Alabama Shakes Launch ‘Sound & Color’ Onto Billboard + Clio Top Commercials Chart, Powered by Shazam
You've seen the commercial a couple dozen times, and now its song is atop a Billboard chart.
It’s been a good month for Alabama Shakes. Not only did the band gain four Grammy Award nominations — including one for album of the year for Sound & Color — but the group also snagged heightened awareness of the album’s title track thanks to its prominent placement in a new commercial for Apple’s iPad Pro. (Not to mention frontwoman Brittany Howard’s honor as Powerhouse at Billboard’s Women in Music event, airing tonight at 8 p.m. ET on Lifetime.)
Alabama Shakes’ Brittany Howard Accepts Powerhouse Honor, Performs ‘Joe’ at Billboard Women in Music
After the ad’s debut Nov. 9, the song was tagged by Shazam users enough through the end of the month to gain the top spot on Billboard + Clio Music’s Top Commercials chart, powered by Shazam, for November.
Using tagging data from Shazam, as well as sales and streaming information tracked by Nielsen Music, Billboard partners with Clio Music each month to present a chart ranking the top songs in commercials. Rankings exclude any song that has recently charted within the top 40 of the Billboard Hot 100.
“Sound & Color,” the newest single from the album, received just over 200,000 Shazam tags for the month to gain the No. 1 slot. Those tags most certainly translated to digital sales; in all, the song sold 41,000 downloads in November, up from less than 1,000 in October, to go with 2.3 million U.S. streams. The strong sales performance led to multiple weeks on Billboard’s Rock Digital Songs chart, with a peak of No. 6 on the marker dated Dec. 12. That was enough to vault the song onto the Hot Rock Songs chart as well, peaking at No. 12 the same week.
November tends to mean the start of the holiday commercial season, and 2015 was no different, with three seasonal songs making the Top Commercials chart for the month. Leading the pack: Stevie Wonder and Andra Day‘s update of “Someday at Christmas,” also featured in an Apple ad. The song debuts at No. 2 thanks to 132,000 Shazam tags and has been viewed 2.8 million times on YouTube since premiering Nov. 25.
Glade brought back its holiday commercials series with a new version of “This Is My Wish,” this time performed by Old Wave; last year’s version, performed by Kevin Ross, topped this chart for the month of December 2014. The song hits No. 10 with 21,000 Shazam tags. Lady Gaga and Tony Bennett‘s take on “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” for Barnes & Noble also barely squeaks onto the chart at No. 15 due to 11,000 tags.
As for non-seasonal affairs, Australian singer and rapper Tkay Maidza’s 2014 track “U-huh” makes the Top Commercials chart in November due to its inclusion in one of the commercials part of Twitter’s first major television ad campaign, this one chronicling the Pope’s visit to America in fall 2014. The song starts at No. 8 after Shazam tags numbered 26,000 in November.
