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

I saw the Prodigy last night and was surprised to find out that the biggest reaction wasn't for "Breathe" or "Firestarter" or "Poison", but for "Smack My Bitch Up." I checked on iTunes and it's their biggest selling track! Sometime in the last 10 years it became their legacy track. How? Why? What other bands is this true?

so, yeah. Please cross-reference with iTunes for this.

1. Prodigy - "Smack My Bitch Up"

great thread idea, i definitely have sat around and figured this out w/ a few bands, will have to look some up when i get home tonight

would be interesting to cross-reference this with licensing

like maybe in the long run that impacts sales more than radio/video play

my guess is that there are a large number of people out there who did not know the band Prodigy but knew there was a song called "Smack My Bitch Up"

i always thought smack my bitch was the big prodigy song!!

it wouldn't have sold as well as nearly half their other 90s songs esp. the two #1s

notoriety was helped by banned video, no?

2. Elton John - "Tiny Dancer"
^^ someone can doublecheck this and refute it if necessary since i'm looking at a cached browser page of his top iTunes songs, but that's a very prominent example of a song that movie licensing turned into a much bigger part of the artist's legacy than it had been before

wouldn't be surprised if 'Wonderwall' was biggest-selling Oasis song online (was probably their biggest hit in the US if not in the UK tho)

Don't have iTunes right here, but just guessing on a few...

Peter Gabriel - In Your Eyes (wasn't even a single from So)
Queen - Bohemian Rhapsody
Lou Reed - Perfect Day

Bohemian Rhapsody was always Queen's biggest hit surely

"Bohemian Rhapsody" benefitted from the 90s re-release and Wayne's World, but it was always one of their biggest hits, I gotta veto that. xpost

Perfect Day? It must still be "Walk on the Wild Side"

Journey's only two top 5 songs in the US were "Open Arms" and "Who's Crying Now."

"Don't Stop Believing," meanwhile, is the biggest-selling catalogue track in iTunes history.

no way was bohemian rhapsody a bigger hit than "another one bites the dust" or "crazy little thing called love"

What about "Son of a Preacher Man" by Dusty Springfield?

obv I don't know the UK chart stuff much, but was that actually her biggest hit?

ooh good call, put a 3 on that. xpost re journey

"Bohemian Rhapsody" held a sales record in the UK for almost a decade and was Queen's first US top 10. I would say songs that establish a band on that level count as one of their biggest hits whether there are higher charting songs or not.

Bohemian Rhapsody was always Queen's biggest hit surely

Not in the U.S., where No. 1 hits "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" (!) and "Another One Bites The Dust" both charted higher. (So did "We Are The Champions," at first, but then "Rhapsody" came back in 1992 and hit No. 2 off of Wayne's World; it had only hit No. 9 on its original release.)

The Romantics' legacy song is almost certainly "What I Like About You" (big jock-rock hit, right?), though in their lifetime "Talking In Your Sleep" charted way higher (No. 3, compared to No. 49.)

what about "Sweet Caroline" by Neil Diamond....again, i'm a lil ignorant of his history but wiki says "Song Sung Blue" was a bigger chart hit

yeah that's really interesting, i don't think i've ever even heard "Talking In Your Sleep" but I've heard "Like" a million times. xpost

this icon should be next to all these songs in the iTunes store: http://www.soulstrut.com/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/badassbuddy_com-slowburner.gif

I think I've heard those 2 about an equal # of times--but I guess "Like" is more of a party song.

what about "Sweet Caroline" by Neil Diamond....again, i'm a lil ignorant of his history but wiki says "Song Sung Blue" was a bigger chart hit

Yeah, I think "Sweet Caroline" and "Cherry Cherry" are both more famous today than "Song Sung Blue" or "Cracklin' Rosie" -- but they were all in the top 5.

Freebird? That's certainly Skynyrd's legacy song, but probably not their biggest iTunes seller (Sweet Home Alabama?).

(Meant to add "Song Sung Blue" and "Cracklin' Rosie" were his only two solo #1s.)

oh wow here's the ultimate one:

according to wiki, "Dancing With Myself" by Billy Idol only reached 102 on the U.S. charts and FAILED to chart in the U.K.

usually a soundtrack or placement in a television show will raise a song out of the bands "hits" into a totally different demographic

Peter Gabriel - In Your Eyes (wasn't even a single from So)

This was released as a single off of the "Say Anything" soundtrack and received massive amounts of radio play.

oh wow here's the ultimate one:

according to wiki, "Dancing With Myself" by Billy Idol only reached 102 on the U.S. charts and FAILED to chart in the U.K.

― stank pony (M@tt He1ges0n), Friday, March 27, 2009 1:27 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah but "Rebel Yell" and "White Wedding" are both bigger iTunes sellers

i mean this could very easily turn into "early hits that established a band's identity but didn't chart as high as later singles when they were more famous" list and get away from the original idea

yeah that's true

i was more just shocked that that hadn't even charted at the time, being how catchy it was and all

"Should I Stay or Should I Go?"

