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Welcome back to Hit Parade, a podcast of Pop Chart History from Slate magazine about the hits from coast to coast.

I'm Chris Malanfi, chart analyst, pop critic, and writer of Slate's Why Is This Song Number One series?

On our last episode, I explained the concept of the legacy hit, a song that underperformed on the charts back in the day,

missing the top 10, top 40, or even the entire Hot 100,

that is now one of the first songs we think of when we hear an artist's name.

I'm now going to attempt the near impossible, ranking a top 10 list of the

greatest legacy hits of all time.

Before I try to rank what I consider the definitive legacy hits, we should set some parameters.

In this episode, I have already cited many songs that fell short of the number one spot

when they originally charted. But some still manage to crack the top ten, or even the top five.

While it's impressive that Sweet Caroline or Thong song have gone on to outperform their original chart runs,

those songs were not exactly struggling to begin with.

This explains, for example, why I will not be ranking journeys don't stop believing,

which by most metrics is a bigger legacy hit than anything on this list.

Don't stop believing.

Hold on to that feeling. list. Keep in mind, Believein' reached number 9 in 1981. It was a top 10 hit. In case you are curious, Journey's biggest chart hit of all time, i.e. the single

that did best in its moment, was the prom-worthy slow dance ballad, open arms from the same

journey album Escape. It spent six weeks at number two on the Hot 100 in early 1982.

For the record, nowadays, open arms does just fine in airplay and streaming,

46,000 radio spins in the last 12 months, and nearly 34 million streams.

But other journey hits that charted lower on the Hot 100 now do better than open arms,

...