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

*explicitly

It’s (Fly Me to the Moon) also been in a ton of movies and tv shows, but so have a lot of other Sinatra songs. There’s a post on this thread from 7 years ago that says a Christmas song was Sinatra’s top Spotify track, but that was just seasonal perhaps.

Do we have a thread for the opposite of this: songs that were massive hits in their day, but now barely register in the artist's body of work? Because we need to talk about "Bootylicious"...

(…)

But today, if you go to the Spotify artist page for Destiny's Child and opt to listen to their most popular songs, you will hear 9 other songs before "Bootylicious." And honestly, I think I get why; but I would have a hard time explaining it. So consider this a placeholder post, and a call for your thoughts on the Destiny's Child legacy in the streaming age!

Speaking of Beyonce-- "Halo" looks like her most streamed song? 1.13 billion

Beyonce in general is one of those artists where the Spotify numbers can be confusing, because many of their career-defining hits belong more to the tail end of the CD era, and then the iTunes download purchase era. Almost everything in Wikipedia's list of the top 100 songs on Spotify (current minimum: 1.326 billion) came out in 2012 or later. I was thinking about this with Gaga's numbers a while back - trying to guess her biggest Spotify songs would probably stump the general public completely.

This chronology, however, doesn't give us any purchase on "Halo," released as a 2009 single from a 2008 album. It's come up a couple times in this thread... Yes, I still hear it out in the world frequently, but I also would never have put it anywhere close to the billion-streamer mark. Wow. For perspective, "Single Ladies," inescapable crossover smash lead single from Sasha Fierce, sits at "only" 458 million. But I think what may be going on is that it actually is one of her biggest hits. Its (excellent) US performance gave me no sense of how much of an international juggernaut it was. Sez Wiki:

"Halo" topped the singles charts of Brazil, Norway, and Slovakia, and reached the top five on the singles chart of Australia, Germany, Ireland, Italy, New Zealand, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States. It has received over ten certifications, including an elevenfold-platinum certification from Australia, a triple-platinum from the United Kingdom, and a double-platinum from Spain and the US.

The "opposite" thing is definitely a fun topic, and would probably merit its own thread, if there's not a good one to revive --- might get confusing if we start bringing up lots of those in parallel.

the king of that thread would have to be Candle in the Wind with the Diana lyrics

I was thinking about how many of these songs have second lives because of prominent placement in kids movies. (Obviously "Hallelujah" in Shrek is one) One of the Despicable Me movies even had an '80s villain who was always accompanied by "Bad" or "Take On Me" or something.

beyonce's self-titled and lemonade were also streaming exclusives on other platforms for a while

"bootylicious" was a bit of an anomaly for destiny's child chart-wise. besides "say my name" all of dc's singles post-"bills bills bills" had scaled the charts with limited/maxi-only retail release or none whatsoever. "bootylicious" on the other hand was not only released to retail as a standard cd single, but that single was also deep-discounted to 49 cents in its first week in what was widely understood in the industry to be columbia's (successful) attempt to block mariah carey's last-ditch effort at reaching #1 on the hot 100 with glitter lead single "loverboy", which included the same rock-bottom sale pricing tactic. "loverboy" had been struggling due to a very lackluster reception at radio.

if "bootylicious" had been released/promoted in a more standard way, it probably would have 'just' been a solid top 10 hit. that's not to diminish its stature as a song or phenom! it was indeed well known and well liked, and plenty of ppl smiled and chuckled at the dictionary addition. but it was not quite on the same tier as "independent women" or "say my name" or arguably even "survivor"

Thanks for the additional context dyl, that's really good info! I think your materialist analysis is probably closer to the truth than my half-baked theories about how the trajectory of pop culture has left "Bootylicious" looking quaint and coy, when it was supposed to be brash and in-your-face.

I remember the "Lovergirl" shenanigans; didn't know "Bootylicious" got similar treatment.

Also: "Survivor" and "Independent Women" remain as obnoxious as ever while "Bootylicious" remains as buoyant as ever.

please don’t mention “Survivor" and "Independent Women" in the same breath like that. one is not like the other.

what if both are like the other?

no ifs buts or maybes about it

"Survivor" sounded massive and thrilling last week when it came on in my car while an Amtrak was running in the same direction as me on tracks parallel to the road and the flow of traffic was keeping pace exactly with the train.

... and at absolutely no other time, ever

but that's a nice image/moment! i just never vibed with that song. maybe i was too big a fan of the show.

You know I'm not going to diss you on the internet but Survivor was a phenomenon and that opening synth line is classic

Independent Woman the stronger jam though, much funkier and should be their legacy tune

Bootylicious got its title into the OED tho.

("Quaint and coy" otm then maybe?)

just noticed another addition to the billion club: "back in black"

"Highway to Hell" and "Thunderstruck" closing in as well

Is AC/DC's biggest hit the one that charted highest on average across the main territories where the band was popular (You Shook Me All Night Long), or based on sales certifications (maybe Back in Black), or average both of those concepts (maybe Highway to Hell or Thunderstruck)? I believe I have never heard of their top charting US single, something called Moneytalks, the followup to Thunderstruck; appropriately, this track is not in their top 10 plays.

