PavementCalifornian indie rock legends Pavement have scored their first-ever gold record in the US, thanks to TikTok and Spotify getting on board with a B-side initially recorded in 1996 and released in 1999.
Harness Your Hopes, a song originally recorded for the band’s 1997 fourth studio album, Brighten The Corners, was released as a B-side on the 1999 EP Spit On A Stranger before the band included it on the 2008 expanded edition of Brighten The Corners, the Nicene Creedence Edition.
As to how a B-side went gold? In 2017, Harness Your Hopes became Pavement’s most-streamed song on Spotify, although the reasons were unknown. Stereogum suggested the song’s meteoric rise in popularity was due to a change in the streaming platform’s algorithm.
At the time of publication, Harness Your Hopes remains the most popular Pavement song on Spotify, racking up a mind-boggling 148,493,534 streams on the platform. Their second most popular song on Spotify, Cut Your Hair, has 42,566,373 streams.
However, Harness Your Hopes became the viral sensation it is today after TikTok users took hold of it in 2020 and again last month, with users uploading videos of themselves dancing to the song. A search for Harness Your Hopes on TikTok leads to results of 16 million videos.
In 2022, Pavement shared a music video for Harness Your Hopes.
The RIAA certified Harness Your Hopes as gold on Thursday, 16 May. Sharing the news on X (formerly known as Twitter), the band wrote, “PAVEMENT earned an @RIAA #Gold award!” On Instagram, they added alongside a screenshot of the song’s certification, “Go back to those gold soundz”.
Check out the 2022 music video below.
Pavement returned to Australia for their highly anticipated tour in February and March 2022. In addition to their headline dates, they led the first-ever Tent Pole: A Music Jamboree festival in Geelong.
Want to listen to Pavement but don’t know where to start? Check out The Music’s top ten Pavement songs list here.
