This 'Incredibly Annoying' '80s Hit Has Been Streamed Over 700 Million Times ...Saudi Arabia

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This Incredibly Annoying 80s Hit Has Been Streamed Over 700 Million Times

Just because a song makes it to the top of the charts at one point doesn't mean it's destined for legendary status. Oftentimes, the court of public opinion changes its verdict over the years, with once-popular tunes becoming lost or eventually inspiring more vitriol than singalongs. Sometimes, though, a hit can continue to be success...even after people decide it's kind of awful.

Take, for example, the case of Swedish rock band Europe's 1986 hit "The Final Countdown." Released on the group's 1986 album of the same name, the song went on to hit number one in 25 countries, climbing to the #8 spot on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100.

    However, over the course of a couple of decades, music lovers apparently had a change of heart.

    In a 2011 Rolling Stone reader's poll, "The Final Countdown" was named the second worst song of the '80s, with writer Andy Greene calling the keyboard part "catchy in an irritating way," but going on to note that the "whole thing is just incredibly annoying."

    The tune might be irritating, but it seems at least some of the people who claim to hate it are still listening. At the time of this writing, "The Final Countdown" has been streamed 748,384,505 times on Spotify — even more than the #1 worst song on the same Rolling Stone reader's poll, “We Built This City” by Starship (streamed over 669 million times as of this month).

    "The Final Countdown" might owe some of its enduring popularity to the fact that it's been played at countless sporting events; the song was also featured prominently in a GEICO ad and on the series Arrested Development.

    'The Final Countdown' was inspired by a David Bowie classic

    In a 2023 interview with Ultimate Classic Rock, Europe vocalist Joey Tempest opened up about how David Bowie's "Space Oddity" helped to inspire the celestially-themed lyrics for "The Final Countdown."

    "One of the first singles that I bought was 'Space Oddity,'" Tempest recalled. "I also liked 'Starman' a lot. I was fascinated with Bowie’s fascination with space and space travel. I got really into it myself. So when I was working on the lyrics for 'The Final Countdown,' I played it probably a hundred times, singing until the right words came. One day, it just came, 'The Final Countdown,' after that drum fill."

    "I knew that the verses and everything were leading up to the same thing that he was singing about, leaving the Earth, floating out there and going somewhere else," Tempest continued. "It’s a melodic entertaining song and it kind of worked that way. That’s the funny thing about that song. People use it for weddings and fun things and the message is different, but it’s still an uplifting song."Clearly all those weddings are contributing to the song's status on Spotify...annoying or not.

    Related: 'The Most Detested Song in Human History' Has Been Streamed Hundreds of Millions of Times

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