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

I saw the Prodigy last night and was surprised to find out that the biggest reaction wasn't for "Breathe" or "Firestarter" or "Poison", but for "Smack My Bitch Up." I checked on iTunes and it's their biggest selling track! Sometime in the last 10 years it became their legacy track. How? Why? What other bands is this true?

so, yeah. Please cross-reference with iTunes for this.

1. Prodigy - "Smack My Bitch Up"

great thread idea, i definitely have sat around and figured this out w/ a few bands, will have to look some up when i get home tonight

would be interesting to cross-reference this with licensing

like maybe in the long run that impacts sales more than radio/video play

my guess is that there are a large number of people out there who did not know the band Prodigy but knew there was a song called "Smack My Bitch Up"

i always thought smack my bitch was the big prodigy song!!

it wouldn't have sold as well as nearly half their other 90s songs esp. the two #1s

notoriety was helped by banned video, no?

2. Elton John - "Tiny Dancer"
^^ someone can doublecheck this and refute it if necessary since i'm looking at a cached browser page of his top iTunes songs, but that's a very prominent example of a song that movie licensing turned into a much bigger part of the artist's legacy than it had been before

wouldn't be surprised if 'Wonderwall' was biggest-selling Oasis song online (was probably their biggest hit in the US if not in the UK tho)

Don't have iTunes right here, but just guessing on a few...

Peter Gabriel - In Your Eyes (wasn't even a single from So)
Queen - Bohemian Rhapsody
Lou Reed - Perfect Day

Bohemian Rhapsody was always Queen's biggest hit surely

"Bohemian Rhapsody" benefitted from the 90s re-release and Wayne's World, but it was always one of their biggest hits, I gotta veto that. xpost

Perfect Day? It must still be "Walk on the Wild Side"

Journey's only two top 5 songs in the US were "Open Arms" and "Who's Crying Now."

"Don't Stop Believing," meanwhile, is the biggest-selling catalogue track in iTunes history.

no way was bohemian rhapsody a bigger hit than "another one bites the dust" or "crazy little thing called love"

What about "Son of a Preacher Man" by Dusty Springfield?

obv I don't know the UK chart stuff much, but was that actually her biggest hit?

ooh good call, put a 3 on that. xpost re journey

"Bohemian Rhapsody" held a sales record in the UK for almost a decade and was Queen's first US top 10. I would say songs that establish a band on that level count as one of their biggest hits whether there are higher charting songs or not.

Bohemian Rhapsody was always Queen's biggest hit surely

Not in the U.S., where No. 1 hits "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" (!) and "Another One Bites The Dust" both charted higher. (So did "We Are The Champions," at first, but then "Rhapsody" came back in 1992 and hit No. 2 off of Wayne's World; it had only hit No. 9 on its original release.)

The Romantics' legacy song is almost certainly "What I Like About You" (big jock-rock hit, right?), though in their lifetime "Talking In Your Sleep" charted way higher (No. 3, compared to No. 49.)

what about "Sweet Caroline" by Neil Diamond....again, i'm a lil ignorant of his history but wiki says "Song Sung Blue" was a bigger chart hit

yeah that's really interesting, i don't think i've ever even heard "Talking In Your Sleep" but I've heard "Like" a million times. xpost

this icon should be next to all these songs in the iTunes store: http://www.soulstrut.com/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/badassbuddy_com-slowburner.gif

I think I've heard those 2 about an equal # of times--but I guess "Like" is more of a party song.

what about "Sweet Caroline" by Neil Diamond....again, i'm a lil ignorant of his history but wiki says "Song Sung Blue" was a bigger chart hit

Yeah, I think "Sweet Caroline" and "Cherry Cherry" are both more famous today than "Song Sung Blue" or "Cracklin' Rosie" -- but they were all in the top 5.

Freebird? That's certainly Skynyrd's legacy song, but probably not their biggest iTunes seller (Sweet Home Alabama?).

