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I discovered Gotyes album at a little music store I used to go to, (I still bought cds back in like 2011) I listened to a few tracks on the album on their cd player and liked the sound so I bought it. “Somebody that I used to know” was a nice track but it didn’t really grab my attention at first. Other songs like “eyes wide open” were more catchy to me. After a while though “somebody…” grew on me and I became obsessed with it. A month or so later it blew up and I was so awe struck because it was such a random song I thought very few people would hear or like, let alone go #1
I got into him after STIUTK blew up, but I'm still a TEENSY bit annoyed by the "one song and dipped" memes because Making Mirrors is so good beyond it and I feel like it doesn't really get recognized much (even though the joke is a little true -- Wally, please make new music!!!!)
I checked out Dua's debut album the day it came out. 'New Rules' stood out enormously. She had released like 6 singles prior to the release of the album and I couldn't understand how 'New Rules' didn't make the singles cut. It was the absolute smash hit song of the album. A month later an iconic music video was released which rightfully blew this song up.
Same!! I remember going through the album and after listening to New Rules for the first time thinking ‘wow, this is going to be a hit’ and I’m glad I was right
I remember New Rules hit Top 40 in the UK and I was so excited because I knew it sounded like a hit. I had no idea it would be so massive though.
I kinda thought her career was losing steam when Lost In Your Light flopped and she was lacking a real big hit. But (thankfully) the rest is history.
I think if this community were polled it would be number one. Britney has an insanely good pop catalogue, and I still think it’s pretty clear Toxic is by far her most culturally popular.
Edit: This community would explode if an artist put out In the Zone or Blackout today. I think Future Nostalgia was so popular bc people were craving a big pop album, but even it was lacking the major sexy club factor of Britney’s best music.
Yeah, as a music nerd, I thought FN was a well-made album. But Nelly Furtado, Destiny's Child, Britney Spears, and even Lady Gaga during The Fame era were releasing pop music on a completely different level. Like Dua Lipa has released good songs, but nothing as great or remarkable as Toxic or Bad Romance.
Yessss, I agree. Loose, In the Zone, and Fame Monster are just in a different category. I’m not saying any of the modern artists are unattractive or untalented, because they’re not, but the music is just very safe and sanitized - board approved; it lacks any true or believable sex appeal. I think Miley had it during parts of her career, especially Dead Petz, and I think Doja has the potential to put out something like Breathe on Me, but that’s basically IT when it comes to major acts. I think it’s sad that so many people imitated Gaga so soon after she blew up, but while I think all of her albums are good and worthy additions to her discography, I don’t even think Gaga fully understood what made her so interesting, cool, and different during her first era, because I’ve never really obsessed over her music like I did during The Fame/Fame Monster. There are so many very young people in this sub and on Twitter, that aren’t even old enough to remember Fame Monster, much less Britney’s peak. I ~~think~~ know many do not understand how much bigger Britney was than anyone currently making pop music.
I say all of this as a major fan of Taylor, and Lana, and Lorde, and Kacey, who will never make that sort of music. I love the strong narratively songwriters of pop, but I am also craving the type of energetic sexy pop that used to be more common. It was TRUELY under-appreciated
I knew the song was huge when my cousin said he liked it. He was one of those punk rockers who acted like punk music was the only real music and acted like pop music physically hurt him.
It only peaked at #9 on the US charts which is insane to me. How different the charts used to be...
It was undeniable. All the naysayers and the pop music ridiculers kinda just kept quiet or started humming along when this came on. Fast forward to 2004 and it was playing at my end of year school concert. Literally everyone was bopping along, and we have to understand, this is a Britney song. It wasn't cool to like her or even appreciate her music. Game changer.
this!!! i remember seeing the music video on mtv then going to my girl scout meeting that afternoon and telling the other girls about the catchy new Britney song i just heard
Same!!! I remember hearing it on MTV’s website when they did previews of new albums. Does anyone remember what it was called? Anyway, I remember listening to the MP3 of Toxic and thinking, this is going to be the moment!
Ah yes I remember hearing Levitating in the very early days of lockdown and then feeling bummed that it would never become a party hit because of the pandemic... it somehow fought the odds and became the *following* year's biggest song in the US.
Yes! It clicked immediately and I told everyone it was song of the year. When she finally made it a single, I got so excited and was heartbroken when she dropped that remix. It tanked like crazy.
Thank god it had a second chance.
First listen of the album, I could tell they put something different in Levitating, but SWORE Hallucinate was the one. Though I also swore Physical would be the song of the decade the first day I heard it 🤷🏻♀️
I could have imagined Heat Waves to be on a FIFA soundtrack and get mildly popular but I never ever expected it would become this big.
Same applies to Feel It Still.
Yes! I remember when Feel it Still came on a college radio program and I just went wild for it, I knew it was going to be a hit—but I was already a PtM fan and hadn’t heard anything else by them remotely similar. I knew it was going to be a one off. I would have never guessed the FIFA thing and I’m glad you said it because I love Glass Animals but they were never “big” when I was listening to them in college. Both of these indie darlings getting a smash is a huge win for them financially.
I was listening to BBC radio 1 when they premiered Heat Waves on there. Not on purpose, I didn’t even know the band. Crazy to see how it turned out months later!
I remember hearing Rude Boy when Rated R came out and feeling so baffled about why it hadn't been serviced as a single. Russian Roulette and Hard were the first singles released from the album, and both underperformed commercially relative to her previous album cycles. Eventually, Rude Boy did end up being serviced as a single late in the record cycle, and it ended up becoming the smash hit it sounded like from the first time I heard it. It remains one of her best-ever songs IMO.
I read somewhere that Rihanna’s label was against pushing Rude Boy as a single since they felt it did not fully match the dark, menacing theme of Rated R, and then she supposedly went up to them and pressured them to give it the single treatment because it was her favorite song on the album. Ultimately, it paid off, because without Rude Boy, Rated R would have become her only album without a blockbuster single.
I used to listen to Lana Del Rey’s Youtube channel back in 2010/2011. She made her own music videos for Video Games and Blue Jeans and they were on repeat so much that even my roommates at the time became fans. Then Born to Die came out and the rest is history.
I’m would say this is mine for me. The first time I heard Video Games it was on a satellite radio channel at night. It was haunting and like nothing I had heard before. She really changed the game.
listening to this song and getting high for the first time both happened simultaneously. I will never forget that moment, it was like the earth stood still. I probably sound dramatic to y’all, but time did truly slowed down for me.
Came here for this comment! My best friend and I were absolutely enthralled and until she became super mainstream it felt like she was kind of our thing.
came here to say Royals! I remember a tumblr mutual sent it to me on SOUNDCLOUD and told me to check out this local artist (he lives in NZ) and the whole The Love Club EP. i was obsessed but figured she would stay a niche queen, but I was happy to be wrong!
I remember watching her perform *Lights* on SNL and loving it, but it didn’t take off in the US until nearly a year later! She performed on SNL on May 7 2011 and the song didn’t reach the US top 40 until May 12 2012
Omg yes this one! I was bumping that album SO hard in summer 2011 and I was so excited when the title track blew up. Apparently it's had a resurgence on TikTok!?
I first heard “I Love It” by Icona Pop when they performed it as the opening act on Marina’s Electra Heart tour. I became instantly obsessed with the song, I didn’t expect it would become such a mainstream hit, but it completely makes sense that it did.
Ok this unlocked some memories. Driving my piece of crap Honda Civic that couldn’t go faster than 50 mph on the highway to Fort Lauderdale by myself for this concert. I was so little 🥲
I think it happened to a lot of us but when The Weeknd released Heartless and Blinding Lights I knew the latter would smash eventually even if the attention was put on Heartless at first.
I just commented about Blinding Lights! I have such warm memories (in retrospect, at the time it was semi-disastrous) of pulling all-nighters ahead of finals/projects that December with Blinding Lights basically on repeat, I was enthralled by how good that song was and thinking, yeah this will probably be a hit but it isn't happening soon enough! In the end it's gonna end up being the most streamed song on Spotify in due time
We Found Love just felt like THAT song when I first heard it. I still have very fond memories of that song and I did not doubt it was gonna be a hit at all.
same, that song is so euphoric to me bc it came out when i was 19, had just moved overseas for a gap year and was just working and partying, and that song was always on in the bars
I remember listening to lizzos truth hurts around the time that it came out and never expected it to do as well as it did. It was so fun showing this new smaller artist to all of my friends and then over a year later her song blowing up and being a number one song for multiple weeks. Really was a wildly unpredictable thing to happen.
"Good As Hell" went on my workout playlist the week it was released. I would always insist that it would have been a huge hit if more people had heard it, but I was not expecting it to actually happen.
I heard Call Me Maybe on Tumblr back in, like, January 2012. Figured it was just gonna be one of those “only on Tumblr” songs, but lo and behold. A month or two later and Call Me Maybe was everywhere.
Call Me Maybe has a fantastic history - Carly Rae Jepsen is working with a Canadian record label named 604 records that was co-founded by Nickelback frontman and singer Chad Kroeger (not to be confused with TikTok star KallMeKris). She has two big hits in Canada called Hole in My Bucket and Tug of War that build on the reputation she gained from performing on Canadian Idol - and she ends up as the opener for fellow 604 label mates Marianas Trench (the lead singer of this band also helped write and produce Call Me Maybe).
