Some songs are destined for the top of the charts. “Love Song” by Sara Bareilles was not supposed to be one of them. It was written in frustration, released quietly, and debuted at the very bottom of the Billboard Hot 100. What happened next is one of the better underdog stories in 2000s pop music.
The Backstory: A Song Written in Spite
Late in the recording process for Little Voice, Epic Records was still hunting for a hit single, and Bareilles was struggling to deliver. She caught herself critiquing her own ideas the way she imagined the A&R team might, and it sent her over the edge. “I got mad at myself for letting those doubts creep into my brain,” she said, “and swore I would write something totally honest, whatever it may be, good or bad.”
The result was a piano-driven pop song built around a refusal. The inspiration came largely from co-writing sessions that Epic and Sony wanted her to do — sessions where Bareilles felt she couldn’t be authentic because she was still figuring out who she was as an artist. Ironically, the tune proved to be exactly what the label wanted.
The Slow Burn: From iTunes Freebie to Chart Debut
Featured initially as the free iTunes song of the week on June 16, 2007, the song was a sleeper hit, debuting a few months later at number 100 on the US Billboard Hot 100. Dead last. The very bottom rung of the most famous singles chart in the world. For most songs, that’s where the story ends.
But “Love Song” had other plans.
The Rocket: A TV Commercial Changes Everything
After being featured in a Rhapsody commercial in 2007, “Love Song” began climbing the pop charts, jumping from No. 73 to No. 16 in a single week. That’s not a climb — that’s a catapult. Fifty-seven spots in seven days, driven almost entirely by television exposure.
In the first week of 2008, the song cracked the top 10, jumping to number nine, where it stayed for four non-consecutive weeks before reaching a peak of number four.
The Peak and the Legacy
Number four is remarkable on its own. But what makes “Love Song” truly special is its staying power. The song spent 19 weeks in the top ten and an overall 41 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100. While flashier songs peaked higher and vanished faster, “Love Song” just… stayed. It also reached number one on the Canadian Hot 100, while topping the US Mainstream Top 40 airplay chart, and ended the year at number one on both the Hot Adult Pop Songs and Hot Adult Contemporary Tracks year-end tallies.
The single was eventually certified six-times platinum by the RIAA, with over 3.7 million digital copies sold in the United States as of 2014. Not bad for a song that started at the very bottom.
The Beautiful Irony
A record label wanted a marketable love song. They got one — just not the kind they had in mind. As Bareilles explained to her hometown newspaper: “‘Love Song’ came out of my own frustration about trying to please somebody else with my music. That is not why I write songs.”
She was right, and the charts proved it.
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