Songs that became famous because of a system glitch

"- chucklebutt "tubthumping": six weeks on hot 100, no. 87 peak. standard configurations of chumbawamba's original had been sold in a hyper-restricted edition of just 70k copies, virtually all of which had sold out by the time it reached peak radio saturation. note again the misleading similarity in artist name."

Youtube has this, but I just can't click on it. I just can't do it. Google has a Billboard magazine article about it from 1998. It appears that the record label - Under the Cover Records - was set up specifically for this kind of thing, clones of underperforming quasi-novelty singles:
https://www.discogs.com/label/54079-Under-The-Cover-Records

They released "Lovefool" by the Casual Sweaters, "How Bizarre" by One-2-3, "Flagpole Sitta" by Hairy Canary, and "Walkin' on the Sun" by Smack. I imagine they're like those direct-to-videotape versions of classic fairytales made by the cheapest animators in South Korea.

There was a version of "What It's Like" by 'Everest' or something that I thought that label did, but it's not on the list.

LOL'ing @ the club version of "Butterfly Kisses" on that list. I'm sure that one's a banger that's guaranteed to fill up the floors.

They released "Lovefool" by the Casual Sweaters, "How Bizarre" by One-2-3, "Flagpole Sitta" by Hairy Canary, and "Walkin' on the Sun" by Smack. I imagine they're like those direct-to-videotape versions of classic fairytales made by the cheapest animators in South Korea.

― Ashley Pomeroy

i mean this was the k-tel model, right?

i love that the knockoff "smashmouth" is named "smack", though.

oh my god i had been wondering what the chucklebutt cover sounded like but last time i had checked it wasn't on youtube! lmfaooooo they even recreated the intro from the original's album version w/ the "i thought that music mattered" film dialog sample!!

apparently that under the cover records producer also did some dance covers around that time for robbins entertainment, a label that would later successfully release some of the biggest radio-friendly dance crossovers of the 2000s in the u.s. (dj sammy's "heaven," cascada's "everytime we touch," d.h.t.'s "listen to your heart"). bottom-feeding gone legit!

"Lovefool" by the Casual Sweaters, "How Bizarre" by One-2-3, "Flagpole Sitta" by Hairy Canary, and "Walkin' on the Sun" by Smack

Luv the “Casual Sweaters,” but the other mock artist names are disappointingly off the mark. Why not go all-in and tempt fate with names like “OMG,” “Harley Disaster,” and “Smush Mouse”?

ok, thanks to the whitburn obsessives i have heard smack's "walkin' on the sun". absolutely the laziest imaginable shit. reminds me of that youtube upload of "trilogie de la mort" with a generic reggaeton beat over the whole thing, and yes i just compared smashmouth to elaine radigue what are you going to do about it?

i have a fondness for some of those shitty knockoff records. some of the hendrix knockoff records are pretty great, for instance. and i am still really wanting to hear that "dirty dancing" knockoff cassette peter thomas did in the late '80s. it's probably terrible, but who really knows?

I have no ideas if it's a glitch but Cymande's Dove kept coming up on my recommendations or on the "up next" autoplay. I notice it's now up to nearly 10m views which seems a lot.

This is permanently lodged in my recommendations. Also, Tommy Guerrero - Road to Knowhere, Gabor Szabo - Dreams.

there have to be many songs that got this status by frequently being mistagged on napster/limewire/etc, not sure whether there is one exemplar though

oh how could i have forgotten this classic case of deliberate mistagging by a label to exploit flaws in the system: freak nasty (of "da' dip" fame) had his 2005 single release "do it just like a rockstar" retagged as "party like a rockstar" on digital download services by his label in 2007 to take advantage of the unavailability of shop boyz' breaking hit with that title, which was at that time only available to purchase as a ringtone. freak nasty's track thus spent three weeks on the hot 100 two years after it was released, rising as high as number 45 before promptly dropping entirely off the chart as soon as the shop boyz download became available.

it's still on itunes to this day under the revised title, tho the original title is visible on the cover artwork. since it well predated the shop boyz tune, it's obviously not a copy, and if you listen to it you'll notice the similarities are pretty slight (and nearly inevitable given that both tracks are such generic examples of party rap jams), with the first line of the refrain being similar in lyric and cadence to "party like a rockstar." (totally irrelevant to the matter at hand, but it also interpolates kid rock's "bawitdaba.")

so again, not so much a glitch in the system as much as an opportunistic attempt to subvert its limitations, but still pretty amusing/interesting in retrospect

didn't the band Zeigeist do this when The Knife's Silent Shout leaked, playing up on how similar the two bands sounded and putting their own "Tar Heart" as a track at the end of the album

I ended up on a bunch of early-2000s Boards of Canada bootlegs due to mistagging which may or may not have been deliberate

I'd completely forgotten about Zeitgeist!

i remember that. Tar Heart was and remains a fantastic song!!

In a fitting end to the 2010s, Jeff Bezos is responsible for the last Number 1 Single of the year, Ellie Goulding's "River" (by Joni Mitchell).

Here's how:

1. You can't find it on Spotify, Apple, Google.
2. That's because - aside from Youtube - it's Amazon exclusive.

and...

