Popular Songs Everyone Knows That Never Became Billboard Hits

Strange as it may seem, some of the biggest songs in rock history — foundational classics that even casual listeners would probably know — were complete and total flops when they first emerged. Eventually, as the artists behind them became bigger stars or recovered from a downturn in popularity, these songs found an audience. Over time, some non-hits became signature songs, concert staples, and classic rock radio favorites.

While there are many beloved and ubiquitous classic rock songs everyone thinks hit No. 1 but never did, there are also the songs that are part of the omnipresent rock 'n' roll canon that, upon their initial release in the '60s, '70s, and '80s, failed to land anywhere on Billboard's Hot 100, the music chart of record. These popular songs, including classics from the Doors, David Bowie, and Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, weren't chart hits, and yet they endured anyway to become pop culture touchstones.

The Doors were one of the most progressive and daring bands of the late 1960s, taking rock to strange, psychedelic new places to the delight of the counterculture and maturing boomers. Led by mystical poet and agitator Jim Morrison, the Doors were wildly successful on the singles chart, if they didn't get too aggressive. The band got into the Top 10 with three singles, all of them tame and melodic love songs: "Light My Fire," "Hello, I Love you," and "Touch Me."

The group's spookier songs with long instrumental journeys or harder-edged musical and lyrical content struggled to get radio airplay and thus pop chart placement. Hardcore Doors fans dutifully bought the band's albums, to the point of gold and platinum status, seeking out mind-benders like "Break on Through (To the Other Side)." Full of gloomy guitar and Morrison's lyrics about expanding one's mind, the psychedelic classic is the Doors' third-most-popular song on Spotify, at 440 million streams. But back in 1967, the year when the Doors hit No. 1 with "Light My Fire," the single version of "Break on Through (To the Other Side) missed the Hot 100 altogether.

"Bad to Bone" opens with one of the most famous blues licks of all time, a guitar riff that still gives us chills every time we listen. Before long, other tropes and elements kick in to make George Thorogood and the Destroyers' most familiar song a blues-rock classic, such as a ripping saxophone solo, the repeated "b-b-b-b-b-b-bad" vocal trick, and the boastful lyrics about being an incorrigible and dangerous rogue. "Bad to the Bone" has been used so many dozens of times in movies and TV shows to instantly signify that a character is attractively menacing that it's become a cliché, while also making the tune feel much older than it is. Thorogood and company had been releasing hard-hitting blues and rock for half a decade before the "Bad to the Bone" 45 hit stores in 1982.

While the album that spawned "Bad to the Bone" and shared its name sold half a million copies in about three years' time, the song couldn't register enough sales or airplay to appear on the Hot 100. "Bad to the Bone" remains the band's most popular streaming selection by far, topping 320 million hits.

The illustrious chart run of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers got underway in 1978, when the single "Breakdown" became their first song to hit the Top 40. That success was actually the result of a re-release, with "Breakdown" initially issued in 1976. After that first attempt by Shelter Records to break the band wide, the label put out "American Girl." While "Breakdown" was bluesy, raw, and slow, "American Girl" was a soaring, inviting anthem playing off of nostalgia, Americana, and ringing guitar riffs — all which would become hallmarks of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. And yet, the song never graced the Hot 100. 

With and without the Heartbreakers, Petty rocked the Top 40 with 16 singles, but "American Girl" was not among them. It made it onto the below-Hot 100 Billboard "Bubbling Under" chart in 1994, though, after the release of a Heartbreakers greatest hits compilation on which "American Girl" appeared, even though it hadn't technically been a "hit." It would've been foolish to not include that quintessential Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers song on that collection. It's the tune the group performed live more than any other as well as their second-best performer on Spotify, with 464 million listens.

In the late 1970s, David Bowie and producer Brian Eno convened in Germany to record a series of experimental rock albums colloquially referred to as the "Berlin Trilogy." Those LPs, "Low," "'Heroes,'" and "Lodger," rank among the most critically acclaimed of the '70s and of Bowie's works, but they were a little too odd and future-forward to be immediate smashes. Of the three albums, only "Low" generated a Hot 100 single: "Sound and Vision" peaked at No. 69.

But the most famous Bowie track of the era is the title song from "'Heroes.'" Bursting with a pervasive, shimmering riff, some passionate guitar solos, and anthemic lyrics, "Heroes" was made available as a single in the U.S. in 1977 but didn't appear on the Hot 100 at all. Over time, it turned into one of the most popular entries in Bowie's extensive catalog. It was well known enough by 1998 that hot band of the era the Wallflowers covered it for the soundtrack of the blockbuster "Godzilla" and released it as a single that made the Top 5 of Billboard's rock chart. The original evolved into one of Bowie's absolute biggest — it's his third-most-listened-to song on Spotify, with 712 million spins as of 2026.

With his rebellious attitude, bleached hair, and loud guitar rock, Billy Idol took 1970s punk and turned it into 1980s pop. Throughout that decade and into the early 1990s, Idol scaled the charts with his unique blend of the tough and familiar, scoring nine Top 40 singles and amassing a catalog good enough to earn him induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. However, one of Idol's best-received song wasn't one of his many hits. "Dancing With Myself" is among Idol's top five most-performed songs and top 10 most streamed, with two versions amassing a combined 300 million-plus plays.

After leaving his U.K. band Generation X to try a solo career in the U.S., Idol remixed and released that group's propulsive, jerky, and suggestive "Dancing With Myself" under his own name in 1981. It flopped, missing the Hot 100 altogether. It wasn't until Idol's handlers at Chrysalis Records tested out the more radio-friendly "Hot in the City" the following year that Idol got into the Top 30 and set his solo career in motion — but the attention wasn't enough to propel "Dancing With Myself" to the Hot 100.