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

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.

but listening to Pearl Jam on Spotify isn’t 100 years old (I really have to explain this joke? lol)

Spotify in 1925 was definitely not the easiest to navigate

Don't understand why the Edison Cylinder <I> want to hear isn't available. Must be a rights issue or some other malarkey.

‘Renegade’ by Styx is an example of this, i think. They had 8 sinles that charted higher, including a #1 with ‘Babe’ but Renegade is their top streaming song, with Come Sail Away at #2 8 million stream behind.

Hm, how did that become their legacy song on Spotify? Was it featured in a movie or show? Most of the placements that I can think of are for "Come Sail Away" (Virgin Suicides, Freaks and Geeks, that Netflix movie with Kelsey Grammer and Kristen Bell). Is it a favourite of radio programmers bc it is shorter and faster? I actually like "Blue Collar Man" more.

"renegade" over "come sail away" surprises me too! looking at wikipedia, "renegade" was in a GTA game and apparently is used as theme music by multiple baseball teams, maybe that's helped...?

The song is often used in some media (such as Supernatural[1] and Freaks and Geeks[2]) to evoke a '70s' aesthetic in the work.

"Renegade" is still a pretty big Classic Rock Radio staple, easily one of the four or five Styx songs you're guaranteed to hear if you tuned in for a day.

Only just now bothered to look up "In the Air Tonight"s chart performance and saw it peaked at #19. I'm sure that's common knowledge but new to me.

used as theme music by multiple baseball teams

This probably explains a lot. I was trying to figure it out from imdb, but I didn't think its appearances in supernatural or freaks & geeks were enough to push it over the edge. And while usually Grand Theft Auto is a good enough reason to explain the popularity of a song, this was from an expansion pack and I was skeptical of it having that much influence.

I don't even remember "Renegade" in Freaks and Geeks. "Lady" (the song Nick sang to Lindsay) and "Come Sail Away" (at the dance) were surely more prominent. But the sports team theme music placements make sense.xp

I would also have thought that South Park had pushed "Come Sail Away" to the top--not to mention the dance scenes in F&G and Virgin Suicides

Not surprised at all at "Renegade", listening to classic rock radio in the 90s I definitely remember hearing it a lot more than any other Styx song. Not hard to imagine why, its the song of theirs that sounds the most like other classic rock radio staples of the time.

Wow, this is a surprising one for me. As a guy who listened to a LOT of Styx in the 80s (and classic rock generally) and owned all these LPs, I had to listen to "Renegade" to remember which one it was. There are probably 10 songs I would have put above it (most of which are in Spotify's top 10 tbf)

I also don't know "Boat on the River" but according to Wikipedia it was a big hit in Germany???

This is old news to veterans of In Which Doctor Casino Listens to Classic Rock Classics for the First Time , but I grew up pretty much knowing Styx for "Come Sail Away," "Blue Collar Man," and "Mr. Roboto." "Renegade," when we got to it, definitely sounded familiar, but I ended up chalking that up to its strong whiff of "Trampled Under Foot." It's certainly possible it was played on one of Atlanta's two classic rock stations (Z93 and 96 Rock) and it just didn't make an impression on me, but I also think it might be one of those that got squeezed out by a slightly more "southern rock"-heavy playlist mix.

Which points to some personal blindspots for streaming popularity surprises! For example, with Lynyrd Skynyrd, I feel like I heard "What's Your Name," "Gimme Back My Bullets," "Gimme Three Steps" and "Simple Man" all about equally often --- of course with "Sweet Home Alabama" way up top. I would have expected them to rank pretty similarly in streams, but Spotify's numbers (in millions of streams) suggest that other people maybe grew up with different helpings of these songs:

622: Sweet Home Alabama
260: Free Bird
207: Simple Man
_86: Gimme Three Steps
_60: Tuesday's Gone
_10: What's Your Name
__9: Gimme Back My Bullets

Like, nothing as strikingly out of whack as to fit this thread's premise, but it still feels weird to me. Is "Gimme Three Steps" really eight times more popular than the (very similar) "What's Your Name"? I never would have guessed!

I think "Sweet Home Alabama" and "Free Bird" are the only ones I hear regularly in Canada. (Just checked the playlist of the local station: they played "Sweet Home" early this morning; also "Renegade".) It was interesting to hear all these other Skynyrd songs in regular rotation in the US. I would have thought "That Smell" would be higher, though?

Yup! "That Smell" is at 22 million - I didn't include everything in the list above.

I love What's Your Name and don't like Gimme Three Steps at all, but anecdotally can say that I hear the latter more often.

again drawing on my memories of 90s upstate ny classic rock radio "Gimme Three Steps" & "Sweet Home" were the ones I heard the most in normal rotation. "Freebird" was one where they played it rarely enough to make it feel special, like at midnight or something.

Not super surprising but Heart’s “Barracuda” which peaked at #11 is their top Spotify song, ahead of their two #1s and five other top ten singles

When I lived in a squat full of crust punk types, everyone agreed that "Barracuda" was a badass song, but thought I was a 'pussy' for liking the rest of Heart's oeuvre.

Even Crazy on You? Wtf

Something about the riff in "Barracuda" appeals to people who love Agoraphobic Nosebleed, what can I say.

Omg it has over 2.5x as many plays as "Crazy on You".

A little surprising to see "Alone" with over 2x as many plays as "Crazy on You" but I guess there's been an intense 80s revival.

yeah i was about to say, their 80s/90s comeback-era stuff does better on there than i'd expect! in terms of radio play i think of that period as equivalent to Van Hagar, where their wiki discography shows all these top 20 songs that i couldn't hum for a million dollars. but apparently they still survive!