White Stripes' 'Seven Nation Army' passes significant streaming marker

From Detroit rallying cry to international sports anthem, the White Stripes' "Seven Nation Army" has now achieved another distinction: It is the latest member of Spotify's 1 billion streams club. 

The 2003 song reached the milestone this week, and the White Stripes recognized the feat with a notice on Instagram Wednesday that thanked fans. 

"Seven Nation Army" is the opening track on the Detroit duo's "Elephant" album. It's familiar, instantly recognizable riff — da, da-DAA-dah-dah-dahhh, dahhhh — has become ubiquitous at sporting events, with fans chanting it everywhere from UK soccer stadiums to UM football games. 

The song was recorded in London in 2002; its title came from Jack White's childhood misunderstanding of the term Salvation Army.

The song has racked up 1,009,410,064 streams on Spotify as of Wednesday. It's by far the White Stripes' most popular song on the streaming service; its next most popular single is "Fell in Love With a Girl" with 146 million streams, followed by "Icky Thump" with 132 million streams.  

"Seven Nation Army" has been officially added to "BILLIONS CLUB," a Spotify playlist that includes every song with 1B streams on the service. 

To date, 212 songs have reached the 1 billion streams marker on Spotify. Eminem has three songs on the list: "Lose Yourself" (1.3B), "'Till I Collapse" (1.2B) and "Without Me" (1.04B). Justin Bieber and Post Malone lead all artists with six songs in the Billions Club, followed by Ed Sheeran, who has five.

Ed Sheeran's "Shape of You" is Spotify's most-streamed song, with 3.05B streams, followed by the Weeknd's "Blinding Lights" with 2.8B streams. 

agraham@detroitnews.com

@grahamorama