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

^^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

“Psycho Killer” was a sizeable hit (#11) in the Netherlands in 1978, as part of the first wave of new wave/punk hits over here. It also reached the Belgian top 20.
It was a bigger hit than “Once In A Lifetime” in fact. They wouldn’t surpass it until the live version of “Slippery People” went top 10 in 1985 and they became certified hitmakers for the duration of one year.

there are songs that are chart hits but there are also songs that obviously have huge cultural cache. "psycho killer" may not have been a chart hit but it's not exactly weird that it's the talking heads' biggest streaming song. seems like this thread should be focused on songs that don't really fit into either of those categories, or at least that it's not obvious why the song has cultural cache.

I don't know. It fits that thread premise. Didn't we start off talking about stuff like Don't Stop Believin'?

fair enough

I think in the US it was the Stop Making Sense film that solidified several of those Talking Heads songs as de facto hits, even though they weren't initially. A live version of "Once in a Lifetime" was released as a single the year the film came out. "Psycho Killer" was memorable as the first song of the film.

Slightly surprised that "The Road to Nowhere" wasn't a big chart hit since I remember hearing it on the radio a lot. That was the first year I had a drivers license, so the lyrics resonated. I must have been listening to the "Mainstream Rock" stations (for probably the last time).

My AOR station in Miami played "Road to Nowhere," "And She Was," and "Wild Wild Life" well into the early '90s.

That's probably the station I was listening to, since I was living in that area in '85 and in the early '90s

!!!

WSHE 103.5 it woulda been

Yes, and/or WCKO 102.7, aka K-102

No, it must have been WSHE, as Wikipedia says K-102 switched over to an adult contemporary format in March 1985, about six months before "Road to Nowhere" came out.

“Road To Nowhere” was their biggest across the board hit, coming out as it did at their commercial peak, right after Stop Making Sense. It was a top 10 or 20 hit in many countries simultaneously, whereas their other hits were more scattershot in that respect. But no, not in the US. It just missed the Billboard Hot 100.

Your annual reminder that the world is a whole lot bigger than just the US and that those streaming numbers you see on Spotify et al cover the whole world, and not just the country you happen to be in.

I'm not sure "This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)" would be anywhere near the iconic song it is without the Stop Making Sense version.

I still remember seeing them on SNL in 1979. They seemed kind of menacing. They later became quirky.

I noticed a lot of MLB players using it as walk up music which is kinda lol considering the first line

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)

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

― Nature's promise vs. Simple truth (bernard snowy), Monday, October 18, 2021 9:00 PM (four months ago)

I know that “Get Down On It” was a very big hit for Kool & The Gang (deservedly so, it’s one of their best), but I would have never guessed that it’s level-pegging with “Celebration” as their most-streamed song on Spotify, miles ahead of all their other hits. (Get Down has 221.5M, Celeb has 216.6M, "Jungle Boogie" has 74.4M)

Celebration is one of those ubiquitous party/wedding type songs isn't it (and used in countless TV shows) so doesn't seem that surprising (to me anyway)

I think that’s what breastcrawl’s saying – the surprise was at Get Down On It being as highly streamed

that was of course what I’m saying, yes. it’s also what I wrote.

Lol, completely misread your post.

Looking at Tunefind, Get Down On It has certainly enjoyed it's fair share of tv & movie appearances too

The real travesty is that "Too Hot" is not anywhere in the top 10.

I know he's not really a singles artist, but Jack Johnson's most streamed song by far is "Better Together", the fourth single and fourth biggest hit from his 2005 album "In Between Dreams", and his second most streamed song (also by a big margin over #3) is "Banana Pancakes", a non-single from the same album.

#1 on this list I've just arbitrarily googled xp:

https://returnofrock.com/kool-the-gang-songs-ranked/