The world hasn’t forgotten. Simple Minds’ classic “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” has reached one billion streams on Spotify, becoming the latest entrant in the platform’s vaunted Spotify Billions Club.
Upon its release in 1985, “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” was immortalized on the soundtrack to teen comedy The Breakfast Club, one of the defining films of its era. The song became a top 10 hit around the world, topping the chart in the United States and Canada and securing its place as one of the biggest hits of the 1980s.
Simple Minds almost did not record “Don’t You (Forget About Me).” Keith Forsey and Steve Schiff wrote the song for the movie soundtrack with Simple Minds singer Jim Kerr in mind, but the band was averse to recording material they hadn’t written, so they initially passed on the offer.
Eventually, they changed their tune, in part due to encouragement from Kerr’s wife at the time, Pretenders singer Chrissie Hynde. Adding his own touches such as the “Hey hey hey!” lyric from the introduction and the “La la la la!” section from the finale, Kerr gave voice to a generation-defining anthem. Despite the group’s initial hesitance, “when I listen to it now, it’s obviously a brilliant, well-crafted pop song,” the band’s guitarist Charlie Burchill later told The Guardian.
Simple Minds formed in the Glasgow punk scene in 1977 and quickly rose to fame in the UK and beyond. The band has sold 60 million albums worldwide, boasts 24 top 40 hits in the UK, and has been called the most commercially successful Scottish band of the 1980s. In 2016, the British Academy of Songwriters awarded Simple Minds an Ivor Novello Award for Outstanding Song Collection.
Listen to “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” on the Simple Minds compilation Celebrate.