— dan barker (@danbarker) December 28, 2019

good eye. the other amazon exclusive for this year, john legend's "happy xmas", is also now a top 10 uk hit single by the same conspiracy of mechanisms. feel weird linking my own words elsewhere, but it does add to what i wrote in another thread here about christmas tunes' (re)appearances on billboard in recent years: 1 2 3

it might be argued that all of these christmas songs' returns to the charts are, if not an actual system glitch (they're legitimately well-known and broadly-heard tunes), driven by feedback loops that weren't quite closed until streaming services, rather than dusty cd comps, became the dominant way by which the public chose to get into the spirit musically each year. the amount of money the biz stands to extract from the phenom goes up annually, so with each coming year the push from their end strengthens accordingly. now here we are with mariah carey on top of the american charts a full decade after it seemed like she would never have a big hit of any sort ever again. and labels will likely fight amongst themselves to have their artists' recordings placed among the coveted amazon exclusive slots.

I didn’t realize that Amazon Music was popular enough to be such a force.

most of the time, it's not! overall streaming activity occurs overwhelmingly thru spotify, apple music, and youtube -- except during the holiday season, when amazon music suddenly becomes a massive player in the game. apparently a ton of people who don't ordinarily stream much at all -- or at least don't bother streaming via amazon -- feel more than comfortable asking their smart speakers to queue up holiday music.

i'd also be willing to bet that "baby shark" saw an unusually large proportion of streams from amazon music

That’s pretty interesting!

can’t discount the number of people getting new gadgets, amazon or otherwise, that have alexa as a present

I’d hazard a guess that “play Christmas music” is one of the first things people try out

Maybe, but that wouldn’t account for pre-Xmas charts...

https://pitchfork.com/thepitch/how-a-long-lost-indian-disco-record-won-over-crate-diggers-and-cracked-the-youtube-algorithm/?fbclid=IwAR1pOjm2QL6206Qj78ftMgJsrqU-Km8O4_IEhfDz5ro-TLjs8BL_BpmWuVY

The end of this article is particularly satisfying.

I thought this would be about that Disco Raga album but this is actually even cooler

hard to believe it's only 2015-16 that it was put on youtube and found by Dan Snaith on there.

a song called Maybe by Kettenkarussell is almost always up next on youtube regardless of what I'm currently watching or listening to on there. The track is... okay, I guess? It has 10million + views now. I'm sure that's a few million up from the last time I clocked the play count. I wonder why?

Facebook is today actively fighting punishment in court for election fraud in the state I live in, and wilfully spreading misinformation about bushfires that will lead to more human deaths, more hundreds of thousands of wildlife deaths, and potentially the eradication of agriculture in the state I come from. Please don't monetise ILX to their benefit.

Ok fine

lol

Some pretty blissed-out YT comments for that “Maybe” track.

All those records sound the same to me, lol ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

If you leave Soundcloud running after the track ends, the app, for reasons that aren’t entirely clear (algorithms? Mischievous intent?) immediately moves from the nascent oeuvre of Elon Musk to the work of a rapper called almndjoy, automatically playing his track Erectile Dysfunction, with its diverting opening line “I’m sorry my dick doesn’t work”. Languishing unnoticed on Soundcloud for a year, it’s seen a vast upsurge in plays since Musk’s track made its debut, replete with a series of comments indicating that “Elon brought me here”. Perhaps that will be Elon Musk’s most lasting musical legacy: he’s brought Erectile Dysfunction to the masses.

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/jan/31/elon-musk-edm-artist-first-track-dont-doubt-ur-vibe

(there is a very tempting potential explanation for this if you know how recommendation algorithms usually do work for things without many sources of input data, like a brand-new elon musk song before it's been reported)

this might count

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GaXDhd2-mwM

I have no clue what the origin of this is (and where volumes 1-7 are) but it seems to be very popular on RYM

Not relevant to this revive but in the original go-round I enjoyed the discussion of how different people's technology played first alphabetical track or first alphabetical artist.

For a long time my wife and I had a shared bunch of music and when sorted alphabetically it always started with ...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead.

Many xxxposts on Amazon music:

My grandparents and my parents and their friends bought Alexa, which I find odd because around my age only one person I know has an alexa. At least in my city it’s the people over 50 that are buying Alexa.

Anyhoo, this spike that I’ve noticed this past year in Alexa purchases might be why Amazon music is becoming important and why they can choose which song becomes a hit, most people just say “alexa play some “insert music genre”” which gives Amazon the chance to push whichever track they chose at the beginning of their playlists.

Yep

can't find any info on this weird amateur (?) recording that has 100000 plays on spotify
https://open.spotify.com/track/5lIikHmK6oZSaPw1vsi35S?si=mr9Syo9eTfS_0Lx8Rm-kGg
a glitch in the matrix?

it was on my discover weekly 🤔

it's kind of amazing

yes it's weirdly enjoyable

crossposted from the J-pop thread, CHAI have covered Plastic Love:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhkQgyxzRzI

i guess pavement "harness your hopes" and the galaxie 500 song could count for this

it wasn't a 'hit' per se, but the same year Orgy released Candyass, a band called Candyass released an album named Orgy.

don’t forget green, who came out with an album called rem

REM was a single. And the bassist on it is currently out on $100,000 bond while working on a plea deal.

jesus christ, R.E.M.'s lawyers are brutal.

lol

Hahaha

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/a4/Bowi.jpg

god damn that still cracks me up