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

Noticed a few funny artist listings in Spotify where the top "Popular" song for a vocal artist is a song where they are basically not on the song... Nico's top song is Sunday Morning, which I suppose has become algorithmically useful for mellow morning-themed playlists. Of course there's an alternate universe where Lou let her sing it... Also, Billy Bragg's top song is California Stars, which is a Wilco song, he doesn't sing on it I think (the backing vox don't sound like him to me anyway).

Any others you've seen?

Nico's top 10 is basically the first VU album and two Chelsea Morning songs

It totally makes sense! I was just surprised that it wasn't Femme Fatale or These Days. Also, nice freudian slip, Nico could have done a nice cover of Chelsea Morning (in the style of the Fairport version, right?)

You can't expect someone to be paid to correct little random metadata things like that very consistently. Possibly what should happen would be to designate some super users to submit metadata fixes about things that annoy them in return for a free account or boosting the reach of their profile/playlists. I get the impression the two big metadata problems are the "fake" artists using the same name as existing artists, and algorithmic playlists that have 2 copies of the same song popping up because the 2 identical versions were on two popular releases.

A lot more artists are going to pull their music from Spotify when they find out how racist German models are getting shafted on metadata

gang starr thread made me look them up. "full clip" is number one with 25 million more than work. i know that it was the title of their greatest hits collection, but it never charted, even on the rap songs. i wouldn't have expected it to be that much more popular than "work" or "mass appeal" or "you know my steez"

*rap songs chart

seems like Soliloquy would be up there, too

Gang Starr is an interesting one. They never had a big hit--their only two singles that made the US pop charts were "Mass Appeal" and "You Know My Steez" but neither hit top 40. Their only #1 rap single was "Take It Personal." But they have a bunch of iconic singles: "DWYCK" "Above the Clouds" "Work" "Just to Get a Rep" "Ex Girl to the Next Girl" "Step in the Arena." I'm not sure why "Full Clip" is so far ahead of the others.

it really might be a result of it being the first rack on the best of.

first track, after the little intro

hmm yeah, looks like it also leads off the "this is gang starr" playlist too. apple music lists a few songs {"above the cloudz," "work," "you know my steez") as more popular, so this is probably just a vagary of spotify's playlists

Not quite top of the tree (and Heart of Glass suffers on Spotify by having its plays spread across various versions) but Blondie's One Way or Another, not even a UK single at the time and only #24 in the US charts, is second only to Call Me on individual streams. Actually Call Me being above Atomic and Rapture is a surprise to me too.

One Way... has been in a bunch of commercials and movies/TV shows, very likely the most licensed Blondie song.

Also helped by being covered by One Direction.

One Way One Direction One Thread

Inspired by a real life stalker, iirc.

i first heard "one way or another" in the rugrats movie

If you'd asked me back in the '80s what Blondie's legacy song would be I'd have thought "The Tide Is High." Felt like that was everywhere.

Or "Rapture"

81 baby here and the Blondie songs I remember hearing out and about most often throughout my life are "Heart of Glass" and "One Way or Another." I always just assumed those were their biggest hits.

I was a high school sophomore/junior in 81 LOL

Before I got my license, I rode the bus home. The driver had the local AM station on. Quite literally, "Rapture" came on every afternoon.

Not sure it has lasted like the others, though.

One problem is people have heard other rapping since then.

(I still love "Rapture" tbh)

Any song from 1980 by an all white band that shouts out Fab 5 Freddy and Grandmaster Flash is a hit to me.

They were very much into the idea of bringing "white" and "black" music together. Debbie's first solo album, "KooKoo," was produced and co-written by Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards.

Yep. I knew they were cool when Chuck D gave them props in his book.

When Debbie hosted SNL in '81, she insisted on bringing the Funky Four Plus One as the secondary musical guest, one of the first times a Hip Hop group appeared on national television.

looking at the B52s--not too surprising, but odd that "Deadbeat Club" isn't even in their top 10.

"Topaz" and "Give Me Back My Man" above it!

Can't be too upset about that, honestly.☺

Austin, I'm also from 81 and have the same Blondie radio perception as you, with "Call Me" and "The Tide Is High" one tier below. "Rapture" I think I saw in some MTV video countdown, but it wasn't a frequent radio item. "Atomic" basically didn't exist.

I'll add that I'm from the USA --- I think this is a band where their lineups of US/non-US hits look pretty different.

The combined effects of multinational streaming services & the biopic on Queen's profile in the US is still pretty startling to me. To my students (I teach music history at a small liberal arts school) they're almost like the Beatles. They can barely comprehend that at no point while Freddie Mercury was still alive - at no point before 2018, really - was Queen the biggest band in America.

with "Call Me" and "The Tide Is High" one tier below.

Yup, exactly!

