What’s the Most Shazamed Song of All Time?

Shazam is 20 years old. Can you believe it?! The iconic music-identifying app was released 20 years ago, and as of last week officially surpassed 70 billion song recognitions. To mark the occasion, Shazam is inviting fans to take a little trip down memory lane with a special playlist filled with the most Shazamed songs of each calendar year for the past 20 years.

Although we’ve all grown accustomed to the app, Shazam originally started as a text service where you had to call “2580” and hold your phone up in the air to identify the song. How far we’ve come in 20 years.

Despite Shazam being a global app, there’s been a lot of local Aussie wins on the app. Masked Wolf ended up having the most Shazamed track globally in 2021 with ‘Astronaut in the Ocean’, while Tones And I‘s ‘Dance Monkey’ is the fastest track to reach 20 million Shazams and is the most Shazamed song ever with over 41 million streams.

For some great pub trivia, Drake is the most Shazamed artist of all time, and the first ever song to be Shazamed (using the text service) was ‘Crazy’ by Gnarls Barkley, which is the biggest nostalgic trip.

Let’s see what music fans from across the globe have been searching for over the past two decades, shall we?

The most Shazamed songs of all time

As mentioned, the most Shazamed song ever with over 41 million Shazams is none other than ‘Dance Monkey’ by Tones And I.

Drake has over 350 million Shazams across songs that he has either led or featured on, making him the most Shazamed artist of all time. ‘One Dance’ is his most popular song with over 17 million Shazams.

You can check out and listen to the rest of the most Shazamed songs in the past 20 years in a playlist exclusively on Apple Music.

Top Shazamed songs by genre

• Top Hip-Hop/Rap: ‘Can’t Hold Us’ by Macklemore and Ryan Lewis feat. Ray Dalton
• Top Dance: ‘Prayer In C (Robin Schulz Radio Edit)’ by Lilly Wood & The Prick and Robin Schulz
• Top R&B/Soul: ‘All of Me by John Legend
• Top Latin: ‘Mi Gente’ by J Balvin and Willy William
• Top Pop: ‘Let Her Go’ by Passenger
• Top Alternative: ‘Dance Monkey’ by Tones And I
• Top Singer/Songwriter: ‘Take Me to Church’ by Hozier

Notable firsts

Whilst these songs and artists may not be the most Shazmaed of all time or of any particular year, these achievements deserve some recognition.

• First Shazamed song on the iOS app: ‘How Am I Different’ by Aimee Mann (July 10, 2008)
• First to reach 1,000 Shazams: ‘Cleanin’ Out My Closet’ by Eminem (September 2002)
• First to reach one million Shazams: ‘TiK ToK’ by Ke$ha (February 2010)
• First to reach 10 million Shazams: ‘Somebody That I Used to Know’ by Gotye feat. Kimbra (December 2012)
• First to reach 20 million Shazams: ‘Prayer In C (Robin Schulz Radio Edit)’ by Lilly Wood & The Prick and Robin Schulz (October 2015)
• First artist to hit 1 million Shazams: Lil Wayne (February 2009)
• First artist to hit 10 million Shazams: Lil Wayne (June 2011)
• First artist to hit 100 million Shazams: David Guetta (May 2015)

And these are the songs that were the fastest to accumulate Shazams.

• Fastest track to reach 1 million Shazams: ‘Butter’ by BTS (nine days)
• Fastest track to reach 10 million Shazams: ‘Shape of You’ by Ed Sheeran (87 days)
• Fastest track to reach 20 million Shazams: ‘Dance Monkey’ by Tones And I (219 days)

Whether you liked the song or not, it’s hard to deny the impact ‘Dance Monkey’ had on us when it was released.

Although it’s not reflected in the list, Kate Bush’s 1985 song ‘Running Up That Hill’ took No. 1 on the Shazam Global Top 200 for 10 days after it was featured in that iconic Stranger Things episode.

From identifying whatever song is playing around you to showing you what nearby concerts are on, it’s wild to think Shazam has been helping us for over 20 years. With more than 225 million global monthly users, Shazam is probably going to be around for another 20.

Happy Birthday, Shazam!