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

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.

Anyway, I suspect "Oh Yeah" by Yello is their biggest download seller, even though it wasn't their biggest hit.

Which of course is due to it being used in that movie.

i dunno how iTunes store works in your country, but here every artist page has their top songs listed. but what i've been doing is just googling "(artist name) top itunes sales" and going to the browser cache of the store page since i don't have iTunes on my work computer.

"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)

I'm pretty sure "Radio Nowhere" was also the iTunes Free Single of the Week when it was released, and that iTunes counts free downloads as sales. (Or at least as volume for measuring popularity.)

One problem is that, with lots of these artists (Neil Diamond, Skynyrd, Billy Idol, Springsteen, Petty, Talking Heads, Peter Gabriel, Radiohead), it's a real stretch to say they "clearly" have just one legacy song. (So with them, the formulation only really works if their biggest hit has been totally lost in the dustbin of history. "Wild Wild Life" might actually come close to that, though. "Sweet Home Alabama" and "Creep" definitely don't. Chuck Berry's only #1 "My Ding-A-Ling" probably does.)

I tried to search "Yello", but the Itunes home page doesn't even allow me to click the band name, so I don't know how to see the artist page.

(xx-post)

fwiw, "Oh Yeah" (at #51) was the only Yello song ever to chart in the U.S. No idea about the rest of the world, where I assume they were bigger. ("Bostich" will always be their legacy song in my house.)

Likewise, Boney M's only U.S. hit was "Rivers of Babylon," but the rest of the planet would presumably disagree.

I think in Europe at least "The Race" and "Bostich" were bigger hits than "Oh Yeah", maybe some others too.

My bad, I thought Sucker MCs was Side A.

..just googling "(artist name) top itunes sales" and going to the browser cache of the store page since i don't have iTunes on my work computer.

Talking Heads top 5 appear to be: Once In A Lifetime, Burning Down The House, And She Was, Psycho Killer, Take Me To The River

I don't look at iTunes but I would assume Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah?

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.

i am pretty sure that every single person in the world except for you was aware of this.

and the title of this thread is confounding...if a track is their legacy song and their best seller period (i will assume that the iTunes best seller is generally the overall best seller) then doesn't that make said song their biggest hit by default? do you mean songs that were someone's biggest hits but didn't necessarily peak as high as others (like Wonderwall, as referenced above)? because that list would go on forever. or songs that were totally unknown at the time and later came out of nowhere (like Hallelujah)?

But what was Leonard Cohen's bigger hit?

He never had a real "hit" in the U.S., but I would assume "Suzanne," right?

Top 5 Peter Gabriel itunes:

In Your Eyes, Down To Earth, Solsbury Hill (2002 remaster), Solsbury Hill, Sledgehammer

Top 5 Leonard Coehn itunes:
Hallelujah, Everybody Knows, Suzanne, Everybody Knows, Hallelujah

suzanne was his signature song, no?

oh look chuck sez the same

and the title of this thread is confounding...if a track is their legacy song and their best seller period (i will assume that the iTunes best seller is generally the overall best seller) then doesn't that make said song their biggest hit by default? do you mean songs that were someone's biggest hits but didn't necessarily peak as high as others (like Wonderwall, as referenced above)? because that list would go on forever. or songs that were totally unknown at the time and later came out of nowhere (like Hallelujah)?

― lil waynes babymama (musically), Friday, March 27, 2009 2:11 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

you're thinking too hard about this. it's really about songs that become more popular well after the initial single release, whether as a live staple, a cover by another aritst, or because of licensing for a commercial, movie, Guitar Hero, etc.

Also guessing Randy Newman's legacy song is not the #2 "Short People," but not really sure what it would be instead. (Strangely, "I Love L.A." didn't chart Hot 100; weird, its video seemed popular at the time. But I doubt that's his legacy song either. So..."Louisiana 1927," by now? "Mama Told Me Not To Come"? The theme from Toy Story? Who knows.)

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 (48 minutes ago) Bookmark

something that doesn't get factored in here is that the video was played about every 10 minutes on MTV when it came out

Where Is My Mind? is the first thing I thought of - I've seen rooms full of young college kids who probably have no idea who the Pixies are freak out when this gets played, thank you Fight Club.

ooh good call, i was skeptical but it is in fact their top song on iTunes

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.

i am pretty sure that every single person in the world except for you was aware of this.

Actually, no. I guess it's different over there, but I'm pretty sure in Finland "Out of Space", "No Good", "Voodoo People", "Firestarter" and "Breathe" are even today more popular than "Smack My Bitch Up".

us American non-dance people only know the last 3 but it definitely seemed like the "Smack" was the least big of those

Randy Newman's legacy song...not really sure what it would be instead

Sail Away?

Pink Floyd. Biggest chart hit is Another Brick In The Wall.

Biggest iTunes song is Wish You Were Here, which is now probably their signature/legacy song. Either that or the #2 iTunes, Comfortably Numb.

I thought the answer was going to be Etta James "At Last". It seems to be her itunes hit as far as I can tell by using the google cache method detailed above.

It was only a #47 Billboard chart hit though, and I thought "I'd Rather Go Blind" or the Henry songs should be her legacy hits.

