I met you in the dark, you lit me up

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

2016 : Say You Won't Let Go - James Arthur

I vaguely remember this one - it's OK but nothing special, isn't it? And was it really that popular? Well, yes - I guess...

OK - it was better than I remembered it being (complete with its romantic lyric about throwing up) and he does use his voice well on it. It's got a very arty 3:30 video as well - black and white and beautiful scenery and all that, tugging at your heartstrings as we follow a couple from the first beginnings through to old age and slow lingering death. You can tell it's arty because it's filmed with an aspect ratio of 2.35:1 - he's a serious artist, I tell you! Having said that, I find it amusing how similar his cover artwork is to Sia's from last year.

Wikipedia has very little on the track - it was the lead-out single for his second album and that's about it. Except from some juicy scandal - ooooh! Well, it's not that exciting really - after the track was released various people noted how much it resembled The Script's "The Man Who Can't Be Moved". James got quite grumpy about it all (OK - even more grumpy than normal) and said "those snakes will never get a dime" - and so, quite obviously, a couple of years later Danny and Mark from The Script were given a song-writing credit on this. I'm no expert on these things and I hate to side with James on anything, but I do feel he's been a bit unlucky here - it certainly has the same feel, but I'm not sure I see it's got any more than that.

And so - you know I asked whether it was really that popular?  Well, it got to #1 in Australia, Ireland, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden and the UK, a very decent #11 in the US, 1.2 billion views on YouTube and 3 billion streams on Spotify, making it the 15th most played song ever. So yes, it REALLY was that popular.

Wikipedia has no cover versions, secondhandsongs.com just the usual selection of randoms and uni a capella groups and YouTube offers up some even more stripped back versions played by sad looking people on guitars - I think we're probably getting a bit too recent for all that nonsense, aren't we?

So, where did such a popular song come in the year-end list? All the way down at #19, so I guess it's just taken its own sweet time getting there. Top of the list was Drake's "One Dance", which I might remember if I bothered listening to it, but I won't - I just can't be bothered with his nonsense.  And the rest of the top five isn't much better remembered by me, being Lukas Graham's "7 Years", Sia's "Cheap Thrills", Mike Posner's "I Took A Pill In Ibiza" and Calvin Harris's "This Is What You Came For" - no prizes for guessing which one of them I can remember! The only ones I do remember are Justin Bieber's "Love Yourself" (#9), "Sorry" (#15) and "What Do You Mean" (#35), Justin Timberlake's "Can't Stop The Feeling" (#10), Shawn Mendes's "Stitches" (#11), DNCE's "Cake By The Ocean" (#23), The Weeknd's "Starboy" and Little Mix's "Shout Out To My Ex" (#39) - which isn't a great selection compared to last years (and it's interesting that all of Bieber's tracks feature in both). 

Looking further down the chart, I'm not expecting to recognise too many but I did know Adele's "When We Were Young" and "Send My Love (To Your New Lover)", Clean Bandit's "Rockabye" and Rag'n'Bone Man's "Human" - so, no, not too many. Looking across the pond, I was quite surprised that Drake didn't take the top spot but he's merely at #3, kept off the top by Justin Bieber's "Love Yourself" and "Sorry" - that boy had quite the year! There's nothing particularly of note in the rest of the chart but I was surprised to see Zayn's "Pillowtalk" as high as #22 and Elle King's "Ex's & Oh's" at #63 because it was released in '14.

I don't mind James's effort but I struggle to imagine myself seeking it out to listen to it - but the same is very much true for every other track of the year we've mentioned, so it's not like there's a host of alternative candidates and there's also no doubt that it's been fantastically successful over the years, so let's keep him happy and let him have it.

2015 - A very catchy number
2017 - A well constructed bunch of not-very-much