(Meant to add "Song Sung Blue" and "Cracklin' Rosie" were his only two solo #1s.)

oh wow here's the ultimate one:

according to wiki, "Dancing With Myself" by Billy Idol only reached 102 on the U.S. charts and FAILED to chart in the U.K.

usually a soundtrack or placement in a television show will raise a song out of the bands "hits" into a totally different demographic

Peter Gabriel - In Your Eyes (wasn't even a single from So)

This was released as a single off of the "Say Anything" soundtrack and received massive amounts of radio play.

oh wow here's the ultimate one:

according to wiki, "Dancing With Myself" by Billy Idol only reached 102 on the U.S. charts and FAILED to chart in the U.K.

― stank pony (M@tt He1ges0n), Friday, March 27, 2009 1:27 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah but "Rebel Yell" and "White Wedding" are both bigger iTunes sellers

i mean this could very easily turn into "early hits that established a band's identity but didn't chart as high as later singles when they were more famous" list and get away from the original idea

yeah that's true

i was more just shocked that that hadn't even charted at the time, being how catchy it was and all

"Should I Stay or Should I Go?"

Peter Gabriel - In Your Eyes (wasn't even a single from So)

...

This was released as a single off of the "Say Anything" soundtrack and received massive amounts of radio play.

"In Your Eyes" was released as a US single, peaking at #26 Billboard Hot 100 and #1 Billboard Mainstream Rock in 1986.

Say Anything gave "In Your Eyes" a second chart run in 1989, but it peaked at #41. No Top 40 for you!

...and became PG's first certified Gold single in 2005 lol

"Only You" did marginally better than "Situation" on the US charts (67 vs. 73) and much better on the UK charts (2 vs. wasn't even released), but "Situation" seems much more like Yaz's legacy song.

"Born to Run!" Peaked at #23.

(Well, technically it's outsold by "Radio Nowhere" on iTunes, but I think that was thanks to some "Magic" promotion)

yeah acts with recent singles kinda skew this, but i think it's safe to assume "Born To Run" ultimately sells more than "Radio Nowhere"

Oh oh oh!

"American Girl" was the second single off Tom Petty's debut album, after "Breakdown," but did not even chart.

Radiohead. Creep is their biggest hit, but probably not their "signature" song. NOt sure what is, though.

Bruce's biggest chart hit is Dancing In The Dark

"Creep" is Radiohead's legacy song to millions of non-Radiohead fans

I'm not sure what Bob Marley's legacy song is, but I have a feeling that "Roots, Rock, Reggae" (his only U.S. Hot 100 hit, peaking at # 51) isn't it. It might not even be in the Top 10.

(Well, Marley has lots of Legacy songs, obviously. Or at least an album full of them.)

Cheap Trick's only #1 is "The Flame." ("I Want You to Want Me" was #7, "Surrender" #62.)

What about remixes doing this with a song? Because Run DMC's It's Like That was just a b-side until it became like their biggest song (v. walk this way obv.)

Also presumably this must have happened by tunes that were sampled a bunch, although none come to mind immediately.

'Hallelujah' wins this thread, surely?

Run DMC's It's Like That was just a b-side

Not really. It was on side one of the 12-inch, and came before "Sucker MCs"; ditto with the instrumentals on side two:

http://www.discogs.com/viewimages?release=257372

How do I find out Itunes sales numbers? Is there some page for them?

Talking Heads. Their biggest charting US single is Wild Wild Life. Biggest in UK is Road To Nowhere. Their signature/legacy song is clearly Once In A Lifetime, which never even charted.

I tried to a search for a specific tune on the Itunes store, but when I click on the song name, I'm thrown back to the Apple store home page.

Strange that "Save a Prayer" didn't have a US single. It was huge on MTV.

but I didn't realise until recently that Rio was not an immediate smash hit in the United States - "Rio" itself only got to number 14, and it wasn't until "Hungry Like the Wolf" that the band really took off.

