These days, streaming is the most popular form of listening to music, and there’s no denying its benefits. At the touch of a button — anywhere, anytime — an artist’s entire catalog can be found at your fingertips, ready for you to choose your own adventure.
Presently, Spotify remains the most popular of all the streaming platforms, accounting for hundreds of millions monthly listeners. Included in that population are those that stream Eagles music, who boast over 20 million monthly listeners.
Below, we’re crunching those numbers even further and counting down the 20 Most-Streamed Eagles Songs, according to data from the time of this writing, Nov. 6, 2024.
20. “Seven Bridges Road” (Live)
From: Eagles Live (1980)
Number of Streams: 58,991,395
Even as they began to fall apart, Eagles decided to do something they’d never done before: release a live album. Eagles Live arrived in 1980, featuring a cover of Steve Young’s “Seven Bridges Road,” which the band had recently reincorporated into their concert set lists.
19. “Already Gone”
From: On the Border (1974)
Number of Streams: 73,815,992
Interestingly, “Already Gone” is another Eagles song on this list written by, well, not any of the members of Eagles. It was written by Robb Strandlund and Jack Tempchin, the latter of whom also co-wrote “Peaceful Easy Feeling.”
“It was at this time that we changed producers [from Glyn Johns] and started working with Bill Szymczyk,” Glenn Frey would recall to Cameron Crowe in 2003. “I was much more comfortable in the studio with Bill, and he was more than willing to let everyone stretch a bit. ‘Already Gone’ — that’s me being happier; that’s me being free.”
18. “Heartache Tonight”
From: The Long Run (1979)
Number of Streams: 81,088,721
The list of people credited as songwriters on Eagles’ “Heartache Tonight” reads like a kind of supergroup lineup: Don Henley, Glenn Frey, Bob Seger and J.D. Souther. Frey and Souther has gotten the song started with a verse, Seger came up with the chorus and Henley helped with the rest of the lyrics.
17. “Hotel California” (Live at the Forum)
From: To the Limit: The Essential Collection (2024)
Number of Streams: 82,805,487
This is just one of several versions of “Hotel California” present on this list. Coming in at No. 17 is the band’s 1976 live version performed at the Forum in Los Angeles. This concert took place in October of 1976, approximately two months before Hotel California the album was released.
16. “The Best of My Love”
From: On the Border (1974)
Number of Streams: 86,765,622
We’re going to slow things down here for a minute with “The Best of My Love,” another Souther co-write that also took some initial inspiration from one of Frey’s California neighbors. “I was playing acoustic guitar one afternoon in Laurel Canyon, and I was trying to figure out a tuning that Joni Mitchell had shown me a couple of days earlier,” Frey recalled to Cameron Crowe in 2003. “I got lost and ended up with the guitar tuning for what would later turn out to be ‘The Best of My Love.'”
15. “Witchy Woman”
From: Eagles (1972)
Number of Streams: 90,114,376
“This is a song that’s hard to go with,” Bob Dylan wrote about “Witchy Woman” in his 2022 book The Philosophy of Modern Song. “It’s about spirits in the air. It’s cheerless and grim — puts ashes in your mouth.” And yet, listeners love it, accounting for some 90 million streams on Spotify.
14. “Hotel California” (Live on MTV)
From: Hell Freezes Over (1994)
Number of Streams: 92,861,687
In April of 1994, Eagles reconvened after nearly a decade and a half to film an MTV special, which resulted in 11 live tracks that found a home on that year’s Hell Freezes Over album. One of them was a stripped-down version of “Hotel California” that took on a much more Spanish flavor.
13. “Love Will Keep Us Alive”
From: Hell Freezes Over (1994)
Number of Streams: 94,697,917
“Love Will Keep Us Alive” is notable for a few reasons. Firstly, it features bassist Timothy B. Schmit on lead vocals, earning itself a Grammy nomination for Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals. It’s also the last single to include guitarist Don Felder before his 2001departure from the band.
12. “I Can’t Tell You Why”
From: The Long Run (1979)
Number of Streams: 113,738,109
“One thing that the Eagles did that never really got noticed very much or talked about is pretty heavily into R&B,” Henley once explained in an interview with Musician magazine. “We were influenced by Al Green. ‘I Can’t Tell You Why’ is straight Al Green, ’cause Glenn was a big R&B freak. He’s from Detroit, and he grew up with all that stuff. When we first started trying to do it on the third album, it was terrible and too white, but we got better at it.”
11. “Take It to the Limit”
From: One of These Nights (1975)
Number of Streams: 127,521,172
Like most bands, the members of Eagles had their share of differences and disagreements, but their collaborative work over the years spawned some of the most popular rock songs of their time. “Take It to the Limit” was started by Randy Meisner, and finished with the help of Frey and Henley.
“I just remember being very happy for Randy,” Henley recalled to Cameron Crowe. “We had tried, unsuccessfully, to get a piece of material for him — or from him — that might be a hit single, or turn into one. I don’t think we ever consciously tried to make a hit single. We finally succeeded with ‘Take It to the Limit.'”
