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

"Dance" is a millennial-approved '80s Jam.

"dance" gets played way more on the radio these days. the style/era of r&b balladry that "love" embodies is one that today's classic hits stations have been hesitant to acknowledge.

That doesn’t surprise me at all. IWDWS(WLM) has crossed over massively to millennials and Gen Z (in the UK at least) and it’s probably the most widely loved of all 80s floor-fillers.

This speaks generally to the fact that nostalgic playing seems to be focused on upbeat numbers maybe for dancefloor reasons, leaving ballads, however huge, to be forgotten, and hearkens back to the very beginning of this thread where Journey was mentioned -- who now remembers "Open Arms"? Their highest-charting single.

Pearl Jam's top two songs on Spotify are "Alive" and "Even Flow" neither of which charted in the US. "Last Kiss" reached #2 and even "Spin the Black Circle" made the top 40 in the 90s. (Which wow: both "Jeremy" and "Daughter" were unavoidable top 40 hits in Canada at the time;"Spin" did not chart and I barely even remember it.)

OK, both of those top 2 songs made the mainstream rock and alternative charts but were not their highest charting singles even on those charts.

Pearl Jam's chart stats are weird because most of their big ones did not have domestic physical single releases at the time they were big - for example "Jeremy" didn't get one until 1995 (and still charted!). The genre charts give a better picture, being airplay-based, than the Hot 100.

"Spin..." did get a physical release, and came out before Vitalogy, so there was a lot of interest. "Last Kiss" was a weird case of a charity single that also did crossover and reach a ton of cash-flush suburban teens of '99... if anything it belongs with like My Ding-a-Ling and so on --- "you'd be shocked to realize this now-forgotten song was technically their biggest hit!"

"Last Kiss" also had a big radio push after the Columbine shooting.

Weird. Frederik Ulling's recording "Klavierstuck V, Work No. 4" is the most-played Stockhausen piece on Spotify, with over six times as many plays as Kontakte. None of the other Klavierstucke make the top 10.

LOL I've got this. Fredrik Ullén btw. And it's on a CD with IX and Kontakte. Could someone have used in a film? Seems unlikely. Or (LOL) an advert.

I don't think "Last Kiss" is forgotten, though? It's their #5 song on Spotify and lots of younger people know it in my anecdotal music teaching experience.xp

color me pleasantly surprised that the youth know that song! i feel like i haven't heard it "in the wild" since the year 2000.

But that explains a lot re Pearl Jam. Someone probably explained that to me before but I forgot.xp

And sorry for getting Fredrik Ullén's name wrong. We should get to the bottom of this, though.

I’m youngish and am currently listening to Last Kiss for the first time ever

Pearl Jam's top two songs on Spotify are "Alive" and "Even Flow" neither of which charted in the US. "Last Kiss" reached #2 and even "Spin the Black Circle" made the top 40 in the 90s. (Which wow: both "Jeremy" and "Daughter" were unavoidable top 40 hits in Canada at the time;"Spin" did not chart and I barely even remember it.)

To me this shows the weaknesses of relying on chart position: as a guy who lived through the 90s as a US guy listening to music, "Alive", "Jeremy," and "Evenflow" and possibly to a lesser extent "Daughter" and "Betterman" were the canonical defining Pearl Jam songs always. xp Doctor Casino has the right take I think, I certainly remember radio ubiquity of "Last Kiss" in 99 (and it's a great song) but it was never seen as core to their work

Hm, OK, I like "Evenflow" but it never seemed like a crossover hit to me in the 90s, although it's the one I always hear on classic rock radio now. "Daughter" and "Jeremy", otoh, would have been known even to non-alternative listeners, at least here. I thought comparing the charts to the legacy was part of the point of the thread, though? "Don't Stop Believin'" was never obscure or minor, I don't think?

90s charts are pretty unrepresentative tho, given the move away from physical singles. Those first three PJ videos were massive on MTV. I doubt Last KISS even had a video.

Airplay charts don't make a stronger case for "Alive" as their biggest hit. If Wikipedia is right, "Alive" peaked at 16 and 21 on the mainstream rock and alternative rock airplay charts, respectively. "Daughter" topped both (which seems consistent with what I remember).

re: Last Kiss, one wishes their other charity compilation cover of a 60s collector's item had done as well. From Music For Our Mother Ocean, the surfer comedy "Gremmie Out of Control":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQ1wLIiv4Cc

Cowabunga!