Peter Gabriel - In Your Eyes (wasn't even a single from So)

...

This was released as a single off of the "Say Anything" soundtrack and received massive amounts of radio play.

"In Your Eyes" was released as a US single, peaking at #26 Billboard Hot 100 and #1 Billboard Mainstream Rock in 1986.

Say Anything gave "In Your Eyes" a second chart run in 1989, but it peaked at #41. No Top 40 for you!

...and became PG's first certified Gold single in 2005 lol

"Only You" did marginally better than "Situation" on the US charts (67 vs. 73) and much better on the UK charts (2 vs. wasn't even released), but "Situation" seems much more like Yaz's legacy song.

"Born to Run!" Peaked at #23.

(Well, technically it's outsold by "Radio Nowhere" on iTunes, but I think that was thanks to some "Magic" promotion)

yeah acts with recent singles kinda skew this, but i think it's safe to assume "Born To Run" ultimately sells more than "Radio Nowhere"

Oh oh oh!

"American Girl" was the second single off Tom Petty's debut album, after "Breakdown," but did not even chart.

Radiohead. Creep is their biggest hit, but probably not their "signature" song. NOt sure what is, though.

Bruce's biggest chart hit is Dancing In The Dark

"Creep" is Radiohead's legacy song to millions of non-Radiohead fans

I'm not sure what Bob Marley's legacy song is, but I have a feeling that "Roots, Rock, Reggae" (his only U.S. Hot 100 hit, peaking at # 51) isn't it. It might not even be in the Top 10.

(Well, Marley has lots of Legacy songs, obviously. Or at least an album full of them.)

Cheap Trick's only #1 is "The Flame." ("I Want You to Want Me" was #7, "Surrender" #62.)

What about remixes doing this with a song? Because Run DMC's It's Like That was just a b-side until it became like their biggest song (v. walk this way obv.)

Also presumably this must have happened by tunes that were sampled a bunch, although none come to mind immediately.

'Hallelujah' wins this thread, surely?

Run DMC's It's Like That was just a b-side

Not really. It was on side one of the 12-inch, and came before "Sucker MCs"; ditto with the instrumentals on side two:

http://www.discogs.com/viewimages?release=257372

How do I find out Itunes sales numbers? Is there some page for them?

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 tried to a search for a specific tune on the Itunes store, but when I click on the song name, I'm thrown back to the Apple store home page.

Bowie's been mentioned: most of his signature songs didn't chart as well as you'd expect (and lots of huge hits have all but vanished from popular memory).

His second most-played song on Spotify is "Starman" (#10 UK, #65 US), the third-most played is "Heroes" (a borderline flop that actually hit most of its chart peaks in 2016 after Bowie died), then there's "Rebel Rebel" (#5 UK, #64 US), "Space Oddity" (#1 UK, but with a complicated release history, hitting its high-water mark five years after it first appeared), and "Moonage Daydream" (never released as a single, at least not under the Bowie name).

Not present are "Dancing in the Streets" (#1 UK, #7 US), "China Girl" (#2 UK, #10 US) "Ashes to Ashes" (#1 UK), "Fame" (#17 UK, #1 US), "The Jean Genie" (#2 UK, #71 US), "Golden Years" (#8 UK, #10 US), "Blue Jean" (#6 UK, #8 US).

(His most-played song by a huge margin is "Under Pressure", which I'm ignoring because of crosstalk with the Queen name/brand).

And for what it's worth "Breathe"/"Firestarter"/"SMBU" are all basically neck and neck on Spotify.

I mean, there's no way that happened because people actively chose to listen to it.

I get the impression there's plenty of genuine affection for the song. eg. there was a live cover of it on an TV program recently on my side of the world, in a segment that leans towards to safe, tasteful choices, if not outright 'standards'.

In my Spotify ignorance, how popular are Spotify-generated playlists? And do record labels push Spotify to put focus tracks on their Playlist?

Essentially streaming stats are a combination of the old sales charts and airplay charts. Only the streaming sites themselves know how the numbers break down of course.

The fourth highest played track on Spotify by the Lovin' Spoonful is "(Till I) Run With You", the sorta title track from their post-Sebastian album.

Essentially streaming stats are a combination of the old sales charts

if you remove all aspects of sales and remuneration

xpost Used in a tv show last year, I guess

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjfbZtP9uHU

streaming stats are a different animal entirely because, to my understanding, it's the total number of times a song's been played since the day the streaming service started tracking streams. maybe some of the services reset or baseline the numbers occasionally, but I haven't heard of it

so sales charts tracking how many copies an album's sold since the day it was released might be a point of comparison, but that's still off. radio charts are plays per what, a week/month/year, and nearly all songs that were released as singles?

