It’s been 26 years since Bon Jovi’s mega-anthem “Livin’ On A Prayer” topped the Billboard Hot 100 for four weeks, but because of today’s internet landscape, the band’s 1986 single returned to the chart this week at Number 25 thanks to a viral clip, Billboard reports. The song’s resurgence is primarily due to a 2009 clip of Boston Celtics fan Jeremy Fry doing an impassioned dance and lip-sync routine up and down the steps at TD Garden in Boston during a break in the game. Although the video has been floating around for a few years, a new upload to the site Utrend.tv last month led to 11 million views worldwide, and 1.6 million Facebook shares.
The video helped “Livin’ On A Prayer” garner 5.1 million streams in the U.S. last week, according to Nielsen BDS, and it’s believed that 96 percent of those came from the video of Fry. Along with hitting number 25 on the Hot 100, “Livin’ On A Prayer” also hit number five on the Streaming Songs Chart and jumped from 19 to eight on Hot Rock Songs; the song also saw an 11 percent increase in downloads this week, reaching 4,000 total.
