{"id":9392,"date":"2011-09-23T14:01:30","date_gmt":"2011-09-23T18:01:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/?p=9392"},"modified":"2011-09-23T14:02:27","modified_gmt":"2011-09-23T18:02:27","slug":"once-and-for-all-what%e2%80%99s-the-most-popular-non-hit-single-ever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/once-and-for-all-what%e2%80%99s-the-most-popular-non-hit-single-ever\/","title":{"rendered":"Once and For All: What\u2019s the Most Popular Non-Hit Single Ever?"},"content":{"rendered":"<iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/jvHKjDKY_O8?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><p><em>The single stiffed, but&#8230;<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Every once in a while I get to thinking about songs that everyone knows&#8211;or, at least that have achieved huge popularity and recognition&#8211;that were <em>not<\/em> hit singles. My case in point is <strong>The Romantics<\/strong>&#8216; &#8220;What I Like About You.&#8221;\u00a0Everybody knows that song.\u00a0It didn&#8217;t make the Top 40, though.<\/p>\n<p>There are various reasons why such a song might take off later rather than sooner: maybe it had poor distribution or bad\u00a0PR in the first place, maybe later it gets used in a commercial or movie or (now) videogame.<\/p>\n<p>I have a few criteria in mind.<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>I am talking about songs that were released as singles only&#8211;so no &#8220;Stairway to Heaven&#8221; and what have you.\u00a0<em>No album tracks<\/em>.\u00a0That&#8217;s a separate category.<\/li>\n<li>By &#8220;not a hit single&#8221; I mean it <em>didn&#8217;t make the Top 40<\/em>.\u00a0I know that the invocation of Top 40 skews the discussion away from modern times when the Top 40 as we knew it has ceased to have any meaning whatsoever.\u00a0Special pleading is welcome.<\/li>\n<li>Most subjective is &#8220;everyone knows it.&#8221;\u00a0Use your judgement.\u00a0Polling data\u00a0are not required.\u00a0A once-obscure song that is later used in a movie or commercial does not necessarily translate into a song that everyone knows.\u00a0<strong>The 13th Floor Elevators<\/strong>&#8216; &#8220;You&#8217;re Gonna Miss Me&#8221; is known by a lot more people because of its use in <em>High Fidelity<\/em>, but most people don&#8217;t know it.\u00a0We&#8217;re looking for major penetration into people&#8217;s brains here.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The single stiffed, but&#8230; Every once in a while I get to thinking about songs that everyone knows&#8211;or, at least that have achieved huge popularity and recognition&#8211;that were not hit singles. My case in point is The Romantics&#8216; &#8220;What I Like About You.&#8221;\u00a0Everybody knows that song.\u00a0It didn&#8217;t make the Top 40, though. There are various <a href='https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/once-and-for-all-what%e2%80%99s-the-most-popular-non-hit-single-ever\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1269,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[342],"tags":[206,88],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9392"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1269"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9392"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9392\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}