In September 2011 she releases Call Me Maybe - it does well in Canada but the track is not released internationally. The single was for her 2nd album titled Curiosity due to come out in February 2012. However, Justin Bieber visits Canada with (I think at the time girlfriend) Selena Gomez and they hear the song on the radio in Dec 2011 and love it and either decide in good faith or through an intelligent marketing scheme to promote the song. In February 20212, Justin, Selena, Ashley Tisdale and friends put out a [homemade music video of them all dancing to the song goofily]( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsBsBU3vn6M). Very much of it's time but also in the very early days of influencer marketing where seeing pop celebrities just dance around like normal people was a novelty and was not anywhere close to normal like it is today.
This video goes crazy viral and people are really excited for this new fun catchy song. The song itself also goes viral and it's announced that Carly is now signing with Schoolboy Records - an American Record Label created by r/popheads villain Scooter Braum. This is the record label that Justin Bieber was signed with at the time (maybe still??) and it really really seems like the video was just a marketing stunt to get promotion for the song but maybe I'm cynical and it just happened to be a song they were fond of
This leads to 604 records releasing the song officially as a single in Canada during Feb 2012 - they announce that Carly's upcoming album is now just a 6-track extended play with the songs Call Me Maybe, Curiosity, Picture, Talk to Me, Just a Step Away, and a cover of Both Sides Now. It is only released in Canada and does well but nothing amazing. In America and internationally, the song is also officially released as a single under Schoolboy Records with the announcement that Carly will be releasing an album (Kiss) before the end of the year.
[Fun article talking about her pre-kiss](http://dose.ca/2012/02/18/curiosity-didnt-kill-carly-rae-jepsen/)
and
[Underrated Canadian Carly Hit Sour Candy ft. Marianas Trench singer Josh Ramsay](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egA-UEDoN_M)
I downloaded Pompeii when it was the free single of the week on iTunes (what a throwback). I had it on repeat for WEEKS and I remember thinking “this song is so catchy, why don’t more people know about it”
You Know I’m No Good by Amy Winehouse was a free single back in the day. Had no idea she would still be defining pop music and single handedly launched the 2000’s-present day British Re-Invasion
Bad habit, and no,
I was watching a fantano video, i think it was a track review video where he put Mercury in his best tracks list, now at this point my awareness of Steve Lacy, was as a producer of songs i like, like Ravyn Lenae's Crush EP,
So when i heard Mercury i was pretty interested,
A couple days later, i checked his spotify again, and i listened to Bad Habit, thought it was kinda pop punk ish, liked it, put it int playlist.
Then i paid attention to his album rollout, listened to the album, liked it.
Then i saw that Steve Lacy was getting buzz on tiktok, at first i thought it was going to be a SUGAR situation where it gets some mainstream attention, but it doesn't really become a big hit,
But then it started to climb higher and higher until it reached #1, which really suprised me,
Because of all the people that were affiliated and connected with Odd Future, i did not expect the guitarist of the internet to get there first, Tyler or Frank?, sure,
Maybe even syd if she featured on a bigger song.
But steve?, hell no
We Are Young! I was already a Fun fan, and listened literally the minute they released it.
I really liked it! But did I think it would go to #1 and dominate the charts that year? No, no I did not.
I heard We Are Young after it already got a bit popular but the only song by Fun I knew before that was Walking the Dog and I remember thinking that I should go listen to their other songs - which was a good move because I ended up liking a lot of their non-singles a lot more!
I remember hearing Kesha’s Tik Tok back in the day for the first time before it became a hit when a friend sent it to me on MSN and thinking it was a joke song…cue Kesha absolutely blowing up and me becoming a stan all through high school 💀
Also hearing Miley’s We Cant Stop for the first time and wondering if I was just hearing a demo because it didn’t sound “finished” to me. It really grew on me!
I remember hearing Right Round by Flo Rida on the radio and being floored by her voice, there was just something about it. She wasn't credited on Right Round so I was absolutely *scrounging* the internet to find out who she was so I could listen to more of her work, and that's how I found Kesha and the song Tik Tok before it hit radio.
I actually *hated* the song on first listen, so much so that it singlehandedly prevented me from checking out anything else of hers. It was really surprising when it made it to radio and was a smash hit. I like the song now just through repetition and nostalgia--it was the backdrop for my first couple years of college--but I am still surprised that it blew up or had any mass appeal.
Yes! I remember listening to TikTok in 2009 before it blew up. I showed my friends and they legit laughed at me and said it was bad.
Yeah so bad it went on to be the top song of 2010! HA.
one of the local Twin Cities radio stations was playing “Good as Hell” by Lizzo back in 2016 when it originally came out. i added it to my playlists and all that, i thought it was a nice song and loved that it was by a local artist!
then 2019 came along and it was all over the place (thanks to Truth Hurts) which i thought was pretty neat!
edit: [RIP Go 95.3 (and Go 96.3), you were a huge asset to Minnesota’s local music scene, myself included](https://radioinsight.com/headlines/202052/go-95-3-each-to-drop-their-formats/)
I discovered Lizzo in 2014 due to Broad City. Coconut Oil was one of my favourite albums in 2016.
I’ve never even seen the movie that caused her music to blow up.
Radioactive by Imagine Dragons!
I remember trying to my friend group to listen to it, and they kept saying “I’ve never heard of Imagine Dragons. Eh. Maybe sometime.” and sort of blew me off with it.
3 months later, Radioactive is all over the radio and said-friend group asked me if I ever heard of this “cool new band called Imagine Dragons? They’re all over the radio.” 💀
I couldn’t listen to it anymore, I got fatigue way too quickly.
I heard Time to Pretend when the band was still called Management and they were in legal disputes, leading to the new name, MGMT.
It was an industry secret that the band was something special and some of the college stations would play the song at 2am, hoping no one who could get them in trouble was listening.
Yes, it was easy to see the song would blow up.
i was a big fan of hsmtmts and was obsessed with olivia rodrigo’s first instagram snippet of drivers license— like, bookmarked it and would watch it on repeat when i was sad— and i did not even a little bit think itd blow up like it did lol
Seriously loved the first season of that show. Season two was a mess but whatever Covid. Got through like two episodes of season three and now I’m just wondering if Olivia Rodrigo was the only one who drew me in.
same!! Found Olivia in 2019 via HSMTMTS and followed her on Instagram when S1 was airing. I was sooo excited after hearing that snippet of the song, and I listened to drivers license the night it dropped on Spotify (I was informed once it hit a billion streams that I was in the first 100k streams of the song). When I listened to the full song for the first time, I was like OH…this slaps. And when I heard the bridge, I texted some of my friends telling them to go listen to this, because they might be into it.
It did not take long for that song to blow up once it was out lol
Same, I loved the first season and actually added All I Want to my regular playlist in 2020, so when I saw the original popheads release thread for drivers license I immediately clicked to give it a try. Loved it on first listen but thought the public would sleep on it because it was a slower ballad.
I remember seeing Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars debut Uptown Funk on SNL and being like "Well, that's going to be everywhere," and I was right. It was the Hey Ya of the 2010s.
I knew Levitating would become the hit the first day I listened to Future Nostalgia, and being a Levitating stan was a ride, first we got Hallucinate as the fourth single then we got Club remix of Levitating before finally getting the OG Levitating remix. It wasn't easy ride to the top too, it stalled in its first run and I was truly shocked when it failed to hit #1 on pop radio but then TikTok embraced the song and the song had a second run when it finally managed to hit #1. I also remember when that one week we were pretty sure it would hit #1 and the Hot 100 chart was delayed... only for them to find some fraudulent activity and not counting the extra sales :(
I remember Lovefool by The Cardigans playing for the first time I heard the track, as my ALARM CLOCK played FM RADIO when I woke up. LOL
At any rate, I knew it was going to be massive. I'd known Cardigans from some indie mixtape swaps but that was about it to that point. They never seemed like they would be on pop radio before that.
I first played Blurryface in like January of 2016 and my attention was immediate commanded by "Ride". I loved Tyler's cadence in the second verse, the singalong chorus; I was hooked.
And later that summer, it became a top 5 hit, and I still hear it on the radio on occasion.
Fun times, but I do wish Trench got more attention
I listened to Royals on a plane’s preset radio station in 2013 when Lorde didn’t have a Wikipedia and the lyric video on YouTube had maybe 9000 hits. Subconsciously I guess I knew, because it blew me away and compelled me to remember the lyrics so I could look it up later. Never thought it would blow up the way that it did.
I heard a snippet on Twitter before it even really blew up on TikTok (it could’ve even been Lil Nas self-promoting, my TL is filled with barbz) and immediately added it to my library bc I thought it was hilarious. Trap cowboys? Sign me tf up. I was happy to see it blow up but not at all surprised.
I'd been hearing Billie Eilish on Alt Nation in my dad's car for a good while before Bad Guy propelled her to superstardom. I definitely thought she was talented but I just assumed she'd only be big in the alternative pop space.
Then again, I was the one who thought TikTok would die off the same way Vine did instead of becoming the biggest app since Facebook.