I'm pretty sure Hungry Like The Wolf was before Rio (in Britain anyway).

Yep. Six months earlier and peaked higher up the charts too

https://www.officialcharts.com/artist/19319/duran-duran/

"Save a Prayer" was released as a single in the US, but belatedly, in 1985. It got to #16.

that was from the live album I think

To further complicate the picture, they had success on the US Dance chart before Rio - "Planet Earth / Girls on Film" went to #26 in '81 and stayed on that chart for over six months, becoming a platinum certified 12" single.

according to Wikipedia, Hungry Like The Wolf was also released in the US before Rio but didn't chart, and was then later remixed and rereleased in December 1982 and peaked at #3 in March 1983

I wonder what impact the Notorious BIG sampling had on ‘Notorious’ being thought of as cheese/junk etc?

Feel like Donnie Darko really cemented that for me.

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard are not really a 'hits' band by any measure, but i raised an eyebrow that their top song on Spotify, "Work This Time," was not a single or a video or a live favorite or from a particularly popular album, and is kind of chill and lo-fi by their standards:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMTcXXDZ8CA

i saw a theory that its placement on the Spotify playlist 'Modern Psychedelia' was how it got so many plays, which seems likely -- it's about 26 songs down on their "top songs" on Apple Music.

xpost re: durans
this probably says more about my wriggling and totally wrong exposure to them, but i'm surprised "girls on film" isn't in their top 5. outside of that, yeah "hungry like the wolf" + "reflex" were the ones i heard most before their early 90s blockbuster.

(which i should say―"ordinary world"+"come undone" are my favs after going through their albums for the first time in retrospect ~2002. i've cooled on rio generally speaking, but those later singles just continue to hit the spot.)

Vienna (a B-side) now ahead of We Didn't Start the Fire in Billy Joel's Spotify streams

https://www.theguardian.com/music/article/2024/jul/01/billy-joel-vienna-tiktok

wow

love Vienna

it's on the "This Must Be the Place" train

I thought "The Downeaster 'Alexa'" would have been higher, but perhaps it's just too grim, to close to the bone.

I haven't heard that in the wild for many a year

^^ lyric from lost verse of "The Downeaster 'Alexa'"

Is Vienna’s popularity down to people clicking on it mistakenly thinking it’s the song by Ultravox?

Given that Joel’s Vienna has 10 times the streams, that’s a lot of clumsy Ultravox fans

I gather it's a tiktok thing, the lyrics would speak to young people

it's a great song

label's cashing in

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jL4S4X97sQ

'tis very very much a tiktok thing indeed

I think there's a general consensus as to what the legacy song is for Country Joe & the Fish, and it's not "Not So Sweet Martha Lorraine", their only charting single in the US

https://www.eater.com/24249926/talking-heads-this-must-be-the-place-best-restaurant-playlist-song

Curious - how'd 'O Children' get to the top of the Nick Cave most played? 155m, ahead of Into My Arms (123m), Red Right Hand (107m)

OH - was about to apologise for not googling 'nick cave o children film soundtrack' and then just did it. Harry Fucking Potter.

Love's top song is "Alone Again Or" (not a surprise), and their #2 is "Always See Your Face" (slightly surprising, but it has been in Movies & TV). However, if you combine the totals from the standard and deluxe versions, their almost as big as #2 #3 track is "Everybody's Gotta Live" from Reel To Real, which also houses #4 "Be Thankful For What You've Got".

― "...And the Gods Socially Distanced" (C. Grisso/McCain), Friday, August 21, 2020 3:11 AM (four years ago) bookmarkflaglink

Now "Everybody's Gotta Live" is Love's number two, 12 million streams ahead of "Always See Your Face" and 12 million behind "Alone Again Or." Spotify ranks as their most popular song for the moment.

msut be all those JoJo Rabbit fans

When and how did "I Wanna Be Yours" become the Arctic Monkeys most popular song (at least on Spotify) by a fairly wide margin? It wasn't even one of the 6 singles released off of AM

I've heard its John Cooper Clarke lyrics recited at two weddings, so maybe there's an "our tune" aspect to it.

