Eye Of The Tiger survives for UK men

DIGITAL music service Spotify recently released its top 20 songs that people like working out to. Among the pounding dance tunes by the likes of Swedish House Mafia, Calvin Harris, Will.i.am, David Guetta and the phenomenon that is Psy's Gangnam Style, sits a track quite different from the rest - Survivor's Eye Of The Tiger.

Unlike the rest of the list, it boasts chugging guitars rather than booming basslines and beeps. It is also the only song on the list made outside the last couple of years.

The reason for its high status is obvious. Most men - it was them that put it in the top 20 - see Rocky as the ideal in sports movies. That challenge of the underdog 'rising up to the challenge of a rival'. Or, for gym talk, rising up to the challenge of getting rid of that beer belly.

Strangely, it was a song that would never have come in to being had Sylvester Stallone got his own way. He had hoped to use Queen's Another One Bites The Dust as the theme for Rocky III, but was unable to get permission.

And so he asked Survivor to write a track, and Eye Of The Tiger came into existence. It appeared on the band's 1982 album of the same name and was written by Frankie Sullivan and Jim Peterik from the band.

It hit number one in countries across the globe including the US, Canada, the UK - although it only reached 62 in France - and has gone on to sell more than 8.5million copies.

Spotify’s data revealed one big difference between men and women’s playlists. UK males placed Eye of the Tiger at number seven on men’s workout playlists, but it doesn’t feature in the top 25 for women – who prefer to get their inspiration from female artists such as Florence, Jessie J and Ke$ha.