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

Although clearly a band on the rise, Queen managed only one #1 album stateside, and diminishing sales thereafter. Hearing "I Want It All" on AOR in 1989 was a shock to me; the comeback was beginning.

I remember some controversy in '92 about school choirs wanting to perform "We Are The Champions" at graduations and school boards striking them down because homophobia/AIDS.

I'd forgotten that "Bohemian Rhapsody" was rereleased and went to #2 in 1992 in the wake of Freddie's death and Wayne's World.

― Josefa, Tuesday, May 3, 2022 12:56 PM

i had too until you mentioned it lol. pretty sure seeing it in wayne's world wasn't my first time hearing it either. i don't even like queen that much and yet i still like it. it seems like a great song that's always existed and they were just the first ones to play it right. like it's the type of thing that inspired elvis or something.

something else i remember about my experience with the 92 revival vs the current state: it didn't really inspire anybody my age to go out and buy queen albums. couple of friends had the greatest hits borrowed from older family members, but no one i knew was looking to actually buy it for themselves because it wasn't *that* cool or whatever. whereas now, kids of all ages seem to know/like at least a couple queen songs and they really embrace the band, especially freddie mercury and his charming grandiosity. it seems like younger generations "get" the band in ways that folks like myself never really did until later in life.

wufs otm basically. their rise in popularity over the past decade has been really fascinating to watch. seems like they're more popular than ever — or at least in my lifetime.

xp That's what I meant about Hot Space. After their biggest chart success, they took a turn into . . . disco? In 1982?

school boards striking them down because homophobia/AIDS.

― Precious, Grace, Hill & Beard LTD. (C. Grisso/McCain), Tuesday, May 3, 2022 1:50 PM

was told not to do "we will rock you" by some upper classmen and their parents at a high school basketball game in 1994 because "it's f@gg0+ music." am so sorry for the language there, but just needing to make the point. (not very nice things about sexuality, basically)

their status as an lgbtq-friendly band wasn't an issue for me —queen just wasn't really my kind of music— but i know for certain that's why a lot of my peers at the time wouldn't take them seriously.

"We are the Champions" was understood much more straightforwardly as a gay anthem.

I was born in 1971.

My childhood Blondie hierarchy would have been something like

Call Me
The Tide Is High
Dreaming
One Way or Another
Rapture

In approximately that order. Even in the 80s, Rapture seemed more like an amusing novelty than an indelible classic.

Queen seemed to disappear completely from AOR/“classic rock” radio (in the Chicago area, at least) after 1984. I don’t think I heard a Queen song on the radio between 1984 and 1992. And when Freddie died, I remember a lot of discussions along the lines of, “Oh yeah, Queen, I sorta remember them.”

They came closest to being the biggest band in the US in 1980: their massive arena tour included three nights at MSG and four at the Forum. But “Another One Bites The Dust” wasn’t released as a single — or performed live — until halfway through the tour. And given that record’s massive success — #1 pop, #2 on the disco and soul charts — going further down that road on Hot Space wasn’t the dumbest idea.

"Call Me" is a classic. I have a special place in my heart for "Hanging on the Telephone," because it's the first thing you heard when you dropped the needle on Parallel Lines. That album was a revelation for me. I've been in love with Debbie ever since.

I suddenly heard every one of Queen's war horses in 1992. AOR decided it was cool to play them now that the world was rid of Mercury's faggotry

IIRC, Hollywood Records had also picked up their catalogue and was aggressively marketing the new CDs.

The radio gap mentioned by Tarfumes seems about right. I don't think I'd ever heard them on the radio before he died.

Afterwards, well

AOR decided it was cool to play them now that the world was rid of Mercury's faggotry

― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, May 3, 2022 3:18 PM

Unfortunately probably not too far from the truth.

Broadcast's rather atypical album track "Tears in the Typing Pool" has been lodged at the top of Spotify's streaming stats for as long as I can remember. It's still in second place overall, stripped of (what I presume is) a recency weighting, but the trajectory is formidable. It surely helps that it appears on a couple of DJ mixtapes. I saw absolutely nothing nearer its release that would have prompted predictions of such a state of affairs and there's just one (1) reported instance of a live performance on setlist.fm, though their records for that artist are admittedly very patchy.

many xps: "Full Clip" was an anthem when I went to hip hop shows in Denmark in the early 2000s, easily eclipsed any other of their songs in terms of being a banger, crowd sure to go wild whenever a dj put it on. So it was interesting when I got to know Gang Starr proper to find out that it wasn't really a huge or very important song in their discog, a bonus track to lead the compilation iirc?

I was born in 1971.

