Proving that essentially all of pop history is now fair game for a TikTok revival, one of the biggest-growing streaming hits of 2022 now belongs to Nixon-era one-hit wonder Edison Lighthouse, with their bubblegum smash “Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes).”
The song, which reached No. 5 on the Billboard Hot 100 in March 1970, has seen an explosion in its streaming consumption after the song started getting adapted into a TikTok meme of users posting clips and photos of themselves to accompany the song’s lyrics — usually the opening lines, “She ain’t got no money/ Her clothes are kinda funny/ Her hair is kinda wild and free/ Oh but love grows where my Rosemary goes…”
Over the 10-day period from Dec. 25 to Jan. 3, the song received a combined 2.705 million on-demand audio streams, according to MRC Data. That number is up from a mere 170,000 on-demand audio streams from the prior 10-day period (Dec. 15-24), a staggering growth of 1,490%. The song has also moved onto Spotify’s daily US top 200 chart, just outside the top 100 as of Tuesday’s (Jan. 4) listing.
It’s hardly the first time a hit from the ’70s has gone viral enough on TikTok to impact the charts anew in the 2020s: Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams,” of course, achieved such a revival following its appearance in a massively popular video by user doggface208 that the 1977 Hot 100 No. 1 hit re-entered the chart in Oct. 2020, eventually climbing back as high as No. 12. But while “Dreams” has proven one of the most enduring, oft-covered hits from the era — from a beloved group of Rock and Roll Hall of Famers — “Love Grows” and Edison Lighthouse bear a more modest legacy, albeit one that still includes a number of covers, and appearances in hit 21st century movies like Shallow Hal and The Kissing Booth.
“Love Grows” marked one of just two Hot 100 appearances for the British pop/rock quartet Edison Lighthouse — the other coming in early 1971 with the No. 72-peaking “It’s Up to You Petula.” But the group’s frontman, Tony Burrows, was perhaps the most prolific bubblegum singer of his era. Though he scored a lone Hot 100 appearance under his own name (1970’s No. 87-peaking “Melanie Makes Me Smile”), his lead vocals could be heard on top 20 hits by White Plains (“My Baby Loves Lovin’,” No. 13, 1970), Brotherhood of Man (“United We Stand,” No. 13, 1970), The Pipkins (“Gimme Dat Ding,” No. 9, 1970) and First Class (“Beach Baby,” No. 4, 1974). He also provided backing vocals on a pair of early Elton John classics: “Levon” and “Tiny Dancer.”