Is Stockhausen's "Klavierstuck V" on there too by any chance?

lol

Silverchair made an attempt, but the label wasn't feeling it and made them go with "Surfin' Bird."

i still hear "last kiss" every now and again

the interesting thing about pearl jam's physical singles (in the us) is that the reason they were released at all was because "yellow ledbetter" ended up getting a lot of unsolicited airplay at alternative stations in 1994 and 1995. that song wasn't available to buy except as the b-side on the "jeremy" single that was released internationally, which consequently became a hot item as an import. stock of the import dried up before demand for "ledbetter" abated, so pearl jam's label finally decided to release the retail singles that had been available internationally stateside (not just "jeremy," but also basically all the hits from ten and vs.). this is why pearl jam's hot 100 stats in the 90s look so weird, with multilple of their hits not even charting until years after they were first popular

riiiiiiiiight! i knew there was something about imports and b-sides involved but totally forgot it was "yellow ledbetter" --- which probably still gets more airplay than many of the above-mentioned songs.

I don’t even know what “Last Kiss” is (and faintly remember “Spin the Black Circle”), but I saw the videos for those older songs a hundred billion times in high school. I’m not surprised those would be the ones with cultural staying power.

The Billboard Airplay charts should be used to measure how popular a song was in the ‘90s. Fuck a Hot 100.

Tbc, I think "Alive" > "Daughter"/"Jeremy" is more significant than "Alive" > "Last Kiss". xp As shown by airplay charts, yes, exactly.

Yeah, “Daughter” is the big & forever PJ song in my mind.

Anyway, I think we’ve established ITT that Spotify’s rankings seem to heavily reflect playlist inclusion and possibly other algorithm triggers that don’t necessarily reflect listener “choice”? I’d be interested to see the top PJ songs on Apple Music or Tidal.

some of the hot 100 airplay peaks for retail-absent (or -delayed) pearl jam hits in the 90s (since they're not conveniently listed on wiki)

"jeremy" #70 *
"daughter" #33
"better man" #13
"who you are" #27
"hail, hail" #69

(* weirdly, this actually occurred not when it first broke out in '92, but following a resurgence in airplay a year later when "daughter" got big)

Surprisingly, Whitney Houston’s biggest song on Spotify is not « I will always love you » but « I wanna dance with somebody » although IWALY is by far her biggest hit.

― AlXTC from Paris

the kids these days just jam out to big star's luded out version from wlyx memphis 1975

I remember the day that "Spin the Black Circle" premiered on radio in Philly. My mom was driving down Kelly and WDRE was playing. Very visceral memory.

Alive was pre-Smells like teen spirit. I can see some radio stations not knowing what to do with it. Was it mainstream rock or alternative?

Jeremy felt like their biggest song back then to me. Maybe it dropped a bit in airplay after Columbine etc.?

for pure amount of airplay, "Last Kiss" is def the one I heard the most. it had crossover appeal most of their original tracks didn't.

I’m sure it got play at the time. I could not tell you what it sounds like though. Some kind of 50s pastiche?

Their decision to stop making videos I think prevented their songs from having as broad an effect as Their early songs

I’m sure it got play at the time. I could not tell you what it sounds like though. Some kind of 50s pastiche?

An actual cover of a 1961 song.

a bad cover, at that

I like Pearl Jam but I fucking hate their version of that song.

Alive was always the big Pearl Jam song over here, its just got a bigger chorus than Jeremy and there's nothing else on Ten that does. Don't feel like the singles on Vs have survived to the same extent let alone those from Vitalogy or after.

"Alive" was pretty omnipresent on rock radio in my parts, though "Jeremy" was bigger.

VS you might hear "Animal", "Daughter" or "Elderly Woman", but when's the last time "Go" got airplay? (and yet that was the first I heard from that album)

i love "last kiss". i remember hearing it a lot on top 40 radio at the time, tho it stood out quite a bit from the rest of the stations' playlists. i didn't know it was a cover until my dad heard it and remarked that it had been a hit when he was a kid

that might be a reason I hate it so much, as due to my dad playing a record at dinner every night between like age 7 and age 18, I was very fond of the original tune, and didn't think Vedder's warbly voice fit it. the plodding tempo didn't help.

I did like his version of "Love Reign O'er Me" though, which most people would probably shoot me for

pearl jam's version of "i've got a feeling" is pretty good

the popularity of “even flow” amongst the Spotify youth can probably be explained by its inclusion in one of the guitar hero games (or was it rock band?)

also, it rips

up through the late 90s you'd still hear "Dissident," "Daughter," and "Elderly Woman," but maybe not as much as "Betterman" or the Ten singles.

xp its popularity has been buoyed by millennials having babies:

https://www.meijer.com/content/dam/meijer/product/0003/28/8415/01/0003288415014_2_A1C1_0600.png

Typical millenial revisionism: Evenflo is a 100 year old company, they celebrated their centenial last month.