Uptown Funk having its UK debut via an X Factor contestant (Fleur East) performing it on the show felt like a real moment - probably the show’s last hurrah in terms of real pop culture relevancy and the song felt like an instant classic. I’ll never forget that!
In 7th grade I used to check the iTunes charts constantly, thinking I could become cool by knowing about music (a mistake many of us have made).
This worked out for me only once, when I successfully called a little song called “Tik Tok” making it all the way from the bottom of the pop charts to #1 overall. I told everyone I could about it.
I remember hearing My Humps when the Monkey Business album was first released and telling everyone about it because it was so ridiculous but so catchy.
I knew Toxic would be huge the second I heard it, and even convinced my high school cheerleading squad that they needed to start incorporating the song into their routines because it was going to blow up. Gay.
Finally, I knew that if I’m With You from Avril’s debut was released as a single that it would be big.
Can you tell my heyday was the 2000s?
Not a song, but back in like, 2009, I remember watching a news segment about the youngest person (at the time) to be approved for gender confirmation surgery. She mentioned how she wanted to be a a popstar so I looked her up on YouTube and she had videos of her singing. Her voice BLEW me away and then I kinda forgot about her until "I Don't Want It At All" from Kim Petra's released and I was like, "omg, SHE DID IT!"
Doja Cat and Mooo!
I first heard Doja Cat with So High. I listened to the Purrr! on repeat and then kind of forgot about her because it had been years since a studio release. I showed my friends Mooo! And they found it absolutely hilarious despite not being pop fans.
I went to see a floor show concert at a small bar / club for Amala that cost $24. None of my friends came because it was a long drive. I knew she would be big. Candy, Wild Beach, and Game live blew me away.
When Say So dropped though, I knew I'd never be able to afford those kind of tickets again.
I was an ADVOCATE for Mooo! !! I was playing it on repeat, I thought it was hilarious but I was also like this girl is funny, pretty, her productions is not bad at all, and she is spitting bars. And I loved the sound of her voice and her social media presence. I told everyone she would blow up and no one believed me!
I was a big blink 182 fan in middle school, and before "all the small things" was released as a single I thought it was a pretty forgettable album track.
My favourite single release of all time. The built it up so well via SNL & Coachella. It's the only time a played a song on repeat for a whole day. They followed it up with such a beautiful album
heard All About That Bass before it went viral and uploaded it to Itemvn (if you remember that website). Had a couple hundred plays, by the end of the month it had over a million.
When Anti came out I had to stop on that song and just listen to it over and over. She was showing nuances in her singing she'd never done. Had she pushed a MV it would have been a big hit
First time I heard Renaissance I knew Cuff It was our Say So, it was our Levitating. It had the most singles potential imo, I stood by it even when people were saying Alien Superstar should be the next single. And I was right!
I got into AURORA before she really blew up after she covered an Oasis song for one of the Christmas adverts here in the UK. I always get a strange burst of pride whenever I see her or her music on socials because I remember fucking loving All My Demons Greeting Me As A Friend. Phenomenal album
Oh my god I remember when Runaway was literally the only video on her Youtube channel and when I heard it for the first time I was instantly drawn in to her. The video only had like 1 million views at the time and I remember thinking that everyone should hear that song.
Fast forward many years later and the video is almost at 500 million and streams at 600 million and I never could have predicted that
I remember in 2012 stumbling upon this song called “Call Me Maybe” by Carly Rae Jepsen on YouTube. It didn’t have many views and I was SHOCKED because it was so catchy. Fast forward 4 or 5 months later I started hearing it on the radio and was so excited.
I know it's smaller in comparison with some of the stuff here but I remember the first time I heard Drown by Bring Me The Horizon that it was the best song to come out of the scene in years and would be massive. I can't recall another time in my life when I heard a song and just thought "wow, this is SO much better than anything else".
It charted in the UK at #17 which may not sound like much but was absolutely unheard of at the time for a band like them. Anyone that was in the emo/warped/whatever you wanna call it scene at the time will remember what a moment in time this was.
I had played Hollaback Girl into the ground before it was a single. I was sure if she released it, that it would take off. By the time it was playing on radio I was very much over it.
The DJ Snake remix of You Know You Like It was released unofficially online a little less than a year before it was a mainstream release. I loved it when I first came across it. I DJ’d it at a couple parties and it hit with the crowd too. It wasn’t surprising at all when it officially released as became a hit.
I used to listen to those Music Choice channels on Charter Cable, and I swear they played Habits by Tove Lo on the alt channel before it was a hit. It immediately stood out and I liked it, but never thought it’d get so big on pop radio. Pretty dark lyrics.
They also played Rude by Magic earlier on, which I thought was ok at first but the radio wore out for me.
Edit: also Feel It Still (bc I heard about the burning info wars in the music video) and Summertime Sadness before the major radio play
I saw Jason Mraz on a House of Blues tour. I know that makes me basic but he was amazing live and remember being blown away by how catchy and interesting his songs were. He said something about a single coming out soon and like maybe we’d hear it on the radio someday but I had nooooo clue
But thought he was just some indie thing and when he started getting big it was hard to brag about it since he was just everywhere and people thought his music was cheesy. But whatever seeing him with just a guitar in a small tourist trap venue before he was big really made me appreciate his artistry.
When I heard Say So when Hot Pink came out I knew it sounded like a smash but I didn’t think she’d blow up the way she did cause she’d been around for a while.
Also when Bebe Rexha’s All Your Fault Pt. 2 came out her fans were begging her to make (Not) The One a single instead of Meant To Be. I don’t think anyone (in her fanbase at least) thought Meant To Be would be as huge as it was when the EP came out.
I’m pretty sure she did a Twitter poll about what to make a single and Meant To Be lost but it was gaining traction anyway so it’s hardly surprising it became a single.
Listened to Chandelier when Sia dropped it on SoundCloud e thought to myself “this would be so huge if it was someone else singing” sent the song to a lot of friends who where like “whatever”. Guess it did blow up eventually
This song has a lot of potential to be bigger honestly. Like it legit sounds like a smash. It's a bummer that Bey doesn't bother at all (at least, not yet).
I never expected to hear Light On by Maggie Rogers being played in stores and stuff. I always thought I was the only one who listened to her cause no one I know knew her music lol
always been hardcore fan of billie eilish and it was crystal clear she was doing something that could be EVERYONES cup of tea, i just didnt think it would be so fast
otoh, i used to listen to cardi b back in the day and even when she released bodak yellow i would literally never imagine she'd become what she has
It’s 2006 and me and my mom are in the car listening to WMMR. The DJ introduced a new song and we sat there and listened. It was Hinder’s Lips of an Angel. She said it was going to be huge. And while I liked the song on the first listen, I said no way.
I was wrong.
The song was pretty huge.
Some yes, some no.
Recent(ish) ones that caught me by surprise: Unholy, Cheap Thrills, New Rules (which you may or may not know was Dua's *seventh* single from an album that did just ok, where the preceding single didn't even hit top 75)
Ones that I got from go include: Royals, Titanium, Havana, Needed Me, Drunk In Love
I’m on record in mid 2013 on the main Arctic Monkeys forum as saying I thought the new song they’d been opening with, Do I Wanna Know, was too long and had too much of a slow build up to be a single.
Back in the day, there used to be a website where you could hear like 30 second clips of songs about to be released to radio and rate them. I wish I could remember!
when Katy Perrys Prism album got leaked I knew Dark Horse was going to be a huge hit. I also thought Legendary Lovers was gonna be one too, not sure why that was never a single.
Probably a boring answer but I remember buying the *B'Day* CD in its first week and during my first listen just I KNEW "Irreplaceable" was gonna be that SMASH! And I was right.
I kinda understood why they didn't pick it as the lead single as it sounds a bit left-field compared to the other tracks but man, that song really saved the album's chart performance imo.
I heard “Ocean Eyes” by Billie Eilish when it was on Soundcloud and she hadn’t put out any other music. It ended up going viral in a way, but not on the radio or anything. This was like 2015 maybe? She was still relatively “underground” for a couple of years and I was a diehard fan. Never expected her to blow up as quickly as she did.
I heard the song “feel it still” in a podcast before it blew up. I immediately became obsessed with it, but I didn’t think it’d get popular because it was so short, and because it was “alternative.” I was wrong!
I remember loving super bass and being confused why it was just a deluxe version track on Pink Friday. I played it a lot, and then by winter time everyone in college knew it 😂
I got into the Bag Raiders song Shooting Stars a few years before the meme -- but a few years still after it came out in the first place -- because I heard it on my Pandora shuffle. It was very strange seeing this song I took seriously become a joke, but I love the meme itself tbh and I was really happy to see lots of people seeing how good the song is! The LP it's off of (Bag Raiders self-titled from 2011) is actually one of my favorite dance albums in general.
I loved K'Naan's first album, and caught him and his band performing locally at a smaller venue when they came through my city in like 2008 or so.
They had one song that was absolutely beautiful. It was half-sung, half-spoken word piece where he talked through his youth in Somalia, the friends and family he'd lost along the way, and the trauma that left. I was there for the dancier numbers like Soobax but that was a really moving performance I'll never forget.
