For me it's because there are 2 versions that are equally huge and among the 5 biggest dance rock/party songs ever.

The Billy Idol version doesn't strike me as that huge, it was very big at the time but in terms of Billy Idol songs I definitely think Rebel Yell and White Wedding have surpassed it in popularity at this point. It's also not even listed on AcclaimedMusic. Does Mony Mony have significant influence?

Does Billy Idol doing it count as influence for the Tommy James version?

As I've told you before, I don't take the criteria literally. The live Idol version was a bigger hit than the studio version in the USA, but that studio version was the biggest rock dance record there was for the 80s and 90s. The other huge ones were "I Wanna Be Sedated" and "What I Like About You."

Read the Wikipedia article, especially the part about "get laid, get fucked." Tremendous cultural impact with that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mony_Mony

I'd say most of the next group of songs after it definitely beat it.

Here is how I'd score Mony Mony compared to the next group.

Mony Mony 4-4-2-2-4 Overall: 16
In The Still of the Nite 3-4-4-3-4 Overall: 18
Jumpin' Jack Flash 4-5-3-4-4 Overall: 19
Born To Be Wild 4-6-2-3-5 Overall: 20
Oh, Pretty Woman 4-6-2-4-3 Overall: 19
I Only Have Eyes for You 3-4-3-3-4 Overall: 17
Anarchy In the U.K. 1-4-4-5-4 Overall: 18
Dancing Queen 4-6-3-4-4 Overall: 21 (though this song should move up anyway and it probably will considering what Brian has said)
Sex Machine 3-4-4-4-3 Overall: 18
Waterfalls 4-4-3-3-4 Overall: 18
White Room 3-5-3-3-2 Overall: 16
Sympathy For the Devil 2-6-2-4-4 Overall: 18
Living for the City 3-4-4-3-4 Overall: 18
Lola 3-5-3-3-4 Overall: 18
Girls Just Want to Have Fun 4-6-2-3-4 Overall: 19
For What It's Worth 3-6-3-4-4 Overall: 20
Sultans of Swing 4-6-2-3-3 Overall: 18
Lean On Me 4-6-2-2-4 Overall: 18
Planet Rock 2-3-4-4-5 Overall: 18
What's Love Got To Do With It? 4-6-2-3-4 Overall: 19
Born In The U.S.A. 3-5-2-4-4 Overall: 18
With Or Without You 4-6-2-3-3 Overall: 18
Fight For Your Right 3-4-4-3-4 Overall:18
Loser 4-4-3-4-3 Overall: 18
Gangsta's Paradise 4-6-3-3-3 Overall: 19
Nothing Compares 2 U 4-4-2-4-3 Overall: 17
For Your Precious Love 4-4-3-2-4 Overall: 17
Blueberry Hill 4-5-3-4-4 Overall: 20
Brown Eyed Girl 4-6-3-4-3 Overall: 20
Tracks of My Tears 4-5-3-4-3 Overall: 19
California Dreamin' 4-6-3-4-3 Overall: 20
Fortunate Son 3-6-3-4-4 Overall: 20
Kashmir 2-5-3-4-2 Overall: 16
Heart of Glass 4-5-3-4-3 Overall: 19
Theme from "Shaft" 4-4-3-3-4 Overall: 18
Me and Bobby Mcgee 4-5-2-3-3 Overall: 17
Baba O' Riley 1-6-4-4-3 Overall: 18
Fire and Rain 4-5-3-3-3 Overall: 18
Paranoid 2-6-5-4-3 Overall: 20
Heart of Gold 4-5-3-3-3 Overall: 18


Even if you don't want to take the criteria too literally most of those songs clearly beat it, imo.

I plan to move it up on the decade list and would support moving it up on this list.

Have you ever been DJing and blasted on "Mony Mony" for like 600 people? It gets a MUCH BIGGER Reaction than any of the songs on your above list.

BTW, I have never heard "Anarchy In The UK" played anywhere in my life. No radio, no clubs, nothing. And I was very active in music when it was current. I only know it from checking it out myself. And it's dogshit. It was close to nothing in America. Even their so called "album" did not even crack the top 100 on Billboard's LP chart and had just a 12 week run in the bottom half of the top 200.

Geez, what kind of 600 people were that? I'm guessing they must have been averaging about my Dad's age, and he was born in WWII. Or maybe America is just very different from the rest of the world...

Fwiw I did give it some credit for it's success as a party song, on Spotify it has 22 million plays which would not result in a score as high as four. I could see Anarchy In the UK being bumped down to a 3 in lasting popularity which would result in 17 points.

I don't think Mony Mony would do very well at a dance club nowadays, (of course I've never been a club dj but I'm fairly confident that it wouldn't, at least with people under the age of 40).

No, they were usually a little younger than me, people who would have been born between like 1961 and 1967.

Is that the combined total of the TJ, and both BI versions?

I don't know where it stands among today's under 40 crowd, but I don't make these lists based only on the current standing of the records. "Stairway To Heaven" is not ranked where it is because it's big with today's under 40s.

The Billy Idol version has 77 million plays which is pretty unimpressive for an 80s song.. Stairway has more than 750 million plays on Spotify so it's not a fair comparison between that and Mony Mony.

Is that the studio version and the live version combined?

By the way, from what I know about Spotify, there are usually several versions of each song available from various albums and collections.

Does Spotify have a breakdown of their users by age and other demographics?

Unless I'm wrong about this Spotify only shows the # of plays an artists top 10 songs and it only showed one version of Mony Mony.

On Last.Fm there are 2 versions of Mony Mony among the Top 50 tracks for Billy Idol with 191k and 27k. For Tommy James the only version of Mony Mony among his 50 most played tracks has 82k. Billy Idol's most played song on Last.Fm and Spotify is Rebel Yell with 584k listeners (with 2 other version of the song in Billy Idol's top 50 tracks) and 274m plays respectively and for Tommy James his most played for both is Crimson and Clover with 220k listeners (and 9 other version of the song in Tommy James' top 50) and 89m plays respectively.

From 1958:

#13 For “Rock Around Clock”

PHILADELPHIA— The rock and roll “standard,” “Rock Around The Clock” will be heard in its 13th film when it appears in the MGM flick “The Reluctant Debutante.” The song, which MGM effectively employed in “Blackboard Jungle,” has a catalogue of over one hundred recordings in over twenty languages, and its Bill Haley version has a world wide sale of over eight million, according to James E. Myers, publisher of the song.

In total spotify has 456 million users.

According to this
[url][https://www.statista.com/statistics/475821/spotify-users-age-usa//url]

Here is the age breakdown of Spotify's users.

18-24: 26%
25-34: 29%
35-44: 16%
45-54: 11%
55+: 19%

So spotify actually has a pretty good amount of older pepole using it