Queen’s John Deacon-penned 1980 US No.1 smash hit single “Another One Bites The Dust” has just achieved over One Billion streams on Spotify.
“Another One Bites the Dust” was featured on the group’s eighth studio album, The Game, from 1980. The song was a worldwide hit, charting number one on the US Billboard Hot 100 for three weeks, from 4 October to 18 October (their second number-one single in the country).
The song spent 15 weeks in the Billboard top 10 (the longest running top ten song of 1980), including 13 weeks in the top five, and 31 weeks total on the chart (more than any other song in 1980). It reached number two on the Hot Soul Singles chart and the Disco Top 100 chart, and number seven on the UK Singles Chart. The song is credited as Queen’s best-selling single, with sales of over 7 million copies.
“Another One Bites The Dust” won an American Music Award for Favorite Rock Single and also garnered a Grammy Award nomination for Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal. It has since been covered, remixed and sampled by many artists since its release, and has also appeared in TV shows, commercials, films and other media. The song is still commonly used at sports events, aimed at the defeated opponent.
The song was also used in a preliminary cut of Rocky III, before being replaced by Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger”. “When one of my idols, Brian May, attended one of our shows in Los Angeles in 1984, he brought up that subject,” recalled Survivor guitarist Frankie Sullivan, to whom Sylvester Stallone had supplied a copy of the movie. “I offered to send him a copy of the tape, which I still own.”
John Deacon’s bass line for the song was reputedly inspired by “Good Times” by pioneering disco/funk outfit Chic. In an interview with NME, Chic co-founder Bernard Edwards stated, “That Queen record came about because that Queen bass player… spent some time hanging out with us at our studio.”