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.

"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

Yeah I'm not surprised at all, Zep and GnR were very tied to a specific scene/time period, AC/DC (like the Ramones, Motörhead) always sounded more timeless.

GnR (at 21.9 million) is only 1.2 million monthly listeners behind AC/DC. It's not a huge difference.

Sure but that includes a large cohort of legacy fans - I think the observation is that AC/DC is attracting more young listeners than GnR.

Oh, I know Moneytalks, I just checked. Yes it's an earworm that I used to hear every week when I worked in warehouses overnight putting myself through college. It seems uncharacteristic of the band that the riff is so generic and subservient to the vocal hook.

Good points about AC/DC winning out due to being more samey and timeless. But this seems the opposite of why Queen won out over other 20th century pop artists, they are stylistically diverse and unrepresentative of the mega-genre "20th century pop". So much for my trying to come up with grand theories I guess.

It's hard to really draw conclusions from streaming stats - those are largely driven by the money that artists/labels are willing to pump into the platforms, it's hard to get a good feeling how many of these streams actually represent listeners preferences - it might just be the case that the AC/DC estate is paying Spotify/Google/Apple a lot more to push its songs into listeners playlists than GnR's management.

In a sense that's the modern way to secure your legacy - instead of spending your efforts on tours for your old fans, spend it on pulling the next generation on board: produce a biopic, get on soundtrack of a movie with a young audience, do a remix with a current artist, hand over cash to Spotify/Apple, etc. Elton John clearly has been better at that game than Axl Rose or Robert Plant.

the three cities with the largest population of ac/dc spotify listeners: mexico city, sao paulo, and santiago

Achilles Last Stand (Taylor's Version) feat. Robert Plant and Jack Harlow

That's funny. Looks like those megacities are also doing the biggest numbers for GnR, Twisted Sister, Bon Jovi, Zep, Pink Floyd, etc.

Some of that is how cities are spatially coded, at least according to Glenn three years ago: but also our third-party geocoding treats Mexico City as one giant single place, where it breaks NYC up into boroughs, for example.

Spotify - anyone heard of it?

Afroman's follow up to "Because I Got High" named "Crazy Rap" (not a hit at all in the US or much of anywhere but admittedly it did hit #10 on the UK charts) has 212M streams on Spotify as compared to 132M for "Because I Got High". Incidentally, reviewing his discography on Wikipedia I see he has released 16 full length studio albums plus 13 mixtapes.

crazy rap aka colt 45 is definitely a cult hit (no pun intended)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPmvyV2v_HY

the Charlie's Angels reference in "Independent Women" might have hurt its long term appeal

yeah that was always a bit unnecessary

had no idea Afroman had a another hit, but am enjoying the aptly titled Crazy Rap now

charming lyrics