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

I never truly appreciated "Naive Melody" until I saw "Stop Making Sense."

have probably mentioned this before but "naive melody" wasn't even on my radar until i heard speaking in tongues and there are two noteworthy things about that:
1.it wasn't until ~summer 2002
2.it was a first listen love and immediately my favorite thing by them

My favorite song in 1987 was "And She Was."

It's still in my top 10, whatever that says about me.

At some point, "And She Was" became a go-to for them on nostalgia radio.

Wait no 1986.

"Stay Up Late" still cracks me up.

The big Chicago FM rock station not only played “And She Was” regularly in 1985, but also this remix:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8P6UgB_xOQ

Kind of waiting for the algorithm to throw "Stay Up Late" at a conservative and they decide it's a grooming anthem.

I’m realizing that even though the release year of their first album is in its title, I had a warped internal sense of the band’s timeline, with everything “pushed up” a few years… I felt like they went into the early ’90s. But they were done by ’88!

(Well, "Sax and Violins" was ‘91)

Sometimes what we are talking about on this thread is not a new legacy song, but a biggest hit that is now (often justly) much less persistent, and one good example I noted recently was The Damned's followup to Grimly Fiendish, a cover version of something called Eloise, and not the William Bell song either. #3 in 1986 and the furthest I think they got from their original sound, although they had a history of 60s covers I generally had little use for. I had never heard it before or the 1968 original by someone improbably called Paul Ryan and the Majority, and I'll be just fine if I never hear it again.

Or am I crazy, was this song great and it's now unjustly forgotten? Btw, Phantasmagoria is a tolerable guilty pleasure, love the bass groove on Shadow of Love in particular...

Kind of waiting for the algorithm to throw "Stay Up Late" at a conservative and they decide it's a grooming anthem.

― an icon of a worried-looking, long-haired, bespectacled man (C. Grisso/McCain), Saturday, September 17, 2022 3:04 PM

"songs that weren't a bands biggest hit, but have been algorithm'd to be accidental culture war songs"

xpost to mig: phantasmagoria has long been my favorite damned album. oh well.

And do you dig "Eloise" too?

‘Night Tracks’ was also better than MTV bc they played black music and dance music

― Josefa, Saturday, September 17, 2022 8:20 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

I would love to know some examples of black and dance music that had videos and was ignored by MTV at the time. Can you remember any specific examples?

“In My House” by Mary Jane Girls
“Let the Music Play” by Shannon
“The Medicine Song” by Stephanie Mills

Here Comes the Sun was the Beatles song with the most streams the last time I looked, which is weird and cool.

xp

“Space Cowboy” by Jonzun Crew
“Last Night a DJ Saved My Life” by Indeep
“Rock Box” by Run-DMC

re: MTV’s explicitly racist programming in its early days, watch this segment by Sam Ford (starting around 4:48):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVGRuHIH6b8

"This isn't the Wizard of Oz, there are black people here" LOL

Bowie's 'This fuckin' guy over here' face during this whole thing...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZGiVzIr8Qg

We were listening to that Hit Parade episode in the car yesterday. My wife thought it felt like he was just listing songs that had some longevity after their initial release (and that therefore outperformed their chart position). Which is a mildly interesting topic but not exactly mind-blowing new information.

The chart performance of a retail single - or radio plays thereof - is a pretty narrow metric. Lots of songs are beloved in ways that won't register if chart position is your metric. This has pretty much always been the case, right?

Loads of rock music was intended to be consumed as part of an album, not as a single.

i think referencing chart performance is a perfect way to illustrate just how consistently wrong "the establishment" gets it. payola and illegitimate popularity also play a role, but i digress.

I think it’s a little more interesting than that – like they talk about how “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” did top the charts for a few weeks, but not for nearly as long as “I Will Always Love You”… and yet “Dance” is her big legacy song now. Public taste over time has shifted from what was reflected by the charts.

I agree it’s not a super profound observation, but it’s the foundation for this long thread anyway, lol

(and they also use current radio play as a metric for the Whitney songs, so it’s sort of apples for apples:

Yours Cool, Chris Molanphy: In the last 12 months. I want a dance with somebody who loves me. Was played on the radio more than 70,000 times. 70,000. That’s three times. The Spins of I Will Always Love You, a song that spent a dozen more weeks at number one. Then wanna dance? Did I Want to Dance With Somebody was streamed 111 million times in the last year. Stunning. That’s more than double the streams of I Will Always Love You.)

Re: Boys + Girls, I remember hearing “Slave To Love” almost daily on the radio at the time; surprised it didn’t even crack the Hot 100. Also surprised that Ferry’s only US top 40 hit was “Kiss and Tell” — a decent song, but one I heard far less on the radio than his earlier singles, or the Avalon singles.

― Montgomery Burns' Jazz (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Saturday, September 17, 2022 5:30 PM

The label pushed Bete Noire hard: talk show appearances for Ferry in America and Europe, SNL performance, plenty of print interviews, world tour.

By contrast B+G barely got a push and was an insta-smash coming after Avalon and the degree to which New Pop had copped his moves and look .

This doesn't quite meet the criteria in the thread title, but it's in the ballpark. After the Joan Jett show the other night, my wife — who's a bit younger than me and really only knows Joan Jett songs as oldies — said something about how "Bad Reputation" is her signature song. Which I agree with, but I noted that it's interesting that it was never even a single in the U.S., much less a chart hit. She was shocked. It's so ubiquitous in her mind that she assumed it was her biggest hit. I guess maybe it was having it as the Freaks & Geeks theme song that really propelled it, or maybe it's just sort of been absorbed over time. But in 1980, that song was still way too punk for the charts.

