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

Based on Youtube comments, it seems to have been adopted as a trans anthem by a number of people.xp

that makes sense. it's just strange that the top two songs from one of the most famously shambolic rock bands of all time are two of their least rockin'

yeah, their #s 3-5 (Alex Chilton, Can't Hardly Wait & Bastards of Young) are the ones I'd assume to be their "legacy" songs

wd guess "Androgynous" being performed/championed by Joan Jett and Miley Cyrus helped it

Towards the end of the song, you can hear Paul Westerberg sing the words "Jefferson's Cock". Occasionally, The Replacements would play gigs in Minneapolis under this name, with the band members wearing dresses.

Ezra Furman also covered it

Where are "Men Without Ties" and "Waitress in the Sky"?

Kiss: "I Was Made For Lovin' You" has over 100 million more spins on Spotify than "Rock'n'Roll All Night"

It deserves them.

their biggest hits--"Beth" (#7) and "Forever" (#8) not even in the top five on Spotify. What is that second one?

maybe IWMFLY ends up in Spotify disco playlists, while IWRNRAL doesn't make it on classic rock playlists? just spitballing though.

hello, hello, the world doesn’t begin and and with/in the US of A!

Chartwise, Kiss meant very little in most of the rest of the world before “I Was Made For Lovin’ You”. But that song was HUUUGE - because: disco. Number one here in the Netherlands (and possibly the biggest song of the year). So HUUUGE in fact that their only other top 10 hit here was follow-up single “Sure Know Something” (which didn’t even crack the top 40 in the US). The Dynasty album, their first album to chart here, went no 1 as well.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Was_Made_for_Lovin%27_You#Weekly_singles_charts

And then there’s “Crazy Crazy Nights”, another US non-hit, which in ‘87 became their only major hit in the UK. It’s now their #5 song when it comes to Spotify streams.

So yeah, gentle reminder: the world is so much bigger than the US.

"Forever" is a Power Ballad from around 1990 or so.

“I Was Made For Lovin’ You” was in Moulin Rouge

its cos the kids know Beth suuuuucks and Disco RUUUUULEZ

what can you do?

"God Gave Rock n' Roll To You" was a UK hit too, tied in with the 2nd Bill & Ted movie. So both of their big UK hits were written or co-written with outside writers, which might be telling us something (as was I Was Made For Lovin' You too, thinking about it).

some early Kiss songs may suffer from stream splitting between the studio versions and the Alive versions

i have to say after growing up as a big Bill & Ted fan and only ever knowing it as a Kiss song, to have The Zombies suddenly start playing God Gave Rock N Roll To You at All Tomorrow's Parties was one of the weirdest things i've experienced live. major tonal whiplash in my brain.

"Rock and Roll All Nite" is the only song of theirs I hear regularly on classic rock radio but yeah, seems like it wasn't their biggest hit anywhere. Going by Wikipedia, "Shout It Loud", a song I've never heard, went to #1 in Canada, apparently. "I Was Made for Loving You" = lol, though.

Breastcrawl OTM, "I Was Made for Loving You" is by far the best-known Kiss song in Finland too.

Yeah, if you asked people in the UK to name a Kiss song imagine most would plump for Crazy Crazy Nights xps

Ween's Ocean Man's journey to becoming their legacy track (60M+ compared to 5M for Voodoo Lady off Chocolate and Cheese, which also feels like the wrong song off that record) was apparently its inclusion in the Spongebob movie and then becoming a sort of meme. It was pointedly left off their 2018 best of.

Voodoo Lady was on a lot of alt-rock stations at the time, if I remember correctly.

Do those guys get along now? Still tour? I know there was a big falling out..

They abruptly cancelled their March-and-subsequent tour dates this year, must have broken up again

One for the Pavement fans

https://www.stereogum.com/2105993/pavement-harness-your-hopes-spotify/columns/sounding-board/

Even as a massive Pavement head, I can't ever remember hearing the official (non-Peel/BBC) recording of "Harness" (listening now).

Wow that's really interesting

lol
When requested, Spotify declined to provide an interview with McDonald

shoulda posted yr questions on the Spotify thread

No kidding, lol. Interesting article, even if it doesn’t really answer the question. (It touches on the same sort of speculations that were aired earlier in this thread, when the song came up.)

weirdly on my Spotify ALL of Pavement's top 5 (with Harness your Hopes as #1" are listed as <1000 plays...? #5 is... their cover of "The Killing Moon"?

Oh yeah, THIS song. And I would agree that sonically, this is somehow more "normal" than most Pavement; I mean, Malkmus sings like he sings, but the basic guitar/drum infrastructure is much more straight-ahead 70s AOR than the median Pavement track.

Yes -- this is sort of a stretch:

It’s hard not to see the zombified success of the song as being anything but for the best, because in this case it really is a great Pavement track — one that captures the essence of the band accurately and deeply

(and, for the record, it really does sound like a B-side -- Malkmus had it right the first time!)

According the YouTube & Spotify, Dylan's legacy song could be "Knockin' On Heaven's Door." It's in second place on both services (#1, though not by much, is either Mr Tambourine Man or Like A Rolling Stone). I wonder if the Guns N Roses cover drove the interest?

He might have been right about "Summer Babe" too, which much as I adore it is somehow not REALLY a Pavement song, it should be a beloved B-side

!!

what the

come on, you can play that shit at a campfire, it is a fantastic song but it doesn't really fit in with the rest of what pavement was doing

there are a lot of pavement songs you can play at a campfire

I disagree and I've tried

"Gold Soundz" I guess but I also consider that not quite at the center of the Pavement project!

off the top of my head, there's also "here," "cut your hair," "shady lane," and "range life"

OK agreed on "shady lane" and "range life"

but not, like, "trigger cut"

would love to hear someone take a crack at "conduit for sale!"

i have definitely been around a backyard firepit where someone was playing a guitar and everybody was singing along to "range life." went really well next to "you ain't goin' nowhere."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjNxmz6Ty0E

Why Is The Obscure B-Side “Harness Your Hopes” Pavement’s Top Song On Spotify? It’s Complicated

https://www.stereogum.com/2105993/pavement-harness-your-hopes-spotify/columns/sounding-board/