Bowie’s most popular songs, according to science

Music fans the world over are mourning the loss of legendary British glam rocker David Bowie this week.

Much of that mourning includes the playing of Bowie’s many classic hits – but which ones are you most likely to hear?

Researchers at McMaster’s Digital Music Lab can make a pretty educated guess.

Led by Matthew Woolhouse, researchers at the lab have access to a database of more than 1.3 billion music downloads made by more than 17 million people in some 30 countries around the globe between 2007 and 2014.

We asked graduate student Michael Barone to pull some data specifically on Bowie, to get a sense of the star’s global popularity.

The data show that Bowie is the 14^th most popular rock artist in the database, behind the likes of Queen, U2, Elvis Presley and others.

He’s also the 7^th most internationally-popular artist, with downloads coming from a wide range of countries.

But the real question, of course, is which of Bowie’s songs are the most popular?

According to the lab’s data, the most downloaded Bowie song is Let’s Dance.

The rest of the top 10, in order of popularity, are:

2. Fame
3. Under Pressure
4. Starman
5. Space Oddity
6. Life on Mars?
7. China Girl
8. Ashes to Ashes
9. Ziggy Stardust
10. Heroes

Bowie’s most popular album? His self-titled debut album, David Bowie.