the 9th highest charting single of their career.

It's almost twice as popular as "Say It Ain't So," their second most popular track ("Buddy Holly," which I would have pegged for #1, is third). It's their #1 iTunes song as well.

Not sure if it's their "legacy" song, but I was legitimately surprised that a song I pegged as "moderately well-liked" evidently towers over the rest of their catalogue in popularity.

re: Talking Heads - a lot of people know them as the 'Psycho Killer' band now for some reason.

Ha ha the green album does rule

was thinking about this with Mariah Carey recently - "All I Want for Christmas Is You".

Island in The Sun was #1 in France and huge in Europe (though not the UK), hence it getting tacked onto EU (and annoyingly, UK) copies of Maladroit, which they had the audacity to release less than a year after it was a hit

Interesting. The more I thought about it, Island in the Sun does seem to have had a longer cultural life than many of their other songs. I still feel like I hear it pretty regularly, and it doesn't have the "90s!" cultural associations their earlier hits do. It's got pleasant vibes, good for, like, grocery shopping, or background music for a tv scene or a commercial.

More like "Island in the Suck"

"Get Ready For This" was only 2 Unlimited's 11th biggest hit, coming from their only 3rd best selling album, but has clearly become their signature song.

No Limit is surely their signature song.

Not in sports arenas it isn't :)

I wouldn't call it their signature song, but I immediately though of 'Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life)' when I saw this title. Wasn't even a single first time round, now comfortably their biggest selling song on iTunes.

It was so a single in the UK, mind. Got to number 11, it did..

At this point, are Quad City Dj's more known for "Space Jam" than "C'mon N Ride It (The Train)"?

"Good Riddance" was very very well-positioned to become a legacy song, by sounding kind of maudlin and, on first listen, evidently being somehow about looking back at something, with "another turning point" in the mix - - I mean the graduation/prom soundtracks just write themselves. It also got slapped on the Seinfeld finale, at the start of graduation season its first year in the wild, surely helped get it going in this regard. The recording also hints at some kind of stately timelessness with the strings and acoustic guitar and everything... in much better shape for "legacy" than anything else in their catalog, even just in terms of not "dating" quite as hard.

That said, I don't know how much anyone actually hears it out in the world after graduation's done and the downloads are sold, or how likely any given person is to name it if asked to name a Green Day song. Would guess their biggest recurrent airplay songs would be "When I Come Around," "Basket Case" and "Boulevard of Broken Dreams," but I could be way off. Obviously, that kind of analysis is subjective in a way not helpful to this thread...

At this point, are Quad City Dj's more known for "Space Jam" than "C'mon N Ride It (The Train)"?

I can conceive of how this might actually be true, but it's probably the most microgenerationally infuriating notion I've ever heard. If "The Train" has not been played enough for future generations to as aware of it as the love theme from Space Jam, then I believe we've failed as a planet and we've earned every consequence we face

to be as aware of it

i feel like i've seen multiple generations of ppl dancing to "the train" at weddings or w/e so i think it's still pretty well known

'The Train' is all anyone associates with the name 'Quad City DJs,' even if there is some subset of Space Jam fans who also know the name of the artist involved. Sorta like the sports arena case; I'm not convinced something can be a 'legacy' song if it's not even popularly associated with a particular artist. But even if that were allowed, ''Space Jam'' is no ''Rock and Roll Pt. 2,'' and I mean, ''The Train'' was a huge hit song and ''Space Jam'' was not.

Space jam may be the nostalgia choice for 20 somethings, but no way is it their legacy song

Oh good. I just usually have low expecations for future generations. And spending too much time on the internet can skewer things, escpecially due to having friends who only become aware of songs due to internet memes.

i know some younger guys in an indie band that cover "this must be the place" and i asked them if that was the go-to talking heads song for millennials and they didn't know anything about that. they just liked the song. it does seem rather attuned to contemporary tastes for reasons i can't pin down; their audience all seem to know the song or dig it regardless. i told them about how once upon a time that it would have ranked way behind "life during wartime" or "once in a lifetime" or even "girlfriend is better" as far as mass recognition was concerned if it even ranked at all and they didn't know about that either.

i didn't tell them i was doing research for a message board because they didn't need to know that.

i think it may be (indeed it was the first dance song at a friend's wedding just a few weeks ago) tho i also think the one it's overtaken could be psycho killer rather than those other ones?

