“Lights” by Ellie Goulding

"Lights" started life on the margins, an extra for iTunes buyers in Britain and Germany who picked up Lights, Ellie Goulding's 2010 debut, until a re-edit late that year made it the single version on the reissue, Bright Lights. Goulding wrote it with Ash Howes and Richard "Biff" Stannard, who produced it, and she built it out of her childhood fear of the dark, turning a kid's dread into glowing synth-pop that critics praised for its production and her airy voice.

It went out as a single on 13 March 2011, then took the long way round in America: a sleeper that spent 33 weeks creeping up the Billboard Hot 100 before settling at number two, and it ended up the fifth best-selling song of 2012 there. It later found a home on her second album, Halcyon, too.

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