“Pompeii” by Bastille

"Pompeii" was the fourth single from Bad Blood, the debut album by British indie pop band Bastille, and it was the one that broke them. Dan Smith wrote it, sings it, plays the keys and produced it with Mark Crew, and Spike Stent mixed it. The title points to the Roman town buried when Mount Vesuvius erupted in AD 79, and the song sets that ancient catastrophe to a stomping drum beat and a wall of chanting backing voices.

It reached number two in the UK and was the 11th best-selling song there that year, and until June 2014 it was Britain's most streamed single ever. It went top ten in fifteen countries, number five on the Billboard Hot 100 among them, and stayed their biggest hit until "Happier". It also earned a BRIT nomination for British Single of the Year in 2014.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.