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

(i could just check but i can't be bothered)

The Lucinda Williams one is weird--I guess that song was used in a movie called Lost Girls? She never had chart hits so streaming numbers are probably overly impacted by use in other media.

Not song, but artist based: Nina Simone has 6.5M monthly listeners, nearly twice what Joni Mitchell and Billie Holiday net, to pick two artists where I'd think there'd be similar listening patterns and esteem, and definately more influence on youtube singers. Maybe it's that the ambitious end of RnB leads so clearly back to Simone these days?

numbers from Spotify btw: Simone 6.5M, Holiday 3.2M, Mitchell 3.8M.

This is wild and makes me feel way less smugly advisory to the world.

Doesn't seem quite as surprising to me as Nina has more big/famous songs, many of which seem to feature every week in one TV show or another

Mitchell probably should invest in a Netflix biopic or something though. I feel like she might be missing out on a lot of young fans, not sure what avenues through which they might discover her.

Ellie Goulding's cover of Joni Mitchell's 'River' (which largely retained the style of the original) got to Number One in the UK in December 2019, so some younger listeners may have latched onto her then.

Doesn't seem obviously true to me that Nina Simone had more big/famous songs than Joni Mitchell. Dr Casino probably otm.

Wait until the kids see the cover of Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter

just looked that up. YIKES.

(i assume that's been much-discussed? i've just never dug into her narrative/body of work as a whole, beyond the couple of albums i know and like.)

There's a long, recent tangent about it and her questionable racial views from that time on one of the ILM Joni threads.

yeah casino otm, i dont think you can overstate how much a streaming biopic (or maybe these days a prestige podcast, too) impacts the visibility & legacy of artists like that with people these days.

ELO has a whole handful of legacy tracks, but Mr Blue Sky seems to have some increased presence over the years, even before the GOTG movies.

I first heard it in a 2006 Dr Who episode.

VW commercial

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-aUBso-XuA

i think i first heard it in the trailer for eternal sunshine of the spotless mind

If it's in the film, then I heard it there, but had my memory wiped at the end of the movie

"Mr. Blue Sky" @ The Movies

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAK1EErTyOc

I had to clip that VW ad out of my post. That campaign reignited interest in loads of songs: "Mr. Roboto"; "Pink Moon", "Da Da Da"...

"Four Horsemen" by Aphrodite's Child has just turned up in a car advert over here.

John Mayer's top track is the 2018 single "New Light", which has more than 40 million spins than his #2 track...the live "Free Fallin'" cover (which itself is 22 million ahead of "Your Body Is A Wonderland").

Huh

In Mexico, the song reached number 1 and was the second best selling-single of 2018.

The biggest song on Spotify for Hall&Oates is "You Make My Dreams" (560 million), far ahead of "Rich Girl" (only 300 million), and it wasn't even one of their #1 hits (only #5).

it’s a long-standing thing apparently, this is from 2010 upthread: q]I'm not sure it's their "legacy song," but Hall and Oates's "You Make My Dreams" is their best seller on iTunes.

As some dude noted on the H&O thread:

it's weird, i never heard that song a lot in the past or thought of it as one of their signature hits, but in the past two years it's picked up some kind of zeitgeist appearing in so much different stuff (that Days of Summer movie and the keyboard cat clip upthread, Step Brothers, episodes of Glee and The Office, etc.).

― Zsa Zsa Gay Bar (jaymc), woensdag 29 december 2010 22:44[/q\

(so much for my formatting skills while in public transport)

This is probably more a matter of me being inattentive in 1992 but I'm impressed that Pale Saints' non-album cover of "Kinky Love" is an order of magnitude more popular on Spotify than every other PS track bar "Sight of You". (Which at least has about 1/2 as many million plays as the former.)

xpost ah thanks, I tried to cmd+F "Oates" here but didn't find that song.
And yeah, I like H&O a lot but I wasn't even familiar with that song, hence the surprise to find it's their biggest song now !

Weird I don't think I even know "You Make My Dreams". Except for "Out of Touch", I can instantly recall every song in the rest of the H&O top 10 on Spotify.

I feel like I hear it all the time somehow (and never intentionally (though it’s a good song))

every time this comes up i'm so shocked to think of ppl not knowing YMMD and loving it with all their hearts, and then i remember it's one i didn't really notice or dive into until like 2007 when i heard it once in a pizza place and became obsessed.

It feels like YmMD and Can’t go for that would be their most generation spanning songs

You Make My Dreams is kind of nondescript, which might account for its popularity. Could be by any number of acts really, unlike Maneater, Private Eyes et al which couldn't be by anyone else.

I think it appeared in The Wedding Singer, the most high profile usage of it I can remember.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2VGpqq2-I8

Those songs are all good. My favs are "Rich Girl" and "Private Eyes."

"Private Eyes" was definitely on my "fav song" playlist as an 8 year old. cos at the time i thought it was about cops

I always assumed part of "You Make My Dreams Come True"'s current appeal, is people realizing that it was clearly the basis for the theme song to Ducktales.

lol

I assume that H&O were reading Faraday’s Chemical History of the Candle when they wrote YMMD

OK, I listened to it and it sounds pretty generic so I'm sure I did hear it and didn't register it. (If it's in 500 Days of Summer, then I have heard it at least twice.)

Idk why this would be more popular than the rest of those singles, which are p much all great, but eh.

really sounds like an Elton John song imo

If it's in 500 Days of Summer

See my YouTube just upthread...

Oh, I did. Weirdly, I had no memory of the song, though, despite having seen the movie twice.

Apparently it’s the official song of the Toronto Maple Leafs (this reporter sounds dubious about it as well):

If you're coming to the Scotiabank Arena to watch the Maple Leafs play, you'd better like Hall and Oates.

For whatever reason, the Leafs game operations people have chosen the "You Make My Dreams Come True" -- the ear-worm hit from the 1980s duo -- as the team's goal song.

And if Friday's exhibition game against Detroit -- a 6-2 Toronto win -- is any indication, you're going to hear that song a lot.

The most-played Royal Trux song on Spotify (by far) is an Aerial P1nk remix of a song from their 2019 reunion album... kind of depressing.

haha as opposed to eras and formats in which royal trux album cuts were broad popular favourites?? cmon of course something like that is going to be top of their chart

I don't think morris is depressed that Twin Infinitives isn't huge among the maga / attempted insurrection fanbase