Anatomy of a Hit is a new feature on This Must Be Pop, where my task is to analyse the highest new entry to the UK singles chart top 10 each week. This week it’s a song that’s been bubbling under for a while…
#1 – Storm Queen – Look Right Through
Most of you will only know Shazam as a music discovery app, but for chart geeks and trend-spotters it has another purpose. Each week Shazam send their subscribers a chart of the most tagged pre-release singles, and the data is invaluable to the music industry, because it shows which tracks are connecting with the public. Radio stations and record labels follow the chart religiously, and it can determine whether a song gets playlisted and the size of the marketing budget come release week.
Look Right Through by Storm Queen is a track which I, and I’m sure many others in the industry, first discovered lurking around the lower end of the Shazam chart. In fact, I first noticed it in a few of the regional Shazam charts (which you can check on the app) back in August. It didn’t take long to rise to no.1, and it stayed there until it was released on 3rd November. First week sales of around 100,000 are certainly impressive for an artist with no official chart history, but for those who follow the Shazam chart, it was no surprise at all.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9c3EQhtf9-U]
Similar to What I Might Do by Ben Pearce, which I featured in Anatomy of a Hit a few weeks ago, Look Right Through had been around for over a year before it became Storm Queen’s breakthrough hit. It was first released in late 2011, but a new, sleeker remix by Marc Kinchen caught on in the clubs as part of the current house music trend (see also Duke Dumont, Disclosure). Thanks to the Shazam buzz, Look Right Through was playlisted by Radio 1, Kiss and Capital, which brought the track to a more mainstream audience and sent it soaring up the charts.
Come back next Monday to read my thoughts on the highest new entry in the top 10. Will it be Lily Allen, Ellie Goulding, Martin Garrix or something else entirely? Tweet me your predictions now!
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