Like any good hiphop DJ in the late 90s, I had a copy of Autoamerican just for "Rapture." I didn't even know that was a single until I saw the video on MTV2 a couple years later.

"Atomic" wasn't that big of a hit in the states, as ETTB mostly sold here off the continued momentum of "Heart of Glass". "Call Me" blowing up set the stage for the Autoamerican hits.

Although if wiki is to be believed, "Atomic" was released as a single _after_ "Call Me"...and even then, only hit #39.

That's true. "Call Me" charted three months before "Atomic" yet was still on the charts after "Atomic" came and went. Altogether "Call Me" was on the charts for over six months.

The combined effects of multinational streaming services & the biopic on Queen's profile in the US is still pretty startling to me. To my students (I teach music history at a small liberal arts school) they're almost like the Beatles. They can barely comprehend that at no point while Freddie Mercury was still alive - at no point before 2018, really - was Queen the biggest band in America.

― thewufs, Tuesday, May 3, 2022

I've noticed it too. They also know Elton John quite well. The biopics helped both artists; Elton got his first US top ten since 1997 a couple months ago.

Maybe not the biggest ever, but "Bohemian Rhapsody" was inescapable in the mid- to late 70s, several other early songs ("You're My Best Friend," "Somebody to Love") were massive radio hits, and they were pretty much juggernauts from News of the World through The Game. I still remember buying Hot Space when it came out and thought they'd lost their damn minds, or at least dramatically misread the room.

I'd forgotten that "Bohemian Rhapsody" was rereleased and went to #2 in 1992 in the wake of Freddie's death and Wayne's World.

I'm a 1982 baby so my perceptions may be off, but charts and sales figures tell me that in the States Queen were never on the level of say, Led Zeppelin in 1975 or the Eagles/Fleetwood Mac in 1977. Obviously they were on that level, or beyond it, in other parts of the world.

It's interesting Blondie just came up, because that's a band that had a similar level of success in 1980-81 - 3 number one hits in that time span to the 2 that Queen had.

This is of course completely subjective, but where I lived in the 70s (Denver, Colorado), you'd be much, much more likely to hear Queen on the radio, even the two AOR stations we had in town, than you were to hear Led Zeppelin. Fleetwood Mac and Eagles I'll grant you, although through the fog of time I can much more easily associate the late 70s with Queen than I can with the Eagles. YMMV, obviously.

Well I can at least remember the Wayne's World Queen resurgence in 1992. That year's Summer Olympics fed into it, too - Freddie and Montserrat Caballe's "Barcelona," "We Will Rock You" soundtracking some of the courage, etc. Still didn't put them anywhere near their current level of ubiquity.

*some of the coverage

"We Will Rock You" is a good soundtrack for courage.

Although clearly a band on the rise, Queen managed only one #1 album stateside, and diminishing sales thereafter. Hearing "I Want It All" on AOR in 1989 was a shock to me; the comeback was beginning.

I remember some controversy in '92 about school choirs wanting to perform "We Are The Champions" at graduations and school boards striking them down because homophobia/AIDS.

I'd forgotten that "Bohemian Rhapsody" was rereleased and went to #2 in 1992 in the wake of Freddie's death and Wayne's World.

― Josefa, Tuesday, May 3, 2022 12:56 PM

i had too until you mentioned it lol. pretty sure seeing it in wayne's world wasn't my first time hearing it either. i don't even like queen that much and yet i still like it. it seems like a great song that's always existed and they were just the first ones to play it right. like it's the type of thing that inspired elvis or something.

something else i remember about my experience with the 92 revival vs the current state: it didn't really inspire anybody my age to go out and buy queen albums. couple of friends had the greatest hits borrowed from older family members, but no one i knew was looking to actually buy it for themselves because it wasn't *that* cool or whatever. whereas now, kids of all ages seem to know/like at least a couple queen songs and they really embrace the band, especially freddie mercury and his charming grandiosity. it seems like younger generations "get" the band in ways that folks like myself never really did until later in life.

wufs otm basically. their rise in popularity over the past decade has been really fascinating to watch. seems like they're more popular than ever — or at least in my lifetime.

xp That's what I meant about Hot Space. After their biggest chart success, they took a turn into . . . disco? In 1982?

school boards striking them down because homophobia/AIDS.

― Precious, Grace, Hill & Beard LTD. (C. Grisso/McCain), Tuesday, May 3, 2022 1:50 PM

was told not to do "we will rock you" by some upper classmen and their parents at a high school basketball game in 1994 because "it's f@gg0+ music." am so sorry for the language there, but just needing to make the point. (not very nice things about sexuality, basically)

their status as an lgbtq-friendly band wasn't an issue for me —queen just wasn't really my kind of music— but i know for certain that's why a lot of my peers at the time wouldn't take them seriously.

"We are the Champions" was understood much more straightforwardly as a gay anthem.