I wonder why You Shook Me has drifted to the bottom of the pack compared to the other three songs, is it too pop metal? Anyway Back in Black is a good legacy song, it seems like the "ultimate" hard rock song to me, a kind of distillation of the rhythmic crunch, bizarre caterwauling and startlingly disjointed yet satisfying riff-cobbling of Zeppelin with the lyrical focus more on partying than the hippie rabbit holes beloved by Plant. Highway to Hell is a little more by-the-numbers, it's a decent glam-rock chorus appended to a nice signature AC/DC quadrilateral diagram riff. Thunderstruck is a bit funny, it's like a geezer trying to use Van Halen style shredding as the basis for a riff rather than a solo, and not being able to play it fast enough anyway.

AC/DC's being more popular now than Zeppelin or GnR seems as unlikely to me as Queen's ascension. Although I see that currently Elton is doing monthly numbers far in excess of Queen, perhaps his top songs will gradually catch up, or it's a temporary thing caused by whatever "Cold Heart PNAU Remix" is. I tried to listen to it and started laughing when Dua interpolated Rocket Man. It currently has more plays than any of Elton's legacy hits...

Money Talks is an earworm for sure but it's not that representative as an AC/DC song

ac/dc has always been wildly popular, i'm not surprised that they're outpacing zep or gnr in terms of monthly listeners. i think their relative lack of variation helps in this regard - if you're in the mood for some ac/dc, you can just throw on that "this is: ac/dc" playlist and get exactly what you're expecting

Yeah I'm not surprised at all, Zep and GnR were very tied to a specific scene/time period, AC/DC (like the Ramones, Motörhead) always sounded more timeless.

GnR (at 21.9 million) is only 1.2 million monthly listeners behind AC/DC. It's not a huge difference.

Sure but that includes a large cohort of legacy fans - I think the observation is that AC/DC is attracting more young listeners than GnR.

Oh, I know Moneytalks, I just checked. Yes it's an earworm that I used to hear every week when I worked in warehouses overnight putting myself through college. It seems uncharacteristic of the band that the riff is so generic and subservient to the vocal hook.

Good points about AC/DC winning out due to being more samey and timeless. But this seems the opposite of why Queen won out over other 20th century pop artists, they are stylistically diverse and unrepresentative of the mega-genre "20th century pop". So much for my trying to come up with grand theories I guess.

It's hard to really draw conclusions from streaming stats - those are largely driven by the money that artists/labels are willing to pump into the platforms, it's hard to get a good feeling how many of these streams actually represent listeners preferences - it might just be the case that the AC/DC estate is paying Spotify/Google/Apple a lot more to push its songs into listeners playlists than GnR's management.

In a sense that's the modern way to secure your legacy - instead of spending your efforts on tours for your old fans, spend it on pulling the next generation on board: produce a biopic, get on soundtrack of a movie with a young audience, do a remix with a current artist, hand over cash to Spotify/Apple, etc. Elton John clearly has been better at that game than Axl Rose or Robert Plant.

the three cities with the largest population of ac/dc spotify listeners: mexico city, sao paulo, and santiago

Achilles Last Stand (Taylor's Version) feat. Robert Plant and Jack Harlow

That's funny. Looks like those megacities are also doing the biggest numbers for GnR, Twisted Sister, Bon Jovi, Zep, Pink Floyd, etc.

Some of that is how cities are spatially coded, at least according to Glenn three years ago: but also our third-party geocoding treats Mexico City as one giant single place, where it breaks NYC up into boroughs, for example.

Spotify - anyone heard of it?

Afroman's follow up to "Because I Got High" named "Crazy Rap" (not a hit at all in the US or much of anywhere but admittedly it did hit #10 on the UK charts) has 212M streams on Spotify as compared to 132M for "Because I Got High". Incidentally, reviewing his discography on Wikipedia I see he has released 16 full length studio albums plus 13 mixtapes.

crazy rap aka colt 45 is definitely a cult hit (no pun intended)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPmvyV2v_HY

the Charlie's Angels reference in "Independent Women" might have hurt its long term appeal

yeah that was always a bit unnecessary

had no idea Afroman had a another hit, but am enjoying the aptly titled Crazy Rap now

charming lyrics

Enola Gay has about twice the streams of If You Leave, which surprises me, and more than Souvenir, Joan of Arc and Maid of Orleans combined as well.

They didn't really have any 'hits' by most (if not all) metrics, but I find it funny that Be Your Own Pet's biggest Spotify song by a large margin is "Becky", which their US label purposely cut from their second album for being "too violent".

Was it on this borad or elsewhere where there was a funny discussion yesterday of OMD’s early sartorial changes?

Found it: Joy Division: Classic Or Dud?

I guess the popularity of Frozen and 4 Minutes is a shock, but more so; how far down the list Holiday and Into The Groove are.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FVLTlvAVIAAAoxK?format=jpg

at least Frozen is good

Hung Up?

What's the story with Material Girl being #1? I loved it when I was a kid but it didn't feel like top-tier canon as I grew up.

“4 Minutes” is surprisingly high, I agree, but “Frozen”’s popularity shouldn’t come as a shock at all. It has been revived on TikTok in recent months by way of a sort-of-trap remix by producer Sickick, and this had led to a whole cottage industry brazenly overseen by Madonna herself. for one, it gave her an opportunity to jump on the afropop train - she hired Fireboy DML for one of the remixes of the remix:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxKRdL1N9os

(many people in Nigeria are *not at all* happy about the imagery here)

more here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frozen_(Madonna_song)#Sickick_remixes

who would have predicted Madonna and Prince having fewer monthly listeners than Kate Bush?

Hung Up?

too low!