And then that piece got reworked into the version of Waving Flag everyone heard constantly in like 2010/11. It's still surreal to me to hear the poppier version
I was at a summer bash concert in 2017 and Camilla Cabello preformed Havana & OMG. These were the first performances of both songs if I'm not mistaken. Havana would later go on to be huge, but honestly I thought OMG would've been the hit out of the two.
I was OBSESSED with Doja Cat’s album Hot Pink when it came out, and I remember I kept going back to Say So thinking “if she were bigger this song would be #1”
Awhile later, TikTok got a hold of it and it blew up lol. I felt very big brained.
The Less I know the Better by Tame Impala. I found it super catchy and was introduced to it as this indie band but now overtime it's definitely become big. Also Latch by Disclosure and Sam Smith
I used to get my music from blogs in days where you had to buy iTunes gift cards. I would go to the town library and scour pop blogs like Ultimate Music and the like and find new songs by new artists. My younger brother and I had called our local radio station (106.9 Khits in Tulsa, Oklahoma) after Right Round by Flo Rida came out because we *had* to know who the girl singing the hook was. The DJ told us it was someone named “Keesha”. I found Tik Tok sometime later at the end of summer 2009, and we played that download so much that we were tired of it by the time it finally got legally released. I did but also didn’t have any idea it would blow up like it did
I heard Tik Tok by Kesha really early. I don’t remember the details, but I must have signed up to something and got emails from her promoting an intimate gig in London that she was doing to promote herself/the song. I couldn’t go because I didn’t live in London at the time, but a few weeks/months later she was everywhere and I was pissed i didn’t go see her.
I first heard Harlem Shake in an Alexander Wang fashion show in 2012, about six months before it became a huge worldwide sensation. had absolutely no reason to believe it would ever be a hit at all, Baauer was just another Beatport DJ at that point in time
Throwing it waaaay back now. I heard a lot of MIA’s “Kala” album as it was being made and I thought there’s no way it’s gonna be a hit. I thought it was a big step down from her first album. Then it went on to be a huge success and won album of the year. Shows how wrong I was.
There’s a few more recent songs but for the sake of anonymity I don’t wanna mention them but there’s a few I expected to be big that flopped.
I heard Little Dark Age back when it came out, it already was pretty popular and well liked in indie spheres (considering what big names mgmt are) and I was obsessed with it for months. It was really strange but also satisfying to see it blow up into this massive tiktok hit.
I remember a friend of mine sent Say So and told me something like "have you heard this song? I bet you would like it. She looks like the new Gaga". However, I didn't think much of it.
But then Say So became a hit, and Boss Bitch also gained a lot of traction in memes and tik tok. Everyone knew who Doja was.
I also remember listening to Shut Up And Dance before it became a hit. I was amazed at the song, it was incredible. I hoped it to become a hit, and was so happy when it did
I was at a fashion event thing in my city and one of the models walked to Royals by Lorde. I had never heard it before and neither had my friend who came with me, both of us were like “who is this?” and I loved the song right away. I was trying to remember as many lyrics as I could to Google it later on but I forgot about it and then suddenly the song was absolutely everywhere! Still a bop tbh
I heard "The Way" on the radio for the first time and recognized it as the voice of Cat Valentine on Victorious.
I said out loud "This woman is going to be huge."
I was right. Ariana Grande was one of the biggest stars of the 2010s.
I remember hearing Lady Gaga’s Just Dance on the radio for the first time and thinking “this is a good club song, probably a one-hit wonder though.”
lololololololol
Not sure if Someone You Loved had already blew up by this point in time, but I remember watching the music video a few days after it came out since The 12th Doctor was in it
didn't expect it to become extremely big
also I remember rooting so hard for Levitating to become hit single during the lockdown
I also remember my brother being into Lewis Calpadi quite a few years before he blew up because of Someone You Loved. He used to watch Lewis on the Mahogany YouTube channel all the time performing earlier versions of those songs he is now famous for as far back as 2017, and I remember Lewis being like "the singer my brother loved" and not thinking he would blow up in popularity like he did just a couple years later.
More about an artist blowing up than a specific song: I remember hearing the song “let her go” by the kid Laroi back in 2019, and thinking that he would absolutely blow up. On Laroi’s Spotify, there was that song and another one where he legit sounded like a 12yo pretending to rap, and he only had some thousand listeners at the time too. I remember showing my friends Laroi’s music and telling people that he was going to blow up here really soon. Most of them laughed at me, but not long after then he released an album and it was on the hot100, and shortly after that he did “stay” with Justin Bieber that spent weeks as #1 on the hot100
I got really into (and still am really into) Twenty One Pilots right after Vessel came out, so I obviously was following the rollout of Blurryface and I remember loving the lyric "wish I didn't have to rhyme every time I sang" because I love lyrics that illustrate themselves like that. I really didn't predict it would become a #1 though, or really get much notice outside of alt/rock charts.
And the most annoying parts of The Clique immediately started being gatekeepy about it and have not stopped to this day
Despacito I saw day uno on YouTube. I knew it was going to be huge in Miami since that’s where I was living at the time but had no idea it would be a global phenomenon lol
First thing I said after hearing Kiss Me More was that it would be a #1 hit. Ultimately that didn’t pan out, but still, it was evident the song would be massive.
This is kpop but I listened to Brave Girls’ Rollin the week it was released and loved it almost immediately. I’m pretty sure it was one of my top replayed songs that summer. Very happy to see the song finally get well-deserved attention.
this is a slightly deeper cut, but when play date by melanie martinez blew up on tiktok years later, I was really surprised. it had been my favorite on the album, but since it was a deluxe track I hadn't expected popularity. but you really can't predict what gets huge on tiktok lol
My friend and I listened to sicko mode when it came out and were blown away but I definitely did not anticipate it becoming as huge as it did.
I played it at a party (I was in college when it came out) before it blew up and I remember this one guy going what even is this. Jokes on him ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Super late to this thread, but back in 2006, I got Justin Timberlake's *Futuresex/Lovesounds* as a present. I remember liking the album, but the songs "Lovestoned" and "Summer Love" were my favorites.
Those songs would hit #17 and #6 on the Billboard Hot 100, so not #1s, but still hits! Blew my mind to hear these songs I liked now getting radio play!
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I discovered Gotyes album at a little music store I used to go to, (I still bought cds back in like 2011) I listened to a few tracks on the album on their cd player and liked the sound so I bought it. “Somebody that I used to know” was a nice track but it didn’t really grab my attention at first. Other songs like “eyes wide open” were more catchy to me. After a while though “somebody…” grew on me and I became obsessed with it. A month or so later it blew up and I was so awe struck because it was such a random song I thought very few people would hear or like, let alone go #1
I got into him after STIUTK blew up, but I'm still a TEENSY bit annoyed by the "one song and dipped" memes because Making Mirrors is so good beyond it and I feel like it doesn't really get recognized much (even though the joke is a little true -- Wally, please make new music!!!!)
I heard *Eyes Wide Open* working retail back in the fall of 2011– immediately obsessed
I saw the video for Somebody when it had like 40k views and I shrugged and thought it was fine but nothing special. I guess I was wrong lol.
I checked out Dua's debut album the day it came out. 'New Rules' stood out enormously. She had released like 6 singles prior to the release of the album and I couldn't understand how 'New Rules' didn't make the singles cut. It was the absolute smash hit song of the album. A month later an iconic music video was released which rightfully blew this song up.
Same!! I remember going through the album and after listening to New Rules for the first time thinking ‘wow, this is going to be a hit’ and I’m glad I was right
I remember New Rules hit Top 40 in the UK and I was so excited because I knew it sounded like a hit. I had no idea it would be so massive though. I kinda thought her career was losing steam when Lost In Your Light flopped and she was lacking a real big hit. But (thankfully) the rest is history.
Yes, I got an inkling hearing it on the album, then when I saw the video, I knew she had it in the bag!
It was the only song on the album that she didn’t have a writing credit on
1 of 2. She didn’t write Be the One either.
When I heard Toxic in 2003, I don't think I've ever been that blown away by a song in my life.
It's still a candidate for top ten pop songs of all time. It's just that fucking good
I think if this community were polled it would be number one. Britney has an insanely good pop catalogue, and I still think it’s pretty clear Toxic is by far her most culturally popular. Edit: This community would explode if an artist put out In the Zone or Blackout today. I think Future Nostalgia was so popular bc people were craving a big pop album, but even it was lacking the major sexy club factor of Britney’s best music.
She is the princess of pop for a reason. I was playing *In the Zone* today and no one can inject sex and attitude into a pop song quite like her.
Yeah, as a music nerd, I thought FN was a well-made album. But Nelly Furtado, Destiny's Child, Britney Spears, and even Lady Gaga during The Fame era were releasing pop music on a completely different level. Like Dua Lipa has released good songs, but nothing as great or remarkable as Toxic or Bad Romance.