10. “Tequila Sunrise”
From: Desperado (1973)
Number of Streams: 154,781,693
When you hear the name “Tequila Sunrise,” you may picture the colorful cocktail in your mind, but Henley and Frey were using it in a different way, a sort of play on words that instead alludes alludes to drinking tequila all night until the sun rises in the morning.
“I love the song,” Frey told Cameron Crowe. “I think the goal of any songwriter is to make a song appear seamless, to never show the struggle. Nothing should sound forced. ‘Tequila Sunrise’ was written fairly quickly, and I don’t think there’s a single chord out of place.”
9. “New Kid in Town”
From: Hotel California (1976)
Number of Streams: 161,403,799
It’s hard to believe now, all these successful years later, but there was very much a time when Eagles assumed their fame would eventually wane. “‘New Kid’ emerged from our whole fascination with gunfire as an analogy. And the point was at some point some kid would come riding into town that was much faster than you and he’d say so, and then he’d prove it,” Souther once explained to Songfacts. “That’s the story of life. That’s the story of aging, especially coming out of your teenage and young man years and as you approach 30, you begin to see that things don’t stay the same forever. And that there’s a lot other guys like you and gals like you that want the same thing that are coming up, and they want their moment, too, and they’re going to get it. And it’s fine. It’s as it should be.”
8. “Lyin’ Eyes”
From: One of These Nights (1975)
Number of Streams: 171,362,056
Los Angeles in the ’70s was a different breed, full of glamor, money and people who weren’t always who they claimed to be. One day in a bar, Frey and Henley took notice of a stunning young woman accompanied by a much older and much less charming wealthy man. “She can’t even hide those lyin’ eyes,” Frey commented, sparking a song.
7. “Please Come Home for Christmas”
From: 1978 Single
Number of Streams: 186,306,280
There’s just something about a sad Christmas song. In 1978, Eagles put their spin on “Please Come Home for Christmas,” which landed at No. 18 on the Billboard Hot 100 — the first Christmas song to make the Top 20 since Roy Orbison‘s “Pretty Paper” in 1963.
6. “Peaceful Easy Feeling”
From: Eagles (1972)
Number of Streams: 192,409,295
Jack Tempchin is the lone songwriter behind “Peaceful Easy Feeling,” a No. 22 hit. It’s not your average love song — Tempchin actually wrote it after getting stood up by a waitress he’d asked out — more of a mantra to oneself. “It was something I wrote for myself and because, I thought, it’s not actually a love song, it’s just kind of different idea,” he told Billboard in 2019.
5. “Desperado”
From: Desperado (1973)
Number of Streams: 202,477,458
“Desperado” was one of the first songs Henley and Frey collaborated on, in the former home of Roger McGuinn. “[Frey] came over one afternoon,” Henley recalled to Rolling Stone in 2016, “and although I was hesitant, I showed him a partially formed chord progression and a melody that I’d been carrying around with me since the late 1960s.” That turned into none other than “Desperado.”
4. “One of These Nights”
From: One of These Nights (1975)
Number of Streams: 303,961,582
Who could resist that sliding bass line in “One of These Nights,” especially when coupled with a four-on-the-floor drum part that clearly nods to ’70s disco? Evidently not millions of Spotify listeners. This style may have had something to do with the fact that when Eagles were recording parts of One of These Nights in Miami the Bee Gees were right next door.
3. “Life in the Fast Lane”
From: Hotel California (1976)
Number of Streams: 345,467,088
There’s no mistaking the introductory guitar riff in “Life in the Fast Lane” as the work of Joe Walsh — hard, funky and catchy. Walsh came up with it on accident while getting ready for a concert one night. “I was just playing, warming up for the show and Glenn comes busting in my dressing room [and] says ‘What the hell is that? I love it,'” Walsh recalled to Paul Shaffer Plus One in 2019, “and I said I don’t know, it’s just this warm up. What he said was ‘Joe, this is an Eagles song.'”
2. “Take It Easy”
From: Eagles (1972)
Number of Streams: 707,912,404
Jackson Browne is partially responsible for this signature Eagles track, who co-wrote the song with Frey. Browne had started the song, intending for it to be included on his own self-titled debut album in 1971. That never came to fruition and so Frey wound up finishing it with Browne. “At that point the song, I mean, I can’t even imagine what I would’ve said in that, you know, I took it up to ‘Standing on the corner in Winslow, Arizona,'” Browne recalled to The Nation in 2014. “Only Glenn would’ve had the girl slowing down to take a look at him.”
1. “Hotel California”
From: Hotel California (1976)
Number of Streams: 1,725,035,713
Even people not all that familiar with Eagles know “Hotel California,” and here we have the original 1976 studio version, Record of the Year Grammy winner in 1978. “‘Hotel California’ is six minutes, the intro is a minute long, it stops in the middle with no drums, and you’ve got a two-minute guitar solo at the end. It’s the absolute wrong format for a single,” Felder would later recall not only thinking to himself at the time. but also telling Henley directly. How sweet it is to be wrong sometimes.
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