Snow Patrol has become the first musical artists from Northern Ireland to have a song reach 1 billion streams on Spotify.
Their hit 2006 track 'Chasing Cars' has over 1,000,200 plays on the music streaming service, making it the most streamed song from any Northern Irish musician on Spotify.
There are currently 322 songs that have hit the music milestone and Snow Patrol join major names such as AC/DC, Ed Sheeran and Fleetwood Mac on the 'Billions Club' playlist.
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'Chasing Cars' was released as the second single from their fourth studio album, Eyes Open in 2006. In 2009, UK music licensing body PPL announced that "Chasing Cars" was the most widely played song of the decade in the UK and ten years later, it was revealed as the most-played song of the 21st century on UK radio.
Lead singer Gary Lightbody reportedly wrote the song when he became sober after a binge of white wine, in the garden of song producer Jacknife Lee's Kent cottage.
In an interview with Rolling Stone, the Bangor man said "It's the purest love song that I've ever written. There's no knife-in-the-back twist. When I read these lyrics back, I was like, 'Oh, that's weird.' All the other love songs I've written have a dark edge."
The phrase 'Chasing Cars' came from Lightbody's father, in reference to a girl Lightbody was infatuated with, "You're like a dog chasing a car. You'll never catch it and you just wouldn't know what to do with it if you did."
In August, Lightbody returned to his home city to perform a special concert to mark being awarded the freedom of the borough from the Ards and North Down Borough Council.
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