I was scared of dentists and the dark

Continuing my trip up the list of the most streamed songs for each year.  

2013 : Riptide - Vance Joy

This is a track I don't recognise from the name, but I suspect I'll know it when I hear it.

Yeah - but only the chorus and I'm not sure I've ever actually properly listened to it all the way through. It's that kinda happy ukelele folk that annoys me - but this just about manages to stay the right side of the line. Don't get me wrong, it's not great - but it could be worse and it does have a nicely quirky video.

Wikipedia has a reasonable amount on the track, but most of it is about how successful it was - and boy was it successful! Particularly in Australia (where he's from) where it holds the record for most consecutive weeks on the chart at 120 - yes, over two years! Interestingly, it's never made it to #1 anywhere (it got to #10 here and #30 in the US) but it's popularity abides on the streaming platforms - it was the most streamed Australian song on Spotify in '23 which is, admittedly, a pretty niche category.

Wikipedia also gives us a couple of cover versions - one by Taylor Swift for the Radio 1 Live Lounge which really won't have hurt its popularity (it's less annoying that the original, but still nothing to write home about) and Stealth did one for the Percy Jackson TV series (also fine). I didn't know any of the artists on the versions suggested by secondhandsongs.com, but I couldn't resist finding out Haley Klinkhammer what did with it (and it's not bad at all - probably my favourite). YouTube offers quite a few options up but far too many of them feature ukeleles, so I avoided them all.

There is absolutely no way I'd have given this the year, but I suspect we're getting to the point that the competition is (as far as I am aware) pretty thin. The #1 track in the year-end chart is the somewhat problematic "Blurred Lines" from Robin Thicke/Pharrell Williams, which, if you ignore the lyrics, is quite well constructed for about ten seconds before it starts repeating itself. The rest of the top five is Daft Punk/Pharrell Williams's "Get Lucky", Avicii's "Wake Me Up", Passenger's "Let Her Go" and Naughty Boy/Sam Smith's "La La La" (which is a great track). Other tracks that jump out at me are Katy Perry's "Roar" (#6), OneRepublic's "Counting Stars" (#9), Bastille's "Pompeii" (#11), John Newman's "Love Me Again" (#14), Ellie Goulding's "Burn" (#15), Taylor Swift's "I Knew You Were Trouble" and Miley Cyrus's "We Can't Stop" (#28) which is more than I expected to recognise.

Looking further down the chart throughout the year, we can see Taylor Swift's "22", Macklemore's "Can't Hold Us", The Wanted's "Walks Like Rihanna", One Direction's "Best Song Ever" and "Story Of My Life", The Vamps' "Can We Dance", Miley Cyrus's "Wrecking Ball", Lorde's "Royals" and Lily Allen's "Hard Out Here". This is also the year that "Ding Dong (The Witch Is Dead)" got to #2 because Maggie died which caused the BBC all sorts of bother. 

Considering how only last year I was complaining how the UK and US charts were pretty much the same, that's quite a UK-centric list so it'll be interesting to see how many of them transferred across the pond.  The #1 single in the year-end chart was Macklemore's "Thrift Shop" which I don't remember, but it got to #1 over here, so I've probably heard it. There's not a lot of other stuff I recognise from the chart but I am surprised at how well Anna Kendrick's "Cups" (from Pitch Perfect) did over there (#21 in their year-end, as opposed to peaking at #71 in our weekly chart) but both my girls absolutely love it still (and we still watch Pitch Perfect once every couple of years). And it's fair to say there wasn't exactly a UK invasion of the US charts - our highest entry in their year end chart was Calvin Harris (#41).

I'm quite surprised this took the year, but it was (and continues to be) way more popular than I ever knew, although I'm quite surprised one of Taylor's offerings hasn't taken it (she actually doesn't take any of the years). For me, there were far better tracks offered by many people but, as we've constantly seen, what I think has absolutely no bearing on what people choose to listen to.

2012 - A perfectly fine song