I mean a combination of sales as in, something activey initiated by the listener, and airplay as in, something pushed onto the listener.

a really cool spotify mod/feature would be if you could change the default artist view from highlighting most streamed songs to highlighting "best" songs, as in, songs preferred by fans most acquainted with said artists catalog (or smth)

with over 62m streams "when the sun hits" is slowdive's biggest song on spotify, beating "alison" handily.

Not sure that counts, as such. Slowdive never had any hits. More than 99% of people would never have heard of them, and of those (like me) who are/were fans, I don't think many would be able to confidently say "*this* is their biggest tune" about any of them. I would have had absolutely no idea what the number one would have been.

Strangely enough it seems Renegade is the big audience favourite rather than Come Sail Away or Mr Roboto or whatever, certainly at the Northern Wisconsin State Fairgrounds.

Read this with disbelief and went straight to Apple Music, where, indeed, Renegade is Styx's most streamed song! What on earth? I wouldn't have guessed it was in the top 5.

(oh sorry that post is from the Kansas thread, not this one)

"Renegade" was/is a huge Classic Rock radio staple, mainly because it's one of the only big Styx songs in hat actually rocks out.

The opening lines are like the definition of Classic Rock

It hits this spot right in the middle of Queen and Bon Jovi

Honestly yeah the inbred-looking extended family of Wisconsonites in the row in front of us all went "yissss!", pumped their fists and began filming on their phones when Tommy Shaw sang the opening lines.

Also the 3rd best utilization of Styx on Freaks and Geeks.

Tony Bennett's top Spotify track is his duet w/Amy Winehouse on "Body and Soul".

https://i.imgur.com/gmco70l.jpg

lol

"Entourage" star Tony Bennett dies at 96.

Yeah, for most people with a detectable pulse, he is the guy who did duets with Lady Gaga and Billy Joel and he may have been in an Austin Powers movie. Sorry.

Interestingly enough, the 2nd biggest Bennett track on Spotify is a version of "The Way You Look Tonight" from a 2012 rarities collection, a recording I assume blew up because of a movie/tv synch or something.

^^My Best Friend's Wedding

This is a funny one: "Let's Twist Again" is Chubby Checker's top Spotify song, beating "The Twist" by around 40 million spins.

you can only Twist once, but you can Twist Again many times

“The Twist” plays are vote-split btw the Checker, Fat Boys, and Hank Ballard & The Midnighters versions.

is this a safe space to admit that i actually really love the Fat Boys version

Am I right that "Let's Twist Again" was technically the bigger hit, by some metrics? It's certainly the one I heard more as an oldie growing up.

Seems it was in the UK.

It's certainly the one I heard more as an oldie growing up.

Same here, going back to the days when they had to play those tracks off tapes because they weren't on CD yet.

I can even remember a period when the local station would only play "Let's Twist Again" and "Limbo Rock" from him.

Bread

Their biggest hits were "Make It With You" (#1) and "Baby I'm-a-Want You" (#3) but "Everything I Own" (#5) is their most streamed song by a 28 million stream margin.

And yet, the first two get played on Sirius's Yacht Rock station constantly, and I've never heard the last one there (or anywhere else, really)

The Ken Boothe and Boy George cover versions were huge in the UK though

Goldfinger's "Superman" is by far their biggest song and definitely their legacy song (Thanks to THPS) even though "Here in you bedroom" I think was their biggest hot at the time.

on further reading, I see they were mentioned already, forgot to see all messages before I did my ctrl - F

Do Metallica belong here now, post Stranger Things?

That’s an odd case, since MoP was a legacy song before they started having hits.

I was quite surprised to see today that Gil Scott-Heron's most streamed song on Spotify is "Lady Day and John Coltrane". Granted it's basically tied with "The Revolution Will not Be Televised" but still.

It’s a bit catchier

Have heard "Lady Day and John Coltrane" many times over the years out in the wild and on the radio versus hardly ever for "Revolution".

I mean it’s probably on some popular Spotify playlist called “organic vibes” or something

GSH on Televised:

It was the only political piece on the album.... Very few people heard 'Save the Children', 'Lady Day and John Coltrane' or 'I Think I Call It Morning'. They just missed the point. The point became one of the 11 pieces. The least inventive one on the album was the one that was the most heralded.

"Santa Claus Is Comin' To Town" will (please) never be Bruce Springsteen's biggest Spotify hit but... it's getting there

xp if "The Bottle" were on Spotify I'm pretty sure that would be GSH's most streamed track.

The top Doors song on spotify & itunes is "riders on the storm," with "people are strange" coming in second. Those are definitely hits, but I'm still a little surprised to see them besting "Light My Fire," which is their fourth biggest streamer on Spotify.

I would have bet on "Johannesburg."

(re: GSH)