Indie

People love superlatives: Best, strongest, fastest, etc. That’s especially true of the music world, which brings us to today’s question:

What Is The Biggest Song Of All Time?

There are at least a few ways you could look at it.

One is RIAA certifications. In January, Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’” was certified 18-times platinum, tying it with Post Malone and Swae Lee’s “Sunflower” as the highest-certified song ever. However, in February, “Sunflower” re-took sole ownership of first place as it was certified 2-times diamond, or 20-times platinum. Currently in third behind both of those songs is Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road” at 17-times platinum. Worth noting, though, is that RIAA certifications only take into account data from the United States.

Another aspect to consider is sales of physical singles. Per Guinness World Records, the best-selling physical single of all time is Bing Crosby’s 1942 recording of “White Christmas,” which has sold an estimated 50 million copies worldwide. Meanwhile, according to a Far Out post from earlier this year, “Every Breath You Take” by The Police tops the list of the “most-played songs on radio stations worldwide.”

The fourth metric we’ll look at here is streams. As of January 2023, The Weeknd’s “Blinding Lights” is the most-streamed song globally in Spotify history. In January 2024, it became the first song to surpass 4 billion Spotify streams and it currently has 4.12 billion plays on the platform.

So, while there is concrete data to consider, what is truly the “biggest song of all time” depends on the value you place on said data. Maybe the answer is “Sunflower,” maybe it’s “White Christmas,” maybe it’s “Every Breath You Take,” maybe it’s “Blinding Lights,” or maybe it’s something else. Ultimately, it’s one of those questions that might be impossible to answer definitively.