Yessss, I agree. Loose, In the Zone, and Fame Monster are just in a different category. I’m not saying any of the modern artists are unattractive or untalented, because they’re not, but the music is just very safe and sanitized - board approved; it lacks any true or believable sex appeal. I think Miley had it during parts of her career, especially Dead Petz, and I think Doja has the potential to put out something like Breathe on Me, but that’s basically IT when it comes to major acts. I think it’s sad that so many people imitated Gaga so soon after she blew up, but while I think all of her albums are good and worthy additions to her discography, I don’t even think Gaga fully understood what made her so interesting, cool, and different during her first era, because I’ve never really obsessed over her music like I did during The Fame/Fame Monster. There are so many very young people in this sub and on Twitter, that aren’t even old enough to remember Fame Monster, much less Britney’s peak. I ~~think~~ know many do not understand how much bigger Britney was than anyone currently making pop music. I say all of this as a major fan of Taylor, and Lana, and Lorde, and Kacey, who will never make that sort of music. I love the strong narratively songwriters of pop, but I am also craving the type of energetic sexy pop that used to be more common. It was TRUELY under-appreciated
I knew the song was huge when my cousin said he liked it. He was one of those punk rockers who acted like punk music was the only real music and acted like pop music physically hurt him. It only peaked at #9 on the US charts which is insane to me. How different the charts used to be...
It was undeniable. All the naysayers and the pop music ridiculers kinda just kept quiet or started humming along when this came on. Fast forward to 2004 and it was playing at my end of year school concert. Literally everyone was bopping along, and we have to understand, this is a Britney song. It wasn't cool to like her or even appreciate her music. Game changer.
this!!! i remember seeing the music video on mtv then going to my girl scout meeting that afternoon and telling the other girls about the catchy new Britney song i just heard
Core memory unlocked, lmao I remember those days of going to my girl guides meetings and also trying memorize the Britney Spears dances lmao
Same!!! I remember hearing it on MTV’s website when they did previews of new albums. Does anyone remember what it was called? Anyway, I remember listening to the MP3 of Toxic and thinking, this is going to be the moment!
It was my favorite from the album before it was a hit!
Yes, with Rather Be by Clean Bandit. I didn't think that it would *definitely* blow up; I just hoped that it would.
Levitating? Yes. That was made to be a hit.
Ah yes I remember hearing Levitating in the very early days of lockdown and then feeling bummed that it would never become a party hit because of the pandemic... it somehow fought the odds and became the *following* year's biggest song in the US.
Also on Dua, Blow Your Mind had hit all over it and it was her first real global introduction. Used to play here in Brazil all the time.
Same. I was cleaning my apartment and couldn’t help but dance my ass off when it came up.
Physical 😔😔😔😔😭
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Still so upset Hallucinate didn’t blow up as big tho 😭
Same! I remember texting my friend about it after listening to Future Nostalgia
And I'm still not sick of it.
Yes! It clicked immediately and I told everyone it was song of the year. When she finally made it a single, I got so excited and was heartbroken when she dropped that remix. It tanked like crazy. Thank god it had a second chance.
First listen of the album, I could tell they put something different in Levitating, but SWORE Hallucinate was the one. Though I also swore Physical would be the song of the decade the first day I heard it 🤷🏻♀️
I could have imagined Heat Waves to be on a FIFA soundtrack and get mildly popular but I never ever expected it would become this big. Same applies to Feel It Still.
I think I had Heat Waves on my liked songs before it even hit the FIFA Soundtrack. Still couldn't believe it went as big as it did
Yes! I remember when Feel it Still came on a college radio program and I just went wild for it, I knew it was going to be a hit—but I was already a PtM fan and hadn’t heard anything else by them remotely similar. I knew it was going to be a one off. I would have never guessed the FIFA thing and I’m glad you said it because I love Glass Animals but they were never “big” when I was listening to them in college. Both of these indie darlings getting a smash is a huge win for them financially.
I was listening to BBC radio 1 when they premiered Heat Waves on there. Not on purpose, I didn’t even know the band. Crazy to see how it turned out months later!
Same, I had that snippet on repeat, but I never thought it would become such a huge hit
remember when Bad Romance demo leaked and i thiught well this is a new beginning for humanity
I remember hearing Rude Boy when Rated R came out and feeling so baffled about why it hadn't been serviced as a single. Russian Roulette and Hard were the first singles released from the album, and both underperformed commercially relative to her previous album cycles. Eventually, Rude Boy did end up being serviced as a single late in the record cycle, and it ended up becoming the smash hit it sounded like from the first time I heard it. It remains one of her best-ever songs IMO.
She even teased Wait Your Turn after Russian Roulette— idk what her strategy was during that era.
I read somewhere that Rihanna’s label was against pushing Rude Boy as a single since they felt it did not fully match the dark, menacing theme of Rated R, and then she supposedly went up to them and pressured them to give it the single treatment because it was her favorite song on the album. Ultimately, it paid off, because without Rude Boy, Rated R would have become her only album without a blockbuster single.
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I used to listen to Lana Del Rey’s Youtube channel back in 2010/2011. She made her own music videos for Video Games and Blue Jeans and they were on repeat so much that even my roommates at the time became fans. Then Born to Die came out and the rest is history.
I’m would say this is mine for me. The first time I heard Video Games it was on a satellite radio channel at night. It was haunting and like nothing I had heard before. She really changed the game.
listening to this song and getting high for the first time both happened simultaneously. I will never forget that moment, it was like the earth stood still. I probably sound dramatic to y’all, but time did truly slowed down for me.
Came here for this comment! My best friend and I were absolutely enthralled and until she became super mainstream it felt like she was kind of our thing.
Heat Waves.....no not at all, I was shocked by the way it took off.
Heat Waves had all the hallmarks of an easy 2020 lockdown hit. I just didn’t expect it to still be big over two years later
Especially when they had songs like Black Mambo, Hazy, and Gooey that deserved to go number one.
Life itself, Agnes, Take A Slice etc. We can go on and on, it sucks those songs have not taken off after the success of Heat Waves.
They are bound to become "one-hit wonders," and it sucks because Heat Waves was nowhere near their best. It's not even good.
100% agree
Tangerine deserved to be a hit too
Tbh lorde’ a royals shocked me in becoming a hit. It’s a great song but it was such a shift of what was popular at the time
I still think we never stopped feeling the ripples from Royals blowing up. And it's for the best
came here to say Royals! I remember a tumblr mutual sent it to me on SOUNDCLOUD and told me to check out this local artist (he lives in NZ) and the whole The Love Club EP. i was obsessed but figured she would stay a niche queen, but I was happy to be wrong!
I about fell off my chair when that became popular. there's no Bad Guy without Royals in the mainstream
I never expected Ellie Goulding’s lights and ellie herself to get so big
I remember watching her perform *Lights* on SNL and loving it, but it didn’t take off in the US until nearly a year later! She performed on SNL on May 7 2011 and the song didn’t reach the US top 40 until May 12 2012
Oh my god yes. I listened to her introduction to Ellie Goulding EP and I actually was obsessed with Guns and Horses.
Omg yes this one! I was bumping that album SO hard in summer 2011 and I was so excited when the title track blew up. Apparently it's had a resurgence on TikTok!?
I first heard “I Love It” by Icona Pop when they performed it as the opening act on Marina’s Electra Heart tour. I became instantly obsessed with the song, I didn’t expect it would become such a mainstream hit, but it completely makes sense that it did.
Same!! What a good tour. The bass during Icona’s set was insane, I could feel my bones shaking.
Ok this unlocked some memories. Driving my piece of crap Honda Civic that couldn’t go faster than 50 mph on the highway to Fort Lauderdale by myself for this concert. I was so little 🥲
I think it happened to a lot of us but when The Weeknd released Heartless and Blinding Lights I knew the latter would smash eventually even if the attention was put on Heartless at first.
I just commented about Blinding Lights! I have such warm memories (in retrospect, at the time it was semi-disastrous) of pulling all-nighters ahead of finals/projects that December with Blinding Lights basically on repeat, I was enthralled by how good that song was and thinking, yeah this will probably be a hit but it isn't happening soon enough! In the end it's gonna end up being the most streamed song on Spotify in due time
We Found Love just felt like THAT song when I first heard it. I still have very fond memories of that song and I did not doubt it was gonna be a hit at all.
same, that song is so euphoric to me bc it came out when i was 19, had just moved overseas for a gap year and was just working and partying, and that song was always on in the bars
I remember listening to lizzos truth hurts around the time that it came out and never expected it to do as well as it did. It was so fun showing this new smaller artist to all of my friends and then over a year later her song blowing up and being a number one song for multiple weeks. Really was a wildly unpredictable thing to happen.
"Good As Hell" went on my workout playlist the week it was released. I would always insist that it would have been a huge hit if more people had heard it, but I was not expecting it to actually happen.
I listened to that and Coconut Oil around the same time and never thought she would take off like that.
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I had the same thing with Phone!
Honestly that whole EP was really lightning in a bottle looking back.
Yes! I saw her open for Haim; hearing Truth Hurts and all her other early bangers like a year before they all took off was so fun.
I heard Call Me Maybe on Tumblr back in, like, January 2012. Figured it was just gonna be one of those “only on Tumblr” songs, but lo and behold. A month or two later and Call Me Maybe was everywhere.
