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

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

never even heard of that Pretenders song, no way is that their biggest hit

or best known song or whatever

all i ever hear on the radio (in the US) are "Back on the Chain Gang" and "Brass In Pocket." oddly, though, their spotify results break down as:

1 I'll Stand By You - 16,924,456
2 Don't Get Me Wrong - 9,015,625
3 Brass in Pocket - 9,980,157
4 Back on the Chain Gang - 4,611,021
5 Holy Commotion - 44,212

so, wow, weeeeird. maybe it's a US/UK thing? or a "when they were added to spotify" thing?

That's the only Pretenders song I know.

(that's misleading, too - - - if you go down to their albums and scroll over the stats, they have tons of stuff with more plays than "Holy Commotion" - which makes me wonder how that top five is actually generated...)

wtf is this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLpmj059JFA

I think she is literally crying over spilled milk in this video

so i'm asking Glenn in the Spotify thread because even if you expand to the top 10 up top, there are some heavy hitters that show up way out of order. "2000 Miles" with 6,220,016, "Middle of the Road" with 1,581,639. still not beating "I'll Stand By You" - though as far as the thread question goes, a little wiki perusal reveals that in the UK, it was one of their biggest hits, at #10 on the singles chart - one of only six top-tenners, though behind "brass in pocket" (#1) "I Go To Sleep" (#7) and "Talk of the Town" (#8). this does not count chrissie hynde's dreadful sonny & cher duet with UB40 which also got to #1 and has had 12 million plays on spotify....

anyway though in terms of radio airplay in the US at least, i don't think their legacy has been displaced just yet. it's "brass in pocket" and "back on the chain gang," with very occasional spins of "don't get me wrong."

Yeah, "Brass in Pocket" is easily their best-known song in North America, right? Never heard of "I'll Stand By You" either.

Re: Spotify, since it may come up again on this thread, Glenn clarifies: The "Popular" songs show raw play-counts in the UI, but are actually ranked based on an internal score that measures, roughly, "current" popularity...

"I'll Stand By You" was huge! Albeit though on Adult Contemporary radio, where it's a staple to this day (and it's also a huge Muzak supermarket jam). It occupies that weird space where there's a whole bunch of people who know it way better than the songs from many years earlier that built the band's reputation.

anyway though in terms of radio airplay in the US at least, i don't think their legacy has been displaced just yet. it's "brass in pocket" and "back on the chain gang," with very occasional spins of "don't get me wrong."

Classic rock stations will also very, very occasionally play "Mystery Achievement" when they need a bathroom break.

Another thing about "I'll Stand By You" is that it's such a generic type love song (see also: Shania's "Still The One") that it's 'our song' for many couples.

I feel like I've heard "I'll Stand By You" in the last 5 minutes of 200 tv episodes

Also covered by Shakira, Girls Aloud, Rod Stewart etc.

could "Brass Monkey" be one of these

no way

i wasn't basing my suggestion on any actual stats, just my impression based on what i hear on the classic hits station these days. here it's definitely "i'll stand by you" >>>>>> "brass in pocket" > "back on the chain gang"