The Best Loved
Musical HITS
Musical soundtracks:
what gets the world singing?
Whether you’ve seen them on Broadway, the West End or just in the cinema, musicals are some of our favourite forms of entertainment. With so many inspiring stories and iconic songs, it can be hard to pick a favourite. So, we did some research to find out the world’s best-loved musical hits.
Using Spotify play counts, we pinpointed the top musicals and their best-loved songs — both those made into movies and on Broadway and the West End.
Top Broadway/West End Musical Hits
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Movie
Musical Hits
Top 20
Of the movie musicals, the 2017 smash hit The Greatest Showman takes the top spot with over 416 million listens for the track ‘Rewrite The Stars’, performed by Zac Efron and Zendaya. This song soars above the rest of the list, with the next spot taken by the 1978 musical Grease and the classic hit ‘You’re The One That I Want’, having more than 174 million streams.
Rewrite The Stars
416,207,352
listens
You're The One That I Want
174,869,256
listens
Lady Marmalade
161,849,896
listens
City Of Stars - Duet
125,947,336
listens
Listen
80,023,410
listens
|
6Mamma Mia! - Honey, Honey, 53,545,587 listens |
|
7Rent - Seasons Of Love, 53,224,740 listens |
|
8Mamma Mia! - Here We Go Again - When I Kissed The Teacher, 47,617,155 listens |
|
9Les Miserables - One Day More, 34,139,501 listens |
|
10Hairspray - You Can’t Stop The Beat, 31,354,599 listens |
|
11Fame - Fame, 28,613,723 listens |
|
12The Rocky Horror Picture Show - Time Warp, 26,706,306 listens |
|
13Annie - You’re Never Fully Dressed Without A Smile, 24,790,550 listens |
|
14Chicago - Cell Block Tango, 22,027,837 listens |
|
15The Phantom Of The Opera - The Phantom Of The Opera, 19,765,249 listens |
|
16The Sound Of Music - My Favourite Things, 19,697,351 listens |
|
17The Blues Brothers - Everybody Needs Somebody To Love, 14,844,702 listens |
|
18The Wizard Of Oz - Over The Rainbow, 12,762,468 listens |
|
19Funny Girl - Don’t Rain On My Parade, 12,040,350 listens |
|
20Across The Universe - All My Loving, 11,996,963 listens |
Movie musical hits - ranked
|
Rank
|
Musical Name
|
SONG Name
|
Release Date
|
Listen Count
|
|---|
Broadway/
West end
Musical Hits
Top 20
The results are very different when we look at Broadway and West End productions, with breakout success Hamilton stealing the spotlight — the musical mixes rap and hip-hop with traditional showtunes, and is written by and stars Mary Poppins Returns actor Lin-Manuel Miranda. The opening number, ‘Alexander Hamilton’, takes the top spot with nearly 115 million listens. This is followed by the 2015 musical Dear Evan Hansen, with Pitch Perfect and Netflix’s The Politician star Ben Platt in the leading role. Its best-known song, ‘Waving Through A Window’, sits at number two with over 72 million listens.
Alexander Hamilton
114,934,000
listens
Waving Through A Window
72,017,121
listens
Defying Gravity
66,636,045
listens
Candy Store
32,693,819
listens
Preludium
23,225,451
listens
|
6The Book Of Mormon - Hello! 22,057,148 listens |
|
7Waitress - She Used To Be Mine, 20,529,149 listens |
|
8The Lion King - Circle Of Life, 15,840,319 listens |
|
9Newsies - Seize The Day, 13,464,310 listens |
|
10Matilda - Revolting Children, 11,422,903 listens |
|
11In The Heights - Breathe, 10,957,577 listens |
|
12Mean Girls - I’d Rather Be Me, 10,928,730 listens |
|
13Legally Blonde - Omigod You Guys, 10,899,209 listens |
|
14The Phantom Of The Opera - The Phantom Of The Opera, 9,325,466 listens |
|
15Anastasia - Once Upon A December, 8,878,733 listens |
|
16Les Miserables - One Day More, 8,044,669 listens |
|
17Aladdin - Friend Like Me, 7,711,195 listens |
|
18 Spring Awakening - The Bitch Of Living, 7,674,262 listens |
|
19 Jersey Boys - Sherry, 7,563,729 listens |
|
20 Chess - Anthem, 6,740,494 listens |
Just two songs appear on both lists: ‘One Day More’ from Les Miserables, with a cumulative 42,184,170 listens; and ‘The Phantom Of The Opera’ from The Phantom Of The Opera, with a combined 29,090,715 streams.
Broadway/West End musical hits - ranked
|
Rank
|
Musical Name
|
SONG Name
|
RECORDING
|
Listen Count
|
|---|
METHODOLOGY
In order to compare songs, we first created a list of popular musicals using IMDB and What’s On Stage as well as looking at Spotify playlists to determine which musicals people are listening to. We then looked at all the songs on the musical albums that have at least 1 million listens.
We also only looked at those movies that are considered true musicals as opposed to those films heavily featuring singing such as A Star Is Born, Bohemian Rhapsody and Once.
To create our final ranking, we only took the top song from each musical. Our top 20 features the most popular songs from 20 different productions, however our full lists feature 150 songs as a comprehensive collection.