Popularity
The song reached number eight on Billboard's Mainstream Rock chart, and number nine on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.
The song was released in the United Kingdom in December 1981 and peaked only at number 62. However, the song, never re-released in the UK, retained a cult following and re-entered the UK Singles Chart in February 2009 at number 94, due to digital downloads. On December 20, 2009, it reached number 9 in the Christmas chart week ending December 26, 2009, and remained in the top 10 well into 2010, hitting a peak of number 6. It has now achieved 63 weeks on the UK Singles Chart, making it the 9th longest runner of all time, and 89 weeks on the Top 100.
It topped downloads in the iTunes Music Store amongst songs not released in the 21st century, and was also the 72nd most downloaded song of 2008, and 84th most downloaded song of 2009 in the store, over 27 years after its release. On 31 August 2009 the song topped the 3 million mark in paid downloads, and has sold 5,433,000 digital units in the US by October 2012. It was placed just outside of the top twenty best selling digital songs of all time on September 2010.
The song is one of the most popular rock tracks in Ireland and continues to remain in the top ten most downloaded songs.
Read more about this topic: Don't Stop Believin'
Famous quotes containing the word popularity:
“A more problematic example is the parallel between the increasingly abstract and insubstantial picture of the physical universe which modern physics has given us and the popularity of abstract and non-representational forms of art and poetry. In each case the representation of reality is increasingly removed from the picture which is immediately presented to us by our senses.”
—Harvey Brooks (b. 1915)
“The nation looked upon him as a deserter, and he shrunk into insignificancy and an earldom.... He was fixed in the house of lords, that hospital of incurables, and his retreat to popularity was cut off; for the confidence of the public, when once great and once lost, is never to be regained.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“There are few cases in which mere popularity should be considered a proper test of merit; but the case of song-writing is, I think, one of the few.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1845)