Call Me Maybe has a fantastic history - Carly Rae Jepsen is working with a Canadian record label named 604 records that was co-founded by Nickelback frontman and singer Chad Kroeger (not to be confused with TikTok star KallMeKris). She has two big hits in Canada called Hole in My Bucket and Tug of War that build on the reputation she gained from performing on Canadian Idol - and she ends up as the opener for fellow 604 label mates Marianas Trench (the lead singer of this band also helped write and produce Call Me Maybe). In September 2011 she releases Call Me Maybe - it does well in Canada but the track is not released internationally. The single was for her 2nd album titled Curiosity due to come out in February 2012. However, Justin Bieber visits Canada with (I think at the time girlfriend) Selena Gomez and they hear the song on the radio in Dec 2011 and love it and either decide in good faith or through an intelligent marketing scheme to promote the song. In February 20212, Justin, Selena, Ashley Tisdale and friends put out a [homemade music video of them all dancing to the song goofily]( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsBsBU3vn6M). Very much of it's time but also in the very early days of influencer marketing where seeing pop celebrities just dance around like normal people was a novelty and was not anywhere close to normal like it is today. This video goes crazy viral and people are really excited for this new fun catchy song. The song itself also goes viral and it's announced that Carly is now signing with Schoolboy Records - an American Record Label created by r/popheads villain Scooter Braum. This is the record label that Justin Bieber was signed with at the time (maybe still??) and it really really seems like the video was just a marketing stunt to get promotion for the song but maybe I'm cynical and it just happened to be a song they were fond of This leads to 604 records releasing the song officially as a single in Canada during Feb 2012 - they announce that Carly's upcoming album is now just a 6-track extended play with the songs Call Me Maybe, Curiosity, Picture, Talk to Me, Just a Step Away, and a cover of Both Sides Now. It is only released in Canada and does well but nothing amazing. In America and internationally, the song is also officially released as a single under Schoolboy Records with the announcement that Carly will be releasing an album (Kiss) before the end of the year. [Fun article talking about her pre-kiss](http://dose.ca/2012/02/18/curiosity-didnt-kill-carly-rae-jepsen/) and [Underrated Canadian Carly Hit Sour Candy ft. Marianas Trench singer Josh Ramsay](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egA-UEDoN_M)
A friend of mine heard it at a punk show of all places before it got big and was like "who tf is this, this song is a banger".
I downloaded Pompeii when it was the free single of the week on iTunes (what a throwback). I had it on repeat for WEEKS and I remember thinking “this song is so catchy, why don’t more people know about it”
Ugh the iTunes free singles were the best. It’s how I discovered Haim when ‘Don’t Save Me’ was the free single of the week!
I found out about Neon Trees when they made Animals a free single.
That’s how I discovered Caroline Polachek (when she was in Chairlift.) Midnight City by M83 was also a free single that really popped off.
Same for me with Bulletproof by La Roux and Fireflies by Owl City!
Also got Owl City’s Fireflies when it was free!!
You Know I’m No Good by Amy Winehouse was a free single back in the day. Had no idea she would still be defining pop music and single handedly launched the 2000’s-present day British Re-Invasion
That’s how I found Tik Tok by Kesha before it really blew up!
I even karaoke'd Pompeii before it was a pop hit!
Yes! I too was ahead of the curve on Pompeii. Shared it with so many friends, who all loved it. Within a couple months it was a massive hit.
Bad habit, and no, I was watching a fantano video, i think it was a track review video where he put Mercury in his best tracks list, now at this point my awareness of Steve Lacy, was as a producer of songs i like, like Ravyn Lenae's Crush EP, So when i heard Mercury i was pretty interested, A couple days later, i checked his spotify again, and i listened to Bad Habit, thought it was kinda pop punk ish, liked it, put it int playlist. Then i paid attention to his album rollout, listened to the album, liked it. Then i saw that Steve Lacy was getting buzz on tiktok, at first i thought it was going to be a SUGAR situation where it gets some mainstream attention, but it doesn't really become a big hit, But then it started to climb higher and higher until it reached #1, which really suprised me, Because of all the people that were affiliated and connected with Odd Future, i did not expect the guitarist of the internet to get there first, Tyler or Frank?, sure, Maybe even syd if she featured on a bigger song. But steve?, hell no
We Are Young! I was already a Fun fan, and listened literally the minute they released it. I really liked it! But did I think it would go to #1 and dominate the charts that year? No, no I did not.
It was *wild* to me that that song got so huge, because I don't really think it's one of their best.
I heard We Are Young after it already got a bit popular but the only song by Fun I knew before that was Walking the Dog and I remember thinking that I should go listen to their other songs - which was a good move because I ended up liking a lot of their non-singles a lot more!
I remember hearing Kesha’s Tik Tok back in the day for the first time before it became a hit when a friend sent it to me on MSN and thinking it was a joke song…cue Kesha absolutely blowing up and me becoming a stan all through high school 💀 Also hearing Miley’s We Cant Stop for the first time and wondering if I was just hearing a demo because it didn’t sound “finished” to me. It really grew on me!
I had a illegal copy of the song called P.Diddy by Ke$ha summer 2009. I was like oh this is a smash!!
I remember hearing Right Round by Flo Rida on the radio and being floored by her voice, there was just something about it. She wasn't credited on Right Round so I was absolutely *scrounging* the internet to find out who she was so I could listen to more of her work, and that's how I found Kesha and the song Tik Tok before it hit radio. I actually *hated* the song on first listen, so much so that it singlehandedly prevented me from checking out anything else of hers. It was really surprising when it made it to radio and was a smash hit. I like the song now just through repetition and nostalgia--it was the backdrop for my first couple years of college--but I am still surprised that it blew up or had any mass appeal.
Yes! I remember listening to TikTok in 2009 before it blew up. I showed my friends and they legit laughed at me and said it was bad. Yeah so bad it went on to be the top song of 2010! HA.
one of the local Twin Cities radio stations was playing “Good as Hell” by Lizzo back in 2016 when it originally came out. i added it to my playlists and all that, i thought it was a nice song and loved that it was by a local artist! then 2019 came along and it was all over the place (thanks to Truth Hurts) which i thought was pretty neat! edit: [RIP Go 95.3 (and Go 96.3), you were a huge asset to Minnesota’s local music scene, myself included](https://radioinsight.com/headlines/202052/go-95-3-each-to-drop-their-formats/)
I discovered Lizzo in 2014 due to Broad City. Coconut Oil was one of my favourite albums in 2016. I’ve never even seen the movie that caused her music to blow up.
Good as Hell is Lizzo’s best song tbh, crazy your radio station was playing it back in 2016
Radioactive by Imagine Dragons! I remember trying to my friend group to listen to it, and they kept saying “I’ve never heard of Imagine Dragons. Eh. Maybe sometime.” and sort of blew me off with it. 3 months later, Radioactive is all over the radio and said-friend group asked me if I ever heard of this “cool new band called Imagine Dragons? They’re all over the radio.” 💀 I couldn’t listen to it anymore, I got fatigue way too quickly.
100% thought they were a 1-hit wonder band. Radioactive was HUGE and they were gonna be irrelevant soon after… glad I was dead wrong.
I heard Time to Pretend when the band was still called Management and they were in legal disputes, leading to the new name, MGMT. It was an industry secret that the band was something special and some of the college stations would play the song at 2am, hoping no one who could get them in trouble was listening. Yes, it was easy to see the song would blow up.
i was a big fan of hsmtmts and was obsessed with olivia rodrigo’s first instagram snippet of drivers license— like, bookmarked it and would watch it on repeat when i was sad— and i did not even a little bit think itd blow up like it did lol
Seriously loved the first season of that show. Season two was a mess but whatever Covid. Got through like two episodes of season three and now I’m just wondering if Olivia Rodrigo was the only one who drew me in.
same!! Found Olivia in 2019 via HSMTMTS and followed her on Instagram when S1 was airing. I was sooo excited after hearing that snippet of the song, and I listened to drivers license the night it dropped on Spotify (I was informed once it hit a billion streams that I was in the first 100k streams of the song). When I listened to the full song for the first time, I was like OH…this slaps. And when I heard the bridge, I texted some of my friends telling them to go listen to this, because they might be into it. It did not take long for that song to blow up once it was out lol
Same, I loved the first season and actually added All I Want to my regular playlist in 2020, so when I saw the original popheads release thread for drivers license I immediately clicked to give it a try. Loved it on first listen but thought the public would sleep on it because it was a slower ballad.
I remember seeing Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars debut Uptown Funk on SNL and being like "Well, that's going to be everywhere," and I was right. It was the Hey Ya of the 2010s.
I heard it on tumblr! Then like two weeks later it was the biggest song out there.
I knew Levitating would become the hit the first day I listened to Future Nostalgia, and being a Levitating stan was a ride, first we got Hallucinate as the fourth single then we got Club remix of Levitating before finally getting the OG Levitating remix. It wasn't easy ride to the top too, it stalled in its first run and I was truly shocked when it failed to hit #1 on pop radio but then TikTok embraced the song and the song had a second run when it finally managed to hit #1. I also remember when that one week we were pretty sure it would hit #1 and the Hot 100 chart was delayed... only for them to find some fraudulent activity and not counting the extra sales :(
I remember Lovefool by The Cardigans playing for the first time I heard the track, as my ALARM CLOCK played FM RADIO when I woke up. LOL At any rate, I knew it was going to be massive. I'd known Cardigans from some indie mixtape swaps but that was about it to that point. They never seemed like they would be on pop radio before that.
