I’ve never heard of them but that reminds me of the odd case of Aphex Twin, whose apparent most popular song is Avril 14th with 124m streams, outdoing his second best by a lot but ultimately only has that many streams cos, as a short piano instrumental, its on relaxing music playlists.

Worth noting that the song was famously (also unscrupulously...) sampled by Kanye West on My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy no less, but the Aphex Twin track actually has more streams than Kanye's!

^Thats why it's totally inaccurate to look at Spotify plays inorder to decide what's the most popular song from an artist

Also surprised to find out Sade's only UK top 10 hit is her debut single, Your Love is King (never heard of it)... Smooth Operator peaked at #19 and The Sweetest Taboo #31! They were both #5 in the US but Your Love is King only #54

 

Oh that's actually a very good one. Sade became very quickly an album artist, so they never had a huge hit single after their first

^Thats why it's totally inaccurate to look at Spotify plays inorder to decide what's the most popular song from an artist

It depends though, at what point does the margin grow big enough that the reputation precedes itself? We can't really quantify streams in a non boolean way.

I assume Centuries is still gaining more as it's #1 on the "popular" tab for them

This is correct ftr; their plays this year so far:

 

43,006,226 - Centuries

31,111,435 - Sugar, We're Goin Down

26,819,462 - Thnks fr th Mmrs

25,955,889 - Summer Days (feat. Macklemore & Patrick Stump of Fall Out Boy)

22,332,815 - Immortals (18,106,803 album version + 4,226,012 'Big Hero 6' version)

20,033,813 - Dance, Dance

18,946,172 - My Songs Know What You Did In The Dark (Light Em Up)

11,522,621 - I've Been Waiting (w/ ILoveMakonnen & Fall Out Boy)

11,384,973 - The Phoenix

8,788,476 - This Ain't A Scene, It's An Arms Race

8,278,573 - Uma Thurman

6,179,683 - The Last Of The Real Ones

5,793,912 - Irresistible (4,196,244 album version + 1,597,668 with Demi Lovato)

5,342,856 - I Don't Care

5,033,677 - Alone Together

3,652,177 - Just One Yesterday

3,053,783 - Beat It

 

3 other acts not yet mentioned who had one #1:

- Saturdays - whatever their signature song is, What About Us isn't it

- New Order - much as I enjoy World In Motion, it's hardly the essence of what they were about

- Vera Lynn - not sure I've ever heard My Son My Son, whereas We'll Meet Again reached #55 only last year and White Cliffs Of Dover never charted

I probably just have a bit of bias towards remembering my own childhood re: Fall Out Boy then, interesting x (pleasantly surprised that 'Thnks Fr Th Mmrs' is still up with their most popular songs as well and in fact even ahead of 'Dance, Dance').

The Troggs' only #1 was With A Girl Like You, but Wild Thing (#2) and Love Is All Around (#5) are both better known.

 

Katrina & The Waves are best known for Walking On Sunshine (#8), but reached #3 over a decade later with Love Shine A Light.

 

Redbone's only UK hit was The Witch Queen Of New Orleans (#2 in 1971), but they may be better known now for Come And Get Your Love (upon which Cyndi Lauper's re-recording of Girls Just Wanna Have Fun was partly based), which was their biggest US hit.

- Saturdays - whatever their signature song is, What About Us isn't it

What About Us is their biggest seller and their current #1 most popular on Spotify! In terms of total streams, it's second to Higher (40m to 42m), though What About Us has a solo version with another 3m while the Higher solo + Flo Rida versions seem to be combined into that one 42m figure. Nothing else is even close - Ego with 18m is next.

^ that surprises me... OK I'll swap them for Andy Williams - several songs have a stronger claim to being his signature song than Butterfly, his only #1

By looking at Spotify streams/YouTube views etc you're just replacing one misleading thing (the chart position) with another. There have been numerous times I've listened to a song on YouTube and read in the comments that people are there because it was in a film, on an advert, someone sang it on X Factor etc.

 

But I would also say that being a bands signature tune can be a reason not to listen to it on Spotify/YouTube etc. For example I've listened to Queen on YouTube many times but I've never played "Bohemian Rhapsody" because I've heard it so many times in my life.

A somewhat topical example as Another Love is on track to re-enter the top 100 this week, but Tom Odell is an example here. Real Love is his highest peaker at #7, fuelled by the John Lewis advert, but Another Love is definitely his signature hit and is over 1m chart sales! Nothing else is more than silver-certified (Real Love, Grow Old With Me and Magnetised).

 

There's also The Vamps, who had five top 10 hits in 2013-14 and all have been outsold by the #24 hit All Night...!

I would argue this for Janet Jackson... she has two #2s and four #3s, but her #4 peaking single Together Again is her best selling single - it's her most physically purchased song, most downloaded and most streamed. I would say it's regarded by many as being her signature song? (Side note: YouTube is a complete mess when it comes to Janet; Together Again isn't officially uploaded, or if it is it's not accessible in the UK!)

 

I guess it's fair to say that When You're Gone by Melanie C (with Bryan Adams), a #3 hit, is more widely remembered by the public than her two #1 hits.

By looking at Spotify streams/YouTube views etc you're just replacing one misleading thing (the chart position) with another. There have been numerous times I've listened to a song on YouTube and read in the comments that people are there because it was in a film, on an advert, someone sang it on X Factor etc.

Does music discovery by those means not count or something??

Does music discovery by those means not count or something??

 

The subject is signature songs which in theory shouldn't need discovering because they're already well known. Maybe there's something in it for the more modern artists, but take The Beatles for example, you can't measure the popularity of their songs by listens on Spotify. They weren't even on Spotify for a long time, but there's a big chunk of people listening to The Beatles in physical format and we'll never know what songs they're listening to the most.

For Gorillaz I think their #1, Dare, is their 3rd best remembered behind Clint Eastwood (#4) and Feel Good Inc (#2). All 3 have pretty high global Spotify numbers for noughties hits, but Feel Good Inc > Clint Eastwood > Dare. The other two were much bigger sellers than Dare in the first place anyway.

Edited April 16, 20214 yr by JulianT

I would argue this for Janet Jackson... she has two #2s and four #3s, but her #4 peaking single Together Again is her best selling single - it's her most physically purchased song, most downloaded and most streamed. I would say it's regarded by many as being her signature song? (Side note: YouTube is a complete mess when it comes to Janet; Together Again isn't officially uploaded, or if it is it's not accessible in the UK!)

According to Kworb https://kworb.net/youtube/video/7SXKHiPQPhk.html it's only available in Canada and Japan :lol:

Oh that's actually a very good one. Sade became very quickly an album artist, so they never had a huge hit single after their first

 

Your Love Is King is an amazing song and is definitely well remembered:)

The subject is signature songs which in theory shouldn't need discovering because they're already well known. Maybe there's something in it for the more modern artists, but take The Beatles for example, you can't measure the popularity of their songs by listens on Spotify. They weren't even on Spotify for a long time, but there's a big chunk of people listening to The Beatles in physical format and we'll never know what songs they're listening to the most.

No one is born knowing a song though. Everyone hears the songs they know through somewhere, and it's no more or less valid if it's on the radio, a stereo, on a playlist, in a movie, in a TikTok or on their friend's aux. I agree that Spotify isn't comprehensive, but once you start pooling together all the quantifiable stream sources, eventually it'll begin to make up the lion's share of a song's lifetime listener base, so it's often just a bit of extrapolating an identified trend.

Edited April 16, 20214 yr by Dircadirca

Jamelia - 'Thank You' reached #2 but 'Superstar', a #3, feels like her definitive hit