Historically, in radio speak, you spend endless hours with a new album debating what the first single sent to radio ahead of the album's release should be (I know, everything's different in the digital age, but let's talk 1979 here....) in order to create the best buzz for sales. In my years in Christian radio, I thought my colleagues in Nashville got it right most of the time, but occasionally I would get an advance copy of a new release, listen to it, and find a song I thought would work best as the first single, but it wasn't chosen.
Normally, by the time you hit the fourth single, it's over a quick lunch on a day you're focused on a new release coming in six months, i.e., there's not nearly the energy poured into the decision. Sometimes the singles are all laid out in advance, and not others.
Now, here we are, 37 years later, and countless millions of people worldwide know this song by its first five beats, and can sing along with the long fade out. It only peaked on the charts at #24, kind of disappointing in that it was the follow-up single to a little tune called "Heart of Glass", but today, you're just as likely to hear "One Way Or Another" on the radio as you are that aforementioned #1 song.
Being a song that's "marketable", which means, "hey, this will make a great song to build our commercial around", or "hey, we could use this song as the credits roll at the end of our motion picture", doesn't hurt either. :)
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