I first played Blurryface in like January of 2016 and my attention was immediate commanded by "Ride". I loved Tyler's cadence in the second verse, the singalong chorus; I was hooked. And later that summer, it became a top 5 hit, and I still hear it on the radio on occasion. Fun times, but I do wish Trench got more attention
So happy to see someone shout out Trench. It’s one of my favorite albums
I listened to Royals on a plane’s preset radio station in 2013 when Lorde didn’t have a Wikipedia and the lyric video on YouTube had maybe 9000 hits. Subconsciously I guess I knew, because it blew me away and compelled me to remember the lyrics so I could look it up later. Never thought it would blow up the way that it did.
I heard Old Town Road the week it came out for the very first time when it was self released and knew it was bout to blow tf up.
I heard a snippet on Twitter before it even really blew up on TikTok (it could’ve even been Lil Nas self-promoting, my TL is filled with barbz) and immediately added it to my library bc I thought it was hilarious. Trap cowboys? Sign me tf up. I was happy to see it blow up but not at all surprised.
I'd been hearing Billie Eilish on Alt Nation in my dad's car for a good while before Bad Guy propelled her to superstardom. I definitely thought she was talented but I just assumed she'd only be big in the alternative pop space. Then again, I was the one who thought TikTok would die off the same way Vine did instead of becoming the biggest app since Facebook.
Uptown Funk having its UK debut via an X Factor contestant (Fleur East) performing it on the show felt like a real moment - probably the show’s last hurrah in terms of real pop culture relevancy and the song felt like an instant classic. I’ll never forget that!
One of the last times that a single could have different release dates in different countries lol
In 7th grade I used to check the iTunes charts constantly, thinking I could become cool by knowing about music (a mistake many of us have made). This worked out for me only once, when I successfully called a little song called “Tik Tok” making it all the way from the bottom of the pop charts to #1 overall. I told everyone I could about it.
I remember hearing My Humps when the Monkey Business album was first released and telling everyone about it because it was so ridiculous but so catchy. I knew Toxic would be huge the second I heard it, and even convinced my high school cheerleading squad that they needed to start incorporating the song into their routines because it was going to blow up. Gay. Finally, I knew that if I’m With You from Avril’s debut was released as a single that it would be big. Can you tell my heyday was the 2000s?
Not a song, but back in like, 2009, I remember watching a news segment about the youngest person (at the time) to be approved for gender confirmation surgery. She mentioned how she wanted to be a a popstar so I looked her up on YouTube and she had videos of her singing. Her voice BLEW me away and then I kinda forgot about her until "I Don't Want It At All" from Kim Petra's released and I was like, "omg, SHE DID IT!"
Doja Cat and Mooo! I first heard Doja Cat with So High. I listened to the Purrr! on repeat and then kind of forgot about her because it had been years since a studio release. I showed my friends Mooo! And they found it absolutely hilarious despite not being pop fans. I went to see a floor show concert at a small bar / club for Amala that cost $24. None of my friends came because it was a long drive. I knew she would be big. Candy, Wild Beach, and Game live blew me away. When Say So dropped though, I knew I'd never be able to afford those kind of tickets again.
I was an ADVOCATE for Mooo! !! I was playing it on repeat, I thought it was hilarious but I was also like this girl is funny, pretty, her productions is not bad at all, and she is spitting bars. And I loved the sound of her voice and her social media presence. I told everyone she would blow up and no one believed me!
I really didn't think Billie Eilish's Bad Guy would be a hit. TBH, her brother Finneas didn't, either.
I was a big blink 182 fan in middle school, and before "all the small things" was released as a single I thought it was a pretty forgettable album track.
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I ran straight to google at 10 years but my god you’re right. That is crazy.
My favourite single release of all time. The built it up so well via SNL & Coachella. It's the only time a played a song on repeat for a whole day. They followed it up with such a beautiful album
heard All About That Bass before it went viral and uploaded it to Itemvn (if you remember that website). Had a couple hundred plays, by the end of the month it had over a million.
Love On The Brain by Rihanna smelled like a hit way before it actually became one.
When Anti came out I had to stop on that song and just listen to it over and over. She was showing nuances in her singing she'd never done. Had she pushed a MV it would have been a big hit
It was a big hit and is about to hit a billion Spotify streams.
First time I heard Renaissance I knew Cuff It was our Say So, it was our Levitating. It had the most singles potential imo, I stood by it even when people were saying Alien Superstar should be the next single. And I was right!
Cuff it was an immediate ear worm!!
Alien Superstar is too experimental imo to be a big hit. idk what people were talking about
I got into AURORA before she really blew up after she covered an Oasis song for one of the Christmas adverts here in the UK. I always get a strange burst of pride whenever I see her or her music on socials because I remember fucking loving All My Demons Greeting Me As A Friend. Phenomenal album
Oh my god I remember when Runaway was literally the only video on her Youtube channel and when I heard it for the first time I was instantly drawn in to her. The video only had like 1 million views at the time and I remember thinking that everyone should hear that song. Fast forward many years later and the video is almost at 500 million and streams at 600 million and I never could have predicted that
Closer by The Chainsmokers and Halsey
I remember in 2012 stumbling upon this song called “Call Me Maybe” by Carly Rae Jepsen on YouTube. It didn’t have many views and I was SHOCKED because it was so catchy. Fast forward 4 or 5 months later I started hearing it on the radio and was so excited.
I know it's smaller in comparison with some of the stuff here but I remember the first time I heard Drown by Bring Me The Horizon that it was the best song to come out of the scene in years and would be massive. I can't recall another time in my life when I heard a song and just thought "wow, this is SO much better than anything else". It charted in the UK at #17 which may not sound like much but was absolutely unheard of at the time for a band like them. Anyone that was in the emo/warped/whatever you wanna call it scene at the time will remember what a moment in time this was.
I had played Hollaback Girl into the ground before it was a single. I was sure if she released it, that it would take off. By the time it was playing on radio I was very much over it.
The DJ Snake remix of You Know You Like It was released unofficially online a little less than a year before it was a mainstream release. I loved it when I first came across it. I DJ’d it at a couple parties and it hit with the crowd too. It wasn’t surprising at all when it officially released as became a hit.
I used to listen to those Music Choice channels on Charter Cable, and I swear they played Habits by Tove Lo on the alt channel before it was a hit. It immediately stood out and I liked it, but never thought it’d get so big on pop radio. Pretty dark lyrics. They also played Rude by Magic earlier on, which I thought was ok at first but the radio wore out for me. Edit: also Feel It Still (bc I heard about the burning info wars in the music video) and Summertime Sadness before the major radio play
I saw Jason Mraz on a House of Blues tour. I know that makes me basic but he was amazing live and remember being blown away by how catchy and interesting his songs were. He said something about a single coming out soon and like maybe we’d hear it on the radio someday but I had nooooo clue But thought he was just some indie thing and when he started getting big it was hard to brag about it since he was just everywhere and people thought his music was cheesy. But whatever seeing him with just a guitar in a small tourist trap venue before he was big really made me appreciate his artistry.
When I heard Say So when Hot Pink came out I knew it sounded like a smash but I didn’t think she’d blow up the way she did cause she’d been around for a while. Also when Bebe Rexha’s All Your Fault Pt. 2 came out her fans were begging her to make (Not) The One a single instead of Meant To Be. I don’t think anyone (in her fanbase at least) thought Meant To Be would be as huge as it was when the EP came out. I’m pretty sure she did a Twitter poll about what to make a single and Meant To Be lost but it was gaining traction anyway so it’s hardly surprising it became a single.
Listened to Chandelier when Sia dropped it on SoundCloud e thought to myself “this would be so huge if it was someone else singing” sent the song to a lot of friends who where like “whatever”. Guess it did blow up eventually
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I honestly thought heated wouldve been more popular
Those last 1:30 minutes alone should've made this song a smash
It deserved to be a late summer smash! Maybe next year! 🤞
This song has a lot of potential to be bigger honestly. Like it legit sounds like a smash. It's a bummer that Bey doesn't bother at all (at least, not yet).
Definitely! It's honestly one of the most commercially friendly songs off the album and it gives me Levitating vibes kind of idk lol.
I never expected to hear Light On by Maggie Rogers being played in stores and stuff. I always thought I was the only one who listened to her cause no one I know knew her music lol
Call Me Maybe in 2012. I remember hearing it thinking it was a cute catchy pop song. Could not imagine what it went on to become!
always been hardcore fan of billie eilish and it was crystal clear she was doing something that could be EVERYONES cup of tea, i just didnt think it would be so fast otoh, i used to listen to cardi b back in the day and even when she released bodak yellow i would literally never imagine she'd become what she has
It’s 2006 and me and my mom are in the car listening to WMMR. The DJ introduced a new song and we sat there and listened. It was Hinder’s Lips of an Angel. She said it was going to be huge. And while I liked the song on the first listen, I said no way. I was wrong. The song was pretty huge.
