her biggest and signature song is Bad Guy

Although her actual most streamed song is 'lovely'.

let's not only look at number of streams to acknowledge popularity when it can be extremely biased due to playlists, if you really think Lovely is more popular than Bad Guy... I'm actually not even sure which one is Lovely or how it goes...

Lol lovely IS 100% well known and is definitely one of her biggest. Sometimes I think you live under a bubble wrap

I’ve definitely never even heard of Lovely. Bad Guy on the other hand was unavoidable

See I want to just say, how are we judging what counts as valid popularity. Oh that song doesn't count because it was on Spotify playlists, but this one does because it was on the radio, or a TikTok meme? Or do we just quote the great Dennis Denuto and say it's just the vibe of the thing? But then I realised of course I basically said all of this in the thread years ago.

 

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.

 

Streaming arguably just becomes a really useful barometer because basically everyone does it. A million people buying a single back in the day is no doubt impressive, but it's still less than 2% of the population. Streams are obviously built on repeated listens, but it's undeniable that sooooo many more people are becoming a part of this survey that it fills out some of the imperfections of the chart system of old, that it only serves a very isolated fraction of music fans that actually pay for their products. It's not perfect obviously, but it brings us a lot closer to a complete picture than charts of old can ever do.

 

Unless we're just getting to the semantics of what it actually means to be a signature song, which might just be more weasel words akin to me saying 'Bruno Mars is more popular than Lauv'. It's a statement very few would disagree with even if I've not laid down the parameters for what 'popular' actually means. So like if a song is an artist's most heard/sought for song across all means and formats, shouldn't it be their signature song? It's just a question of how we tally up all those different means and formats to decide that.

 

Bad Guy was certainly the bigger UK hit at least, if not the bigger worldwide hit.

 

it is probably more known amongst the general British public.

But even in the UK, 'lovely' is currently in the Spotify top 200 while 'bad guy' isn't, so there's a good chance it is slowly closing the gap. I'm not saying 'bad guy' isn't the bigger hit overall right now but it really wouldn't surprise me if 'lovely' ends up being the better remembered song in the long run. It's probably the kind of song that could eventually have a moment that gives it a more representative peak position much like Tyler, The Creator's 'See You Again'.

I think the days when a song used to have to have a high chart postion and presence in the charts for it to be deemed a hit are way over. Lovely is definitely a long term more popular choice.

Most misleading artist with chart peaks goes to Westlife, 14 number ones and nobody remembers any of them :lol:

 

Yeah nobody remembers, but 4 of them are already mentioned in comments below…. And all this without adding the amazing Mandy

I would say all artists with a sizeable number of number ones have some questionable ones. I even include The Beatles in that, whilst all their number ones are pretty well known it would be silly to think "The Ballad of John and Yoko" (number 1) is better known than "Let It Be" (number 2).

Good topic this 👍🏻

 

I'd say Blue and Busted are prime contenders for this thread.

 

With the former, it's generally likely to be "All Rise", "Fly By II" or "One Love" you hear on the radio these days, rather than any of their actual number ones.

 

Same with Busted, "Year 3000" is their signature song and it's none of their four number ones.

Van Morrison - Whenever God Shines His Light made #20 yet Brown Eyed Girl nowhere to be seen until it made #60 in 2013.

 

 

Also - I think that Do I Wanna Know has probably now overtaken Dancefloor for the Arctic Monkeys’ best known song

I’d argue that Dancefloor isn’t even top 5 anymore, partly down to TikTok:

 

I’d have

1) Do I Wanna Know?

2) 505

3) I Wanna Be Yours

4) Fluorescent Adolescent

5) Why’d You Only Call Me When You're High?

Mardy Bum should arguably be in the mix too - that seems to be a live favourite.

If anything, I'd say that Do I Wanna Know just has misleadingly low peak!

 

Dancefloor still *feels* like a number 1. I just think enough of their songs have stood the test of time enough for a non-chart follower to feasibly believe they had a few #1s!

Yes, I didn’t mean anything against Dancefloor, they just have so many bangers which have stood the test of time

Good topic this 👍🏻

 

I'd say Blue and Busted are prime contenders for this thread.

 

With the former, it's generally likely to be "All Rise", "Fly By II" or "One Love" you hear on the radio these days, rather than any of their actual number ones.

 

Fly By II is nowhere near their most popular songs on Spotify - the top 3 are All Rise, Sorry... and Best in Me.

 

Fly By II is nowhere near their most popular songs on Spotify - the top 3 are All Rise, Sorry... and Best in Me.

Prominent playlisting probably helping the second and third songs there, you definitely hear One Love and Fly By II more on the radio. I strongly believe the general public would know those two and All Rise above any other Blue song (and as someone who's not really a huge Blue fan and only knows their songs from the radio, I'm speaking from experience)

Fly By II is nowhere near their most popular songs on Spotify - the top 3 are All Rise, Sorry... and Best in Me.

 

I've never even heard of that last one, let alone heard it 🤷