Thanks in part to another new audience, teens finding it on TikTok, the band’s version of I Wanna Be Yours is now wildly, improbably popular

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/mar/20/john-cooper-clarke-arctic-monkeys-worlds-favourite-poem-i-wanna-be-yours-ford-cortina

Most popular MBV song on Spotify is When You Sleep.

I thought my youngest kid was trying to sing Weezer’s “Photograph” and that led me to discover “Island in the Sun” on spot is their most streamed?

That makes sense. It’s the least power chordy of their hits.

It's also in one of the "Trolls" animated movies, fwiw

Ahhh, was assuming it was probably in some kids film but was too lazy to check which one.

it was their biggest streamer before Trolls, i posted about it upthread a decade ago, prior to the release of any Trolls movie

"say it ain't so" has actually caught up on spotify a little since then, island in the sun used to be almost twice as popular

moving side discussion from Most popular MLB player walk-up songs this season (2025) over here and reviving gang starr/"work" discussion―――

how did "work" get such reverence? i mean it's a sick beat and album highlight, but it's just an album cut from 1998. the opening lines do lend themselves pretty easily to 'hype music' environments, i.e. sports, gym, etc.

i'm reminded a bit of public enemy; their top track is something more recent that got picked up by a similar vibe. things that make you go, "huh."

Not sure why it didn’t get more attn back 1998.

my guess: it appeared in either madden or nba2k

i mean... i know it’s been a fan favorite since the album came out, but 150mil+ streams and en route to be their top track?

don't get me wrong, i think it's awesome the song is getting love and it's definitely one of their best. i used to play it out as much as i could get away with by the time i had a dj gig in 99/2000.

not their top track ―yet― but i think this has to be one of the best examples of the thread topic. it was just an album cut.

Cheap Trick's biggest song on Spotify is..."Surrender". No surprise, it's a signature song.

Their third biggest song is "The Flame", their biggest Pop hit.

Their second highest track? The flop <STUDIO> version of "I Want You To Want Me"!

Not the Budokan version. That breakthrough hit that's probably right now being spun on multiple Classic Rock stations all over the US and/or the world is their fifth-highest streamed track, after the three aforementioned numbers and "Mighty Wings" from the Top Gun soundtrack.

Kate Bush's "Running up that hill" barely charted on release, but became a hit after it was in Stranger Things. Now around 6x as many spotify plays as any of her other songs.

hard for me to imagine that it wasn't already her #1 song on Spotify before Stranger Things, tho. it was her only top 40 song in the U.S.

it was also #3 in the UK. so I don't know what you mean by "barely charted."

Yeah it was already one of her biggest hits and if it wasn't her legacy song before then at worst it was #2 or #3.

I was looking at Deep Purple’s Spotify page and see that “Perfect Strangers” is at #3, well ahead of the much bigger hit “Hush.”

In other "Right Song, Wrong Version" news, BB King's top Spotify track is his 1997 duet w/Tracy Chapman version of "The Thrill Is Gone" (the original is his #2).

"Days Like This" is Van Morrison's 5th biggest Spotify track, ahead of genuine hits like "Domino", "Wild Night", and "Jackie Wilson Said...".

Huh:

It became the official anthem of the peace movement in Northern Ireland[citation needed] and the Northern Ireland Office used it along with "Brown Eyed Girl" as theme music for a television advertisement promoting the ceasefire.[4] Morrison performed it for an audience of 60–80,000 people when President Bill Clinton visited Belfast, Northern Ireland on 30 November 1995. Clinton, himself a saxophonist, had shown an appreciation for Morrison's music and had wanted to perform but was advised against it by security officers.