My childhood Blondie hierarchy would have been something like

Call Me
The Tide Is High
Dreaming
One Way or Another
Rapture

In approximately that order. Even in the 80s, Rapture seemed more like an amusing novelty than an indelible classic.

Was Heart of Glass not a massive hit in America? That's the first time of theirs I would always think of.

"Heart of Glass" was indeed a massive hit.

I think age is more important in that era. When hit songs fell off the charts back then they pretty much disappeared. If a song came out a year or two before you started paying attention you might not know it.

I definitely remember Queen having a pretty big resurgence in the early 90s. I don't know if I heard anything by them before this, but Freddy Mercury's death, Wayne's World, "Ice Ice Baby" all came around the same couple of years.

I had their two greatest hits albums released around this time (the red and blue ones) and listened to them a lot.

I also remember "We Are The Champions" being played everywhere after the Montreal Canadiens won the Stanley Cup in 93.

I was in my mid-teens at the time and they were very popular with people my age at least.

This week in 1992 “Bohemian Rhapsody” was #2 in the US

Sorry, should have put Heart of Glass in there but I don't remember where it would be relative to the others.

I figured "My Way" (280 million) by Sinatra would be one of these--in that he had a ton of #1s but MW only went to #27--but I didn't expect "Fly Me To the Moon" (445 million) to be so far ahead of his other hits.

Do we have a thread for the opposite of this: songs that were massive hits in their day, but now barely register in the artist's body of work? Because we need to talk about "Bootylicious"...

The single climbed to #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 during the Summer of 2001, the fourth and final time Destiny's Child achieved that feat. While it didn't have quite the staying power of the previous year's Charlie's Angels tie-in "Independent Women" (11 weeks at #1), "Bootylicious" was as ubiquitous as any song before or since, complete with an entry in the dictionary and a Target advertising campaign. And while 2001 may have been the beginning of the end for Destiny's Child as a commercial prospect, Beyoncé Knowles has certainly did enough in the years since to carve out a permanent place in the pop culture imagination.

But today, if you go to the Spotify artist page for Destiny's Child and opt to listen to their most popular songs, you will hear 9 other songs before "Bootylicious." And honestly, I think I get why; but I would have a hard time explaining it. So consider this a placeholder post, and a call for your thoughts on the Destiny's Child legacy in the streaming age!

it’s certainly not the only factor, but the fact that it’s used as the melodic framework in this recent UK number one hit has very likely given its streaming numbers an extra boost:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVWsP3IadBk
Dave • Starlight

xp

…and it’s even explicit referenced/interpolated at the end.

*explicitly

It’s (Fly Me to the Moon) also been in a ton of movies and tv shows, but so have a lot of other Sinatra songs. There’s a post on this thread from 7 years ago that says a Christmas song was Sinatra’s top Spotify track, but that was just seasonal perhaps.

Do we have a thread for the opposite of this: songs that were massive hits in their day, but now barely register in the artist's body of work? Because we need to talk about "Bootylicious"...

(…)

But today, if you go to the Spotify artist page for Destiny's Child and opt to listen to their most popular songs, you will hear 9 other songs before "Bootylicious." And honestly, I think I get why; but I would have a hard time explaining it. So consider this a placeholder post, and a call for your thoughts on the Destiny's Child legacy in the streaming age!

Speaking of Beyonce-- "Halo" looks like her most streamed song? 1.13 billion

Beyonce in general is one of those artists where the Spotify numbers can be confusing, because many of their career-defining hits belong more to the tail end of the CD era, and then the iTunes download purchase era. Almost everything in Wikipedia's list of the top 100 songs on Spotify (current minimum: 1.326 billion) came out in 2012 or later. I was thinking about this with Gaga's numbers a while back - trying to guess her biggest Spotify songs would probably stump the general public completely.

This chronology, however, doesn't give us any purchase on "Halo," released as a 2009 single from a 2008 album. It's come up a couple times in this thread... Yes, I still hear it out in the world frequently, but I also would never have put it anywhere close to the billion-streamer mark. Wow. For perspective, "Single Ladies," inescapable crossover smash lead single from Sasha Fierce, sits at "only" 458 million. But I think what may be going on is that it actually is one of her biggest hits. Its (excellent) US performance gave me no sense of how much of an international juggernaut it was. Sez Wiki:

"Halo" topped the singles charts of Brazil, Norway, and Slovakia, and reached the top five on the singles chart of Australia, Germany, Ireland, Italy, New Zealand, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States. It has received over ten certifications, including an elevenfold-platinum certification from Australia, a triple-platinum from the United Kingdom, and a double-platinum from Spain and the US.

