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

Kenny G and GB both compilations ofc.

I only count Three Days Grace, Theory of a Deadman, and Nickelback as Canadian?

So, these are all of the 20th-century songs with a billion streams:

1. Queen, "Bohemian Rhapsody" 1.59B
2. Oasis, "Wonderwall" 1.22B
3. Queen, "Don't Stop Now" 1.13B
4. Journey, "Don't Stop Believin'" 1.12B
5. Queen, "Another One Bites the Dust" 1.09B
6. Nirvana, "Smells Like Teen Spirit" 1.06B
7. Toto, "Africa" 1.06B

― jaymc, Saturday, September 4, 2021 5:34 PM (one month ago) bookmarkflaglink

Congratulations to The Police, who I see have just joined this club

I know it's demographics but still kind of wild that something like Don't Start Now, which came out only last year, has already accumulated enough streams to put it ahead of all of those 20th century 'classics'.

"Under Pressure" should be in the billions club soon. It's at 991 million now.

Take On Me is pretty close too. 973 million. If you add the 29 million for the acoustic version then they’ve already made it

"Billie Jean" at 975 million as of this writing

Don’t Let Me Down being The Beatles’ biggest song on YouTube is pretty astounding. Has it been in a bunch of movies or something?? It was only a B-side originally.

That is weird. I suppose it’s one of the few with an actual “video” to go with it, but still.

Yeah very weird. They have plenty with a video.

Jimmy Buffett's duet w/Alan Jackson, "It's Five-O-Clock Somewhere", has 50+ million more spins on Spotify than "Margaritaville".

truly insane.

tho probably more of a streaming artifact than an indication of it becoming his legacy song, in this case... like I assume all the boomers who love hearing "Margaritaville" get their kicks by hearing it five times a day on the radio, while "Five O' Clock Somewhere" came out recently enough for it to be popular with like, the new-country parents of Spotify-using zoomers or w/e. could also be in a lot of "time to party" and "end of the day" playlists...

5 o’clock has been played consisently on Country Radio since it came out. Its numbers don’t surprise me. Though i would have figured Mville’s numbers to be higher than 90 some million.

"Margaritaville" appears to be most popular on iTunes, although it's hard to find actual numbers.

possibly everyone who loves it has the LP, cassette, or CD?

Or the ppl who loved it in 1984 are - gasp - starting to get a little tired of it and don't need to hear it frequently?

You can only live so long on spongecake alone

Run-DMC's third highest chart hit, "It's Tricky" is their big streamer...

I think their big pop hit ("Walk This Way") has kind of dulled in acclaim over the years, and the historical hip-hop head pick ("It's Like That") isn't at that critical mass yet, so I guess "It's Tricky" ultimately splits the difference and plays to both crowds pretty well

Excuse me, FOURTH highest chart hit!

Seem to recall "It's Tricky" is big Jock Jam/Sporting Events song.

the rise of rappers who stylistically rap off the beat has made listeners appreciate anew that it is indeed tricky to rock a rhyme that’s right on time

If there’s any act who didn’t deserve their legacy track to be a cover, it’s them.

also that song is fckn awesome

"Helplessly Hoping" is the top CSN song on Spotify at 92 million streams. Even if you include CSNY songs only "Teach Your Children" beats it, at 98 million. HH was used in an Alex Garland movie, I guess.

^^Good One! Definitely never heard it on Classic Rock radio.

Feel like “It’s Tricky” started its rise in the late 90s/early 00s, it appeared on a bunch of soundtracks around them

Wasn't it in used prominently in that shitty Todd Phillips road trip movie?

I remember from the ad for the video game SSX Tricky, you can guess why it was used

"Helplessly Hoping" does make sense for a soundtrack-based boost - it feels VERY much like a closing-credits song of the last 20 years, for almost any kind of movie that's not a comedy or a brutal action thriller. Apparently also used on Grey's Anatomy, in addition to Annihilation. Feels like something contemporary young people might actually make or listen to, possibly at coffee shops, while wearing old-man hats. (Not intended as a put-down to the song.)