Turns out "At Last" was a Pop- 47, R&B - 2, and "I'd Rather Go Blind" was a B-side(Tell Mama) to a Pop - 23/R&B- 10 and didn't chart when it was an A-side. Historic Billboard charts are strange when it comes to race and everything else.

I'd never even heard of "At Last" until customers started asking for it as a Wedding Song in the late 90s. (must have been in a movie?) I had a big blind spot in my R&B knowledge, or their was a regional or cultural difference in oldies play.

Anyway. She had bigger hits.

it seems odd that the top Louvin Brothers song on iTunes (not counting mistagged tracks from their tribute album) is "Kneel at the Cross," which edges out obvious big hits/legacy songs like "I Don't Believe You've Met My Baby," "Knoxville Girl," and all of Satan Is Real. afaik "Kneel" was never issued as a single and has only appeared on the original LP, the Bear Family box sex, and an old Rounder compilation. What gives?

xp I never heard of "At Last" until last year! I always would have figured "Dance With Me Henry" was Etta James's most famous song, though Joel Whitburn doesn't list that one (maybe too early? also maybe not a pop crossover?) in his Hot 100 book. Looks like her biggest hit of the "rock era" was "Tell Mama," which went to #23 in 1967; only other Top 30s were "Pushover," #25 in 1963, and "Trust In Me," #30 in 1961. No idea if I've ever heard those, but I'm obviously no expert.

xp I never heard of "At Last" until last year!

I think this is one of the most shocking revelations I've ever read on ILM.

x-post Back when the album first came out, a friend copied "Surfer Rosa" for me but left "Where is My Mind?" off the cassette. For a few months there, I had no idea it existed, at least not until I got the CD and was, like, huh, why did he leave this one off?

What about Teenage Kicks? I have a feeling that didn't make the top 40 when it first came out.

"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.

But "Only You" >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> "Situation"

wonder what Radiohead's biggest iTunes seller is

oh SHIT i hate people

oh my god so many people actually need to have their ears surgically removed right now-

um, l-jag it probably* has everything to do with the fact that it was marketed as a single, was a huge 90s radio hit in the alternaboom, and subsequently still gets incredible airplay on every rock station in the world. Not because the world did some awesome critical litmus test and chose it over awesome* songs like "Weird Fishes/Arpeggi"

*definitely
*not awesome

I can't think of any rap song this works for, except maybe "Juicy," which was a pretty big hit in its own right.

It was featured in the "Fishes" episode of The Bear last year (the episode everyone talked about) so may have snowballed from there?

common's "invocation" is his top track on spotify. it was a single b-side for like the third single from the album it originally appeared on. it's a sick jimmy ponder smooth jazz guitar loop + the one where he says 'on a quest for love like the proceed drummer' but otherwise - HUH!? how did that get to be so popular??

(i mean i used to put that beat on at least 90% of my mixtapes back in the day, so maybe that affinty has carried over? it's not a song i'd quite call a deep cut, but again: it wasn't even a single and it's beating out stuff like "the light" and "go")

it's on Spotify's I Love My 90s Hip-Hop playlist

(although these days all Spotify-branded playlists seem to be "made for you," so I have no idea whether other people are seeing what I'm seeing)

I really wish there was a way to turn that 'made for you' feature off (perhaps there is?!) as it means probably 60-70% of those playlists are now populated by stuff I already know/listen to

Just searched that playlist and the only Common tracks on it for me are Resurrection and The Bizness (with De La) xp

it's on Spotify's I Love My 90s Hip-Hop playlist

― jaymc, Wednesday, May 22, 2024 1:54 PM

see but this is what i mean -- how would it have ended up there in the first place? other than it just being an old school fan favorite of much larger significance than i would have thought?

(it does appear on my version of that playlist upon looking, but i don't think i've ever actually played it from there)

How do Spotify playlists even get made, is it just one person, do they have meetings, rough drafts?

remember that scene in _the show_ where russell simmons is on the treadmill listing off which songs are to be on the def jam 10th anniversary box set?

it's kinda like that, except daniel ek isn't on a treadmill. he's in an underground war room somewhere carrying out his process to world domination.

just noticed a satisfying example... in the 90s, i'm pretty sure i wanna be sedated and sheena is a punk rocker were played on alt radio more than blitzkrieg bop. i remember a key moment in my so called life when the edgy girl's band covers sedated. at college i certainly heard the ramones a lot more than most first wave punk bands, songs ranging from teenage lobotomy and pinhead to kkk took my baby away, bonzo goes to bitburg and pet sematary, a band sort of always in the background with a stronger legacy than the dolls, pistols, damned, even iggy.

the ramones' highest selling single was the 1980 reissue of sedated, which didn't chart but was apparently a steady seller. the highest charting song (top ten in the UK) by the band was their terrible cover of baby i love you, supposedly demo'd at gunpoint by phil spector and recorded with session musicians... so it's pleasant to see that blitzkrieg bop is now firmly well ahead of sedated in the streaming list, and baby i love you is down to #5. perhaps the turning point was 1994 when bop was included on jock rock volume 1.