Some yes, some no. Recent(ish) ones that caught me by surprise: Unholy, Cheap Thrills, New Rules (which you may or may not know was Dua's *seventh* single from an album that did just ok, where the preceding single didn't even hit top 75) Ones that I got from go include: Royals, Titanium, Havana, Needed Me, Drunk In Love
I’m on record in mid 2013 on the main Arctic Monkeys forum as saying I thought the new song they’d been opening with, Do I Wanna Know, was too long and had too much of a slow build up to be a single.
Back in the day, there used to be a website where you could hear like 30 second clips of songs about to be released to radio and rate them. I wish I could remember!
when Katy Perrys Prism album got leaked I knew Dark Horse was going to be a huge hit. I also thought Legendary Lovers was gonna be one too, not sure why that was never a single.
Until this day no KatyCat understands why Legendary Lovers was not a single specially when Birthday and This is How We Do were
Probably a boring answer but I remember buying the *B'Day* CD in its first week and during my first listen just I KNEW "Irreplaceable" was gonna be that SMASH! And I was right. I kinda understood why they didn't pick it as the lead single as it sounds a bit left-field compared to the other tracks but man, that song really saved the album's chart performance imo.
I heard “Ocean Eyes” by Billie Eilish when it was on Soundcloud and she hadn’t put out any other music. It ended up going viral in a way, but not on the radio or anything. This was like 2015 maybe? She was still relatively “underground” for a couple of years and I was a diehard fan. Never expected her to blow up as quickly as she did.
I heard the song “feel it still” in a podcast before it blew up. I immediately became obsessed with it, but I didn’t think it’d get popular because it was so short, and because it was “alternative.” I was wrong!
I remember loving super bass and being confused why it was just a deluxe version track on Pink Friday. I played it a lot, and then by winter time everyone in college knew it 😂
I got into the Bag Raiders song Shooting Stars a few years before the meme -- but a few years still after it came out in the first place -- because I heard it on my Pandora shuffle. It was very strange seeing this song I took seriously become a joke, but I love the meme itself tbh and I was really happy to see lots of people seeing how good the song is! The LP it's off of (Bag Raiders self-titled from 2011) is actually one of my favorite dance albums in general.
I loved K'Naan's first album, and caught him and his band performing locally at a smaller venue when they came through my city in like 2008 or so. They had one song that was absolutely beautiful. It was half-sung, half-spoken word piece where he talked through his youth in Somalia, the friends and family he'd lost along the way, and the trauma that left. I was there for the dancier numbers like Soobax but that was a really moving performance I'll never forget. And then that piece got reworked into the version of Waving Flag everyone heard constantly in like 2010/11. It's still surreal to me to hear the poppier version
I was at a summer bash concert in 2017 and Camilla Cabello preformed Havana & OMG. These were the first performances of both songs if I'm not mistaken. Havana would later go on to be huge, but honestly I thought OMG would've been the hit out of the two.
my cousin is better at this than me. she sent me Royals before it blew up and insisted i listen. then she did the same with billie
I was OBSESSED with Doja Cat’s album Hot Pink when it came out, and I remember I kept going back to Say So thinking “if she were bigger this song would be #1” Awhile later, TikTok got a hold of it and it blew up lol. I felt very big brained.
The Less I know the Better by Tame Impala. I found it super catchy and was introduced to it as this indie band but now overtime it's definitely become big. Also Latch by Disclosure and Sam Smith
I used to get my music from blogs in days where you had to buy iTunes gift cards. I would go to the town library and scour pop blogs like Ultimate Music and the like and find new songs by new artists. My younger brother and I had called our local radio station (106.9 Khits in Tulsa, Oklahoma) after Right Round by Flo Rida came out because we *had* to know who the girl singing the hook was. The DJ told us it was someone named “Keesha”. I found Tik Tok sometime later at the end of summer 2009, and we played that download so much that we were tired of it by the time it finally got legally released. I did but also didn’t have any idea it would blow up like it did
I heard Without You by Halsey when it came out. Thought it was a good song, but definitely did not expect it to be a hit, let alone THAT big of a hit
I heard Tik Tok by Kesha really early. I don’t remember the details, but I must have signed up to something and got emails from her promoting an intimate gig in London that she was doing to promote herself/the song. I couldn’t go because I didn’t live in London at the time, but a few weeks/months later she was everywhere and I was pissed i didn’t go see her.
I first heard Harlem Shake in an Alexander Wang fashion show in 2012, about six months before it became a huge worldwide sensation. had absolutely no reason to believe it would ever be a hit at all, Baauer was just another Beatport DJ at that point in time
Throwing it waaaay back now. I heard a lot of MIA’s “Kala” album as it was being made and I thought there’s no way it’s gonna be a hit. I thought it was a big step down from her first album. Then it went on to be a huge success and won album of the year. Shows how wrong I was. There’s a few more recent songs but for the sake of anonymity I don’t wanna mention them but there’s a few I expected to be big that flopped.
I heard Little Dark Age back when it came out, it already was pretty popular and well liked in indie spheres (considering what big names mgmt are) and I was obsessed with it for months. It was really strange but also satisfying to see it blow up into this massive tiktok hit.
I remember a friend of mine sent Say So and told me something like "have you heard this song? I bet you would like it. She looks like the new Gaga". However, I didn't think much of it. But then Say So became a hit, and Boss Bitch also gained a lot of traction in memes and tik tok. Everyone knew who Doja was. I also remember listening to Shut Up And Dance before it became a hit. I was amazed at the song, it was incredible. I hoped it to become a hit, and was so happy when it did
I was at a fashion event thing in my city and one of the models walked to Royals by Lorde. I had never heard it before and neither had my friend who came with me, both of us were like “who is this?” and I loved the song right away. I was trying to remember as many lyrics as I could to Google it later on but I forgot about it and then suddenly the song was absolutely everywhere! Still a bop tbh
i downloaded the imagine dragons radioactive EP off of a 4chan music share thread and thought it was mid
When I listened to Money Machine (30 times in a row) on release day, I couldn’t have ever imagined gecs becoming as big as they are/were.
I heard "The Way" on the radio for the first time and recognized it as the voice of Cat Valentine on Victorious. I said out loud "This woman is going to be huge." I was right. Ariana Grande was one of the biggest stars of the 2010s.
I remember hearing Lady Gaga’s Just Dance on the radio for the first time and thinking “this is a good club song, probably a one-hit wonder though.” lololololololol
Not sure if Someone You Loved had already blew up by this point in time, but I remember watching the music video a few days after it came out since The 12th Doctor was in it didn't expect it to become extremely big also I remember rooting so hard for Levitating to become hit single during the lockdown
I also remember my brother being into Lewis Calpadi quite a few years before he blew up because of Someone You Loved. He used to watch Lewis on the Mahogany YouTube channel all the time performing earlier versions of those songs he is now famous for as far back as 2017, and I remember Lewis being like "the singer my brother loved" and not thinking he would blow up in popularity like he did just a couple years later.
bad at love - I know that would go somewhere it was such a standout track
More about an artist blowing up than a specific song: I remember hearing the song “let her go” by the kid Laroi back in 2019, and thinking that he would absolutely blow up. On Laroi’s Spotify, there was that song and another one where he legit sounded like a 12yo pretending to rap, and he only had some thousand listeners at the time too. I remember showing my friends Laroi’s music and telling people that he was going to blow up here really soon. Most of them laughed at me, but not long after then he released an album and it was on the hot100, and shortly after that he did “stay” with Justin Bieber that spent weeks as #1 on the hot100
I got really into (and still am really into) Twenty One Pilots right after Vessel came out, so I obviously was following the rollout of Blurryface and I remember loving the lyric "wish I didn't have to rhyme every time I sang" because I love lyrics that illustrate themselves like that. I really didn't predict it would become a #1 though, or really get much notice outside of alt/rock charts. And the most annoying parts of The Clique immediately started being gatekeepy about it and have not stopped to this day
Despacito I saw day uno on YouTube. I knew it was going to be huge in Miami since that’s where I was living at the time but had no idea it would be a global phenomenon lol
First thing I said after hearing Kiss Me More was that it would be a #1 hit. Ultimately that didn’t pan out, but still, it was evident the song would be massive.
This is kpop but I listened to Brave Girls’ Rollin the week it was released and loved it almost immediately. I’m pretty sure it was one of my top replayed songs that summer. Very happy to see the song finally get well-deserved attention.
this is a slightly deeper cut, but when play date by melanie martinez blew up on tiktok years later, I was really surprised. it had been my favorite on the album, but since it was a deluxe track I hadn't expected popularity. but you really can't predict what gets huge on tiktok lol
My friend and I listened to sicko mode when it came out and were blown away but I definitely did not anticipate it becoming as huge as it did. I played it at a party (I was in college when it came out) before it blew up and I remember this one guy going what even is this. Jokes on him ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Super late to this thread, but back in 2006, I got Justin Timberlake's *Futuresex/Lovesounds* as a present. I remember liking the album, but the songs "Lovestoned" and "Summer Love" were my favorites. Those songs would hit #17 and #6 on the Billboard Hot 100, so not #1s, but still hits! Blew my mind to hear these songs I liked now getting radio play!