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

"The Weight" is one of those songs that was an instant standard. Practically every interpretive singer who wasn't in the Sinatra school took a crack at it between '68 & '73-ish.

see also: covers that folk/rock/soul song-interpreters of the '60s and '70s would have on their records

Seeing that Faces 'Ooh La La' up above - surely there must be many Faces 'Stay With Me's attributed to Rod splitting the vote?

Seems preposterous to suggest Big Yellow Taxi is Joni Mitchell's legacy song, nonetheless it's her top streamer

Why preposterous? That song is much more likely to be known by the average person than any of her others.

"Help Me" was a bigger hit at the time, but agreed that at the least the "choooo bop bop" was probably what the average radio listener would conjure up if asked to do a Joni Mitchell impression.

Yeah help me has the chart placing but I'm guessing taxi has had more sales (it was rereleased) and certainly had far more radio play.

"Big Yellow Taxi" was in my Grade 7 English textbook!

I'd have guessed Both Sides Now would be her legacy song.

Big Yellow Taxi was the first song of hers i remember from my youth, so dang catchy. there have been a number of crappy modern covers so makes sense that would be her big song rn.

"Help Me" was a bigger hit at the time, but agreed that at the least the "choooo bop bop" was probably what the average radio listener would conjure up if asked to do a Joni Mitchell impression.

I've never heard of "Help Me" tbh.

I would say "Both Sides Now".

! "Help Me" is wonderful. Essential LA-sound early 70s pop imo.

totally, it's a perfect song

Why preposterous?

well, maybe not preposterous then but BYT is kinda one of her children's song songs imo, it's a decent song but not very representative

'Big Yellow Taxi' is the first song that I think of whenever someone brings up Joni Mitchell, so I'm not surprised to hear that it's her most streamed song. I hate it, though.

I wouldn't say I hate it but the songs on fx Hejira and Hissing are on an entirely different plane

It put me off checking out her other material for the longest time.

have to say though, first 100 times I heard the refrain was on the Janet Jackson song where it works perfectly imo, Q-Tip on point

damn I would've thought "A Case of You" or "Woodstock"

Judy Collins' version of "Both Sides Now" is the one that reached the Top Ten in the US

...and "Woodstock" has two competing hit covers w/CSNY and Matthews Southern Comfort.

Everyone's covered "Both Sides Now".

Letters To Cleo: "I Want You To Want Me" (a Cheap Trick cover from 10 Things I Hate About You) way outpaces "Here And Now" on Spotify (5 mil spins vs. 1 mil)

...and their other 10 Things cover (Nick Lowe's "Cruel To Be Kind") is almost at 2 million.

such a good movie

while Heroes is probably Bowie's legacy song (and a good one!) if you count collabs Under Pressure is by far his best streamer with 200 million streams! (Heroes "only" at 90 million)

surprised at both of those - would have said that if he has a single "legacy song" (which isn't really ever going to fit perfectly for an artist with that many hits) it'd be SpaceOddity or Ziggy Stardust.

Space Oddity over Ziggy, tho. But "'Heroes'" and schmaltzy covers of it have become ubiquitous in movies, tv, and advertising especially after his death. Under Pressure benefits from being a collaboration with another one of the biggest pop acts in history.

on a similar tip, Iggy Pop: The Passenger has 88 million plays and Lust For Life has 29 million plays on Spotify. I guess his biggest hit was real wild child? still would not have figured The Passenger would have such a massive play count

again, ubiquitous syncs

more ubiquitous than lust for life, though?

i guess the numbers don't lie

very close second

i think more people take the lust for life drumbeat for syncs and that maybe splits the numbers

a weird streaming age story: so i was listening to some Eno earlier today and I was astonished at the ridiculously high play totals for some of his tracks...not his 70s solo tracks, not his collaborations with David Byrne, but his ambient stuff. "An Ending (Ascent)" has over 57 million streams! Why? A few of his ambient tracks made their way onto Spotify's "Sleep" playlist, which has well over 2 million subscribers.

people just listen to that playlist on repeat for hours every night! it's probably earning some experimental composers some decent money.

Ha, that's great.

2 million users falling asleep to it is an uncapped bandwidth provider’s nightmare.

I'm not sure how these Spotify rankings work exactly, but I see that Johnny's Cash's version of "Hurt" has double the plays of any of his other songs (188 million to "I Walk the Line"'s 92 million and "Ring of Fire"'s 94 million) but is only ranked as his second most popular track, hopefully because some Spotify bot is going "Nah, man."

I think there's some recency element in the algorithm

yeah i think glenn broke that down at some point, there's a special sauce, maybe also taking into account how much it's been searched for, how many playlists it's in, etc.

I was shocked recently to see that "Mary Jane's Last Dance" is edging out "American Girl" for most played Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers song on Spotify. Both have half the plays of "Free Fallin'" but its credited to solo Petty. Just had no idea it was that popular.

Yeah, I wouldn’t have guessed that one would be even in his top 5 songs...

that makes sense to me, that was the massive single from the Greatest Hits album, which sold 12 million copies and was maybe the first Petty album that for my generation was somewhat aimed in our direction. I was 18 when it came out and the previous albums several albums he'd released were all imo a bit more "adult" (Southern Accents, Full Moon Fever, Into the Great Wide Open, Traveling Wilburys.) I liked them but MJLD was a song definitely with an eye on younger listeners, if only for the video. which was huge.

"An Ending (Ascent)" has over 57 million streams! Why?

I think this was in Trainspotting? pretty sure there was a film placement that kickstarted its popularity

yeah it's used in lots of TV shows/movies, including Traffic, which I think is what you're thinking of, but that still struck me as a crazy high number.

xpost (re: Petty)
Interesting -- I see it came out in fall '93, and that was definitely a moment when the song/video would have fallen thru the cracks for me (my first year of college).

Yeah I can see that in retrospect. That 93 GH package was actually my intro to Petty (was 15 or so) but that song never clicked that much for me then, so I guess I never picked up on how popular it was.

"Deep Blue Day" is the Trainspotting selection. It's from Apollo, which for about 20 years has been my favorite ambient Eno – perfect for 9:30 p.m. weeknight writing.

kind of pointless to parse this for still-active huge artists, but kendrick lamar's top track on Spotify, by a long shot, is "HUMBLE." with almost 900K plays. "King Kunta" which I think of as his signature song, is way down at 250K. clearly i'm not really in touch with his hitmaking! but also clearly, it'll be years before he could properly have a "this thread" kind of song.