"Joy," Apollo 100 (1972)

When Bach reached the top 10

Peak: #6 on the Hot 100
Streams: 1.1 million

It’s not so unusual for classical music to be the basis of a pop hit. Just ask The Toys. But it’s rarer for a piece of classical music itself to storm the charts. The most famous example is probably “A Fifth of Beethoven,” Walter Murphy’s disco reworking of Beethoven’s fifth symphony. It got all the way to #1 i…