This remains an interesting topic to me, which is why I follow this thread wiht interest.

At the same time, I don't really have any trouble reconciling the disparate impulses reflected in the Hit Parade podcast.

Of COURSE I wanted to hear the catchy songs emanating from my radio in 1981, as fed to me by Casey Kasem. That was a large part of my life at the time.

But it's equally true that in the long run, people will gravitate toward a different mix of songs than the ones that grabbed us immediately.

"Cool It Now" and "Shake Your Love" aged in a different way from how "I Want Candy" and "Once in a Lifetime" aged. The same is true of "Borderline" vs. "La Isla Bonita."

Joan Jett played at the first rock concert I ever saw, in 1982, and somehow I already knew “Bad Reputation” then, even though it wasn’t a single. AOR radio must have been playing it as an album cut.

It's an amazing song, and definitely its presence has grown a LOT over the years. F&G is a good inflection point I think. But I would put I Love Rock n Roll forward as her legacy song -- the only thing I knew by her as a 90s teen, her biggest Spotify track by a mile, and I think it would be in a lot of VH1 docs and things like that. Just a much bigger thing culturally... Wouldn't be surprised if many folks think of her as a one hit wonder off of that.

"Bad Reputation" has popped up in a lot of ads and other Film/TV since F&G, and has always been presented as sort of her signature song: for one thing, it's the song she does in URGH! A Music War, which alongside "I Love..." was probably many fans intro to her post-Runaways.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_S7MlEBKB0k

That’s a good point about URGH! Which probably applies to a lot of other groups… “Unforgettable Urge” be Devo, “Tear It Up” by the Cramps, and “Come Again” by the Au Pairs all seem like signature tunes because of that film.

“Uncontrollable Urge,” jfc

Nat "Devo" Cole mashup!

IIRC, many of the URGH! performances were the bands' set-closers, which would prove that theory.

The podcast episode was worth it for me just to become aware of how much "I Wanna Dance WIth Somebody" had eclipsed "I Will Always Love You", which seemed un-eclipseable in its heyday. As for why "I Wanna" is so much more popular "How Will I Know", the former has a lyric tailored to wedding reception vibes, which is prob true of a few more of these legacy songs. Are wedding dj royalties tabulated somewhere?

Another song that popped into my head was "Just Like Honey" by the Jesus and Mary Chain. None of the singles from Psychocandy reached the top 40 and the album itself only got to #31, although it sold steadily. Their commercial peak was with the next album and the one that followed it. I have no idea if they sold anything in the US or were ever played on MTV.

I learn that it was the NME's second-favourite song of 1985, behind "Never Understand" and just in front of "Running Up That Hill". Who would have thought the NME circa 1985 would still be relevant in 2022. Not me! But it is. I need to learn its secrets.

But since then "Just Like Honey" has been used in Lost in Translation and a bunch of adverts and TV shows. And it always pops up in lists of "songs that have the same rhythm as 'Be My Baby'", e.g.:
https://www.avclub.com/kick-kick-kick-snare-repeat-15-songs-that-borrow-the-1798240471
https://www.billboard.com/music/pop/the-ronettes-be-my-baby-drum-intro-artists-sample-interview-7866041/

I think it helps that unlike "Never Understand" and "You Trip me Up" the feedback is relatively restrained. It can be made into a normal record if you turn down the treble.

JAMC's most popular US single is likely "Head On."

...or "Sometimes Always".

Apparently "Blues From A Gun" hit #1 US Alt Rock, "Head On" at #2, "Far Gone and Out" at #3, and "Sometimes Always" at #4.

I would go so far as to say that JAMC never had anything in the US you could call a "hit" and to be honest I wouldn't even say "Just Like Honey" has risen to any kind of widespread recognition here despite its use in some popular movies. I was in college when Automatic came out, #1 "Alt Rock" it may have been but there was nobody listening to it except me.

True, and a lot of what was big on Alternative Radio then had disappeared from regular rotation and--if you were lucky--relegated to niche programming like Sunday Night "College Music" shows.

Insert "a few years later" after 'rotation'.

tbc I meant in current streaming numbers. "Just Like Honey" and "Head On" are their biggest Spotify "hits."

Surprisingly, "April Skies" is their #2 on Spotify.

jamc a perfect example of a cult band in the u.s. afaict. have still never heard them on the radio or 'out and about' yet they're a pretty common name by now. wonder how much the pixies cover plays into their stateside notoriety.

meaning: i wonder how many u.s. folks came to them via the cover.

Probably quite a few, but there were a lot of teenage hipsters like myself who knew Psychocandy very well. I remember arguments circa 1986 about who the JAMC sounded like most… my friend said the Monkees and I said The Beach Boys

probably a matter of time before By Your Side is the most played Sade tune on Spotify, already surpassed Your Love Is King

which tbh is completely reasonable

No Ordinary Love #3 on Spotify and on YT a surprise #1

such a great band

Looking at at the Velvet Underground top five on Spotify, I think it's all brunch playlist selections.

Yeah, not that they had hits, but I’d expect something like Sweet Jane to be the legacy song rather than Pale Blue Eyes.

Walk on the Wild Side still has about as many streams as the top 4-5 Velvets tracks, though, so no real upending of legacy there.