THE BEAST

Dream Theater won a Grammy for Best Metal Performance with “The Alien”, but streaming data points to a different winner.

The Grammy for  Best Metal Performance  went to  Dream Theater , but looking at the popularity stats of the nominees, there’s a different track that stands out –  Gojira’s “Amazonia” .

Gojira’s track scored the highest among all the  “Best Metal Performance”   nominees   according to its combined streaming, social media and radio airplay numbers. It was  streamed 12 million times, Shazamed 25 thousand times, got 6.9 million YouTube views  with its official video, and still has  the highest Spotify playlist reach (705.000) .

Independently of the voting results of the 2022 Grammy Awards, the music research and analytics platform  Viberate  crunched the online popularity stats of the nominees to let the numbers have the final word. After all, it’s fans across the globe who “vote” for their favorites  on daily  basis by streaming tracks, watching videos and Shazaming the catchiest tracks.

The verdict: “Amazonia” was the most popular metal performance of 2021
According to the online stats,  Deftones  placed second with  “Genesis” , which was streamed 11 million times.  Rob Zombie’s “The Triumph of King Freak (A Crypt of Preservation and Superstition)” , which was actually Shazamed the most (more than 31 thousand times), came in third. Grammy winners Dream Theater were fourth, while fifth place went to  Mastodon  with  “Pushing the Tides” .