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Ghost’s mega-hit Mary On A Cross has been streamed one billion times on Spotify
Ghost’s “Mary On A Cross” has reached one billion streams on Spotify, joining a small group of heavy metal songs to pass that mark. The milestone is striking because the 2019 track began as a B-side rather than a major single, before finding a much wider audience through TikTok.
The song appeared on the two-track release “Seven Inches Of Satanic Panic”, whose fictional backstory places it with a late-1960s forerunner of Ghost. An animated video arrived in 2024, and the track has since become a regular part of the band’s live set, with 250 performances recorded on setlist.fm. Tobias Forge has described its lyrics as layered and tongue-in-cheek; Ghost’s most-streamed Spotify song remains “Square Hammer”, with 299 million plays.
In short
- “Mary On A Cross” has reached one billion Spotify streams.
- TikTok helped turn the 2019 B-side into a hit.
- “Square Hammer” remains Ghost’s most-streamed song.
Explained simply
Ghost is a Swedish heavy metal band known for pairing theatrical costumes and characters with rock music. Tobias Forge leads the band and writes its songs, while its stage shows use a fictional mythology that gives the music a shared backstory.
“Mary On A Cross” first appeared in 2019 as the B-side to another song on a two-track release called “Seven Inches Of Satanic Panic”. Its invented story presents the songs as recordings by an earlier version of Ghost from the late 1960s; a B-side is a track released alongside a main single.
The song later reached a much wider audience through TikTok, a short-video app where music can spread as users make and share clips. Its success shows how a track’s audience can grow well beyond its original release and fan base.
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