.. And she was

And She Was & Stay Up Late both got tons of Airplay when they came out 30 years ago. Also, holy shit those songs are 30 years old.

i was just throwing random examples at them because i think even casual fans from the 70s or 80s would recognize a bunch of other talking heads songs before "this must be the place." even if most singles were not huge chart hits, the videos were still all over mtv and everyone knew the chop the arm motion or the big suit dance. even aor radio played talking heads cuts from way back. i just don't recall that particular song having any profile at the time the way it does now.

i remember reading how roxy music was one of ric ocasek's influences so when i started listening to them i picked "virginia plain" to like because i thought it was the most cars-ish song. maybe vampire weekend kids read about the talking heads comparisons and go digging and settle on "this must be the place" in the same manner? i dunno, just unsubstantiated speculation.

in Queen's Top 10 on Spotify = I Want It All! baffling surely? has it been covered by Foo Fighters or some shit?

How about Billy Joel, Scenes From An Italian Restaurant

This guy has tracked Spotify play counts for every song that charted on the Hot 100 through 2005:
http://poly-graph.co/timeless/

"Don't Stop Believin'" and "Bohemian Rhapsody" both in the top 20, natch.

Top Fleetwood Mac song (and 2nd most-played song of the 70s, after "Bohemian Rhapsody") is "Go Your Own Way" ... which I'm not sure I would have predicted.

yeah that was a huge hit and is the one most likely to appear in crit lists but i would've guessed something different, maybe 'landslide' or 'rhiannon' or 'dreams' which kinda suprised me when it won the ilm poll a little while back.

I saw that "timeless" article a couple days ago and was kinda disappointed by the method - it's a neat concept but for example wouldn't it have made sense to figure out when the songs got added to Spotify, and do the stats based on how many plays it's had versus months it's had when it was possible for it to get played? Also surprising that AFAICT they seem to be suggesting that every song that charted on the Hot 100 1990-1999 is on Spotify, which I guess certainly could be true though I'd be a little surprised if it were.

The funniest thing though is this bit - "Some of my friends were deeply disturbed by what's been lost in time (e.g., Pearl Jam)." Er... except that Pearl Jam's biggest songs on Spotify would totally show up on this table, they just never charted on the Hot 100. "Alive," at 32.2 million spins, would be among the top four little circle icons if it qualified for inclusion. "Even Flow" is at 27m and "Jeremy" at 21m - that one should absolutely show up on this chart since it made #79 on Billboard (years after the song's actual peak in popularity). Their biggest Hot 100 performers are Spotify duds, but nobody would have ever confused those for their biggest songs anyway - "I Got Id" #7, 684,000 plays; "Last Kiss," #2, 10 million plays.

Somewhere in here might be an interesting project, like sorting out how much songs have changed in popularity, but some of it's self-fulfilling prophecy stuff; radio sorta stopped playing some songs for whatever reason, so people don't know them, so people don't choose to click them on streaming apps.

"Yellow Ledbetter," which b-sided the charting "Jeremy," also should be here - over 14 million plays on Spotify.

311-Amber

http://www.nme.com/blogs/nme-blogs/these-are-the-most-streamed-beatles-songs-so-far?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social

Fabs Top 5 after 24 hours on Spotify

1. Let It Be
2. Here Comes The Sun
3. Hey Jude
4. Twist and Shout
5. Come Together

Yeah I have noticed that. Quite surprising (I would have expected "she loves you", "yesterday", "help"...).
Also not much love for John's songs these days !

Oh fuck I just copied & pasted different results in the Spotify thread FUCK oh well

Sam Cooke for the win, maybe? "A Change is Gonna Come" is his signature song and and the most streamed on Spotify, yet more than twenty of his songs charted higher!

people don't know much about history

Andrew Gold - Spooky Scary Skeletons

this thread title is v.unwieldy, mods should re-title it "Burning down the charts"

I guess "legacy" song works but it suggests more permanence & less renewal than we actually see ~in the streaming era~

btw Dr C's lecture upthread re: Pearl Jam chart placements was great. I love when ppl get called out on messageboards, forever <3

haha aww, thanks. forgot about that. so stupid!!!

it occurred to me yesterday that for the pretenders this is probably "i'll stand by you". (and it's a deserving song! sorry haters aka fans of the pretenders' actual music.)

anything after the death of James Honeyman-Scott is not canon imo