Streaming World: Back To 2012

2012 TOP 100 HITS – #1

Imagine Dragons – Radioactive – 696 805 000

With It’s Time, On Top of the World and Demons all recording impressive entries on this tally, the #1 position of Radioactive had to be expected. At the time, Imagine Dragons couldn’t do something wrong.

This song is one more sleeper hit, the ultimate evidence that immediate impact isn’t always the best argument of success. Growers almost always end as bigger because if they started from nothing to become big, it’s because the public truly liked the song itself and not the artist or the promotion around it. Radioactive peaked at #12 in the UK on its 20th week on chart. In the US, by its week 20 the track still hadn’t break the Top 40. It ultimately peaked at #3 on its week 43. Indeed, the song took 42 weeks before reaching the Top 5, the slowest climb ever to that region of the charts. Radioactive also remains the longest charting song of all-time in the US as it featured inside the Hot 100 for an unreal 87 weeks.

Now well over 8 million download sales in the US alone, the song was so big at Spotify too that it led their all-time list at some point in 2014 until being topped by more recent songs, the first of them being Wake Me Up by Avicii.