CSNY And Sons

I remember from the ad for the video game SSX Tricky, you can guess why it was used

― Vinnie, Monday, November 15, 2021 7:29 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

yeah that game was massively popular in my neck of the woods and it definitely seemed to have this attitude of "we licensed this song so we're gonna play it EVERYWHERE"

I do wonder how many bands' top streamer is something from one of the Tony Hawk soundtracks. several people I went to school with who knew of the Ramones say they heard 'em first on Tony Hawk 3

I would have to assume that almost all of the lesser-known bands featured in any of the TH games get almost all their streams from playlists assembled specifically to duplicate those soundtracks. Those games were massive.

yeah i was right --- generally there are huge huge differences for many bands between the TH song and their next-biggest song. to be fair, as far as this thread is concerned, it's not so surprising that fairly obscure punk and skater bands would benefit enormously from being in this super-massive game. so for example The Ernies normally top out at around 40K streams on Spotify, as with their song "Polarized." but "Here and Now" is way up at 4 million, a 100x Tony Hawk multiplier!

however, for thread purposes, this rule generally does not apply to artists that were getting any kind of radio play. ultra-massive Papa Roach and somewhat widely-known Suicidal Tendencies alike see no meaningful Tony Hawk imbalance in their numbers. Primus's #1 song is indeed "Jerry Was A Race Car Driver," but that got airplay on radio and MTV years before the game.

the big discovery for me in this is Goldfinger, who got a fair amount of alt-rock airplay in 1996, as a SoCal pop-punk act that I assume got signed in the wake of Green Day. i would have guessed their #1 Spotify song would be "Here in Your Bedroom," which has a respectable 16 million streams. but it's swamped first by their dumb cover of "99 Red Balloons" at 75 million. well, that was used in a multitude of soundtracks around 2000, when pop-punk was even more prominent on the airwaves. by itself it'd be a good answer for this thread. but that in turn is beaten by their Tony Hawk song, "Superman," at 95 million. damn, good job Goldfinger! that song was also used in Rock Band, but I think that might actually be a symptom of its Hawk exposure.

Damn, now I want to obtain several million dollars, go to film school, and miraculously obtain myriad industry connections just so that I can write, direct, and produce a brutal action thriller. Of which the end credits are set to "Helplessly Hoping."

“superman” by goldfinger isn’t just a tony hawk song it is the tony hawk song.

i think it’s the first song that plays in the first game’s first stage

would be really fun to see a deep dive article on how having a song in an early stage of a Tony Hawk game legitimately changed a band's career. virtually all the comments on the YouTube video of "Superman" are about THPS

I'm not sure if it was even a single, but Lagwagon's "May 16" was used in TH and has 18 million streams on Spotify

wait IIRC the songs in THPS were randomized every time you opened up a level, am i wrong about that?

which one? I think that's true of 3 but my vague memory is that the first time through it does play certain songs. or at least they go in a certain order but you can set it to random. dunno about the others

i only ever played 1 and 2... i feel like if it was the same song every time i played the same level trying to beat the time or whatever, it woulda got reeeeal old. but this is twenty years ago now.

The THPS series played a sizable part in exposing me to rap beyond what was on the radio. Opened the door to finding a lot of great music

Solsbury Hill has twice the streams of Sledgehammer

Justice!

There's a lot of talk of "This Must Be the Place" upthread, but Talking Heads biggest streaming song by far is "Psycho Killer", which equally fits the theme of the thread since it also wasn't a hit. (Granted, "This Must Be the Place" is #2).

Interestingly (at least to me), their biggest hit in the US was "Burning Down the House", which never was a hit in the UK and their biggest hit in the UK was "Road to Nowhere" which never was a hit in the US. Those are their #4 and #5 most streamed songs, also behind "Once in a Lifetime"

Back in the 80s it felt like "Once in a Lifetime" was their legacy hit, even though BDTH was a bigger hit. MTV played the video quite a bit even years after it came out.

"Road to Nowhere" spent eight weeks on the Mainstream Rock airplay chart, peaking at 25 (at a time when that chart meant more than it does today) but yeah, not Hot 100. That one, "Burning Down...", and "Psycho Killer" were the only songs of theirs I knew growing up.

https://www.billboard.com/artist/talking-heads/chart-history/mrt/

Here's a Spotify stat that surprised me recently. James Brown's most popular song by far, according to Spotify, is "Get Up Offa That Thing", which is not something I would have expected. I would have guessed "I Feel Good", "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag", or "Sex Machine" to have led the pack. In fact, "I Feel Good" is surprisingly low for what I would have expected to be the mainstream popular choice for James Brown.

James Brown's music is split between two accounts: a 'solo' page and one for "James Brown & The Famous Flames", where "I Got You (I Feel Good)" is his overall biggest track.

That said, his numbers are probably extra-weird because of that catalogue split and also the shear # of different versions of songs and comps.

Haruomi Hosono's three most popular things now are: the collaborative album Pacific, the Muji BGM tape, and "Sports Man". The first two he doesn't even remember making, the third was hardly a hit at the time