The "opposite" thing is definitely a fun topic, and would probably merit its own thread, if there's not a good one to revive --- might get confusing if we start bringing up lots of those in parallel.

the king of that thread would have to be Candle in the Wind with the Diana lyrics

I was thinking about how many of these songs have second lives because of prominent placement in kids movies. (Obviously "Hallelujah" in Shrek is one) One of the Despicable Me movies even had an '80s villain who was always accompanied by "Bad" or "Take On Me" or something.

beyonce's self-titled and lemonade were also streaming exclusives on other platforms for a while

"bootylicious" was a bit of an anomaly for destiny's child chart-wise. besides "say my name" all of dc's singles post-"bills bills bills" had scaled the charts with limited/maxi-only retail release or none whatsoever. "bootylicious" on the other hand was not only released to retail as a standard cd single, but that single was also deep-discounted to 49 cents in its first week in what was widely understood in the industry to be columbia's (successful) attempt to block mariah carey's last-ditch effort at reaching #1 on the hot 100 with glitter lead single "loverboy", which included the same rock-bottom sale pricing tactic. "loverboy" had been struggling due to a very lackluster reception at radio.

if "bootylicious" had been released/promoted in a more standard way, it probably would have 'just' been a solid top 10 hit. that's not to diminish its stature as a song or phenom! it was indeed well known and well liked, and plenty of ppl smiled and chuckled at the dictionary addition. but it was not quite on the same tier as "independent women" or "say my name" or arguably even "survivor"

Thanks for the additional context dyl, that's really good info! I think your materialist analysis is probably closer to the truth than my half-baked theories about how the trajectory of pop culture has left "Bootylicious" looking quaint and coy, when it was supposed to be brash and in-your-face.

I remember the "Lovergirl" shenanigans; didn't know "Bootylicious" got similar treatment.

Also: "Survivor" and "Independent Women" remain as obnoxious as ever while "Bootylicious" remains as buoyant as ever.

please don’t mention “Survivor" and "Independent Women" in the same breath like that. one is not like the other.

what if both are like the other?

no ifs buts or maybes about it

"Survivor" sounded massive and thrilling last week when it came on in my car while an Amtrak was running in the same direction as me on tracks parallel to the road and the flow of traffic was keeping pace exactly with the train.

... and at absolutely no other time, ever

but that's a nice image/moment! i just never vibed with that song. maybe i was too big a fan of the show.

You know I'm not going to diss you on the internet but Survivor was a phenomenon and that opening synth line is classic

Independent Woman the stronger jam though, much funkier and should be their legacy tune

Bootylicious got its title into the OED tho.

("Quaint and coy" otm then maybe?)

just noticed another addition to the billion club: "back in black"

"Highway to Hell" and "Thunderstruck" closing in as well

Is AC/DC's biggest hit the one that charted highest on average across the main territories where the band was popular (You Shook Me All Night Long), or based on sales certifications (maybe Back in Black), or average both of those concepts (maybe Highway to Hell or Thunderstruck)? I believe I have never heard of their top charting US single, something called Moneytalks, the followup to Thunderstruck; appropriately, this track is not in their top 10 plays.

I wonder why You Shook Me has drifted to the bottom of the pack compared to the other three songs, is it too pop metal? Anyway Back in Black is a good legacy song, it seems like the "ultimate" hard rock song to me, a kind of distillation of the rhythmic crunch, bizarre caterwauling and startlingly disjointed yet satisfying riff-cobbling of Zeppelin with the lyrical focus more on partying than the hippie rabbit holes beloved by Plant. Highway to Hell is a little more by-the-numbers, it's a decent glam-rock chorus appended to a nice signature AC/DC quadrilateral diagram riff. Thunderstruck is a bit funny, it's like a geezer trying to use Van Halen style shredding as the basis for a riff rather than a solo, and not being able to play it fast enough anyway.

AC/DC's being more popular now than Zeppelin or GnR seems as unlikely to me as Queen's ascension. Although I see that currently Elton is doing monthly numbers far in excess of Queen, perhaps his top songs will gradually catch up, or it's a temporary thing caused by whatever "Cold Heart PNAU Remix" is. I tried to listen to it and started laughing when Dua interpolated Rocket Man. It currently has more plays than any of Elton's legacy hits...

Money Talks is an earworm for sure but it's not that representative as an AC/DC song

ac/dc has always been wildly popular, i'm not surprised that they're outpacing zep or gnr in terms of monthly listeners. i think their relative lack of variation helps in this regard - if you're in the mood for some ac/dc, you can just throw on that "this is: ac/dc" playlist and get exactly what you're expecting