“We recorded it in one take,” Santana remembered, “and in the middle of the take, time stopped and I entered into a vortex. I was like, ‘Uh-oh. This is big.’”
Billboard has named it the third most popular song since 1958, as measured by weighted chart positions. It trails “Blinding Lights,” a pop-R&B track by the Weeknd, and Chubby Checker’s “The Twist,” which (sorry, Mr. Checker) is a novelty song. In other words, “Smooth” is the most successful rock song. Of. All. Time.
Armchair Warrior 
I love the song and it’s great, but I question the math behind the “Most Successful” declaration. It brings to mind the classic saying about statistics: “If you interrogate the numbers long enough, they’ll tell you anything.”
Then there is “lies, damned lies, and statistics.”