Chartbreaker: How The Marías’ ‘No One Noticed’ Went From ‘The Back Burner’ to Breakthrough Hit

“It’s almost like, an anti-pop song,” María Zardoya, the leader of The Marías, says of “No One Noticed.”

Considering the sighing production, murmured harmonies and somber lyrical tone as Zardoya pleads with a lover for attention and reassurance, “No One Noticed” understandably did not lead the indie-pop band’s second album, Submarine, upon its release last May. Yet in the months since, the song has transformed into a viral breakthrough and the band’s biggest hit to date.

Zardoya says that none of the band members expected “No One Noticed” to become The Marías’ first solo Billboard Hot 100 entry. Its success not only strengthened the band’s commercial footprint — it validated their entire aesthetic.

“It gets you in your feels — it’s pretty emotional, and kind of slow,” she says of “No One Noticed.” “It gives me hope that people are still open to listening to a song over and over that makes them cry.”

The enduring hit isn’t the bilingual, Los Angeles-based quartet’s first visit to the Hot 100, previously reaching the chart thanks to Bad Bunny: in 2022, the band was a featured act on “Otro Atardecer,” a buoyant Spanish-language album cut from the superstar’s Grammy-winning album Un Verano Sin Ti that peaked at No. 49. “That was always our No. 1 song on our Spotify page, by far, and we thought it was going to be forever,” says drummer/producer Josh Conway with a laugh. “That was a pretty big pinch-me moment, when ‘No One Noticed’ surpassed it. And now it’s surpassed it by a lot.”

The origin of “No One Noticed” predates the Bad Bunny collaboration — as well as The Marías album that came before Submarine. Zardoya, a Puerto Rico native who grew up in Atlanta, formed The Marías in 2016 when she started writing songs with L.A. native Conway, before recruiting Jesse Perlman on guitar and Edward James on keys. Following a pair of indie EPs and steady work as a touring band, The Marías signed an Atlantic Records deal in early 2021 and released their debut album, Cinema, that June.

Zardoya says that the band started writing “No One Noticed” during the pandemic in 2020, chipping away at a demo before ultimately “putting it on the back burner for a while,” then revisiting it as a potential addition to Submarine. Part of the reason why it was shrugged off for years was because as the group searched for a breakthrough single, they thought that meant something with a quicker pace than the viscous dreaminess of “No One Noticed.”

“We were understandably getting a little pressure from the label, and I think that the first thing labels look at as being a ‘hit’ is something with tempo,” Zardoya explains. So the band focused the Cinema campaign around the sleek dark-pop single “Hush,” and released the danceable electro-funk track “Run Your Mouth” as the lead single to Submarine last year. Both made the lower reaches of the Hot Rock & Alternative Songs chart.

Meanwhile, Mick Management’s Jonathan Eshak, the band’s manager who started working with The Marías between their two albums, identified a sizable live base for the band and prioritized streamlining their touring agenda for Submarine. “They could play pretty large rooms — not just in New York or L.A., but in markets that are a little less traveled,” Eshak says. “But a big mission statement from María, Josh, Jesse and Eddie was they didn’t want to be viewed as just a domestic act — they really wanted to speak to fans who are either Spanish-speaking, have ancestral roots in Latin America, or are in Latin America.” As such, The Marías kicked off their tour in support of Submarine with a four-night residency at Foro Puebla in Mexico City last June, before headlining across North America throughout the summer.

As they began presenting Submarine on tour, The Marías found it interesting that “No One Noticed” would elicit some of the evening’s biggest cheers; similarly, the band would hear from friends, and read fan comments, declaring the moody track as the album standout. By July, TikTok users had adopted the song — particularly its “Come on, don’t leave me, it can’t be that easy, babe/If you believe me, I guess I’ll get on a plane” breakdown — and when Billie Eilish posted a clip of herself singing along to “No One Noticed” on her Instagram story on July 17, streams began to skyrocket.

By early September, “No One Noticed” had reached the top 10 of the Hot Rock & Alternative Songs chart. As the band was prepping for its first proper European tour for the fall, it was announced as an opener on the December leg of Eilish’s arena tour. “Billie showed love for ‘No One Noticed’ really early on,” says Zardoya, “so it was cool to perform that song live at her shows — I would dedicate it to her before we performed it, every single night.”

And as the crowd sizes increased, so did the song’s audience. Since serving as a summertime-sadness anthem thanks to its initial TikTok pickup, “No One Noticed” has crossed over to streaming platforms and even to radio. The song has 215.3 million official on-demand U.S. streams through Jan. 30, according to Luminate, and reached No. 4 on Hot Rock & Alternative Songs, No. 11 on Streaming Songs and No. 26 on Pop Airplay, where it hits a new high this week. “No One Noticed” has also peaked at No. 22 in 18 weeks on the Hot 100 and reentered the top 40 on the Feb. 1-dated chart.

The Marías are slated to perform at three South American editions of Lollapalooza in March before playing Coachella in April. Eshak says that, as the band prepares to play Submarine in front of oversized festival crowds, the rising interest in their catalog beyond “No One Noticed” demonstrates how much more growth they can achieve in 2025.

“There’s so much runway for this band,” he says. “Obviously a hit song’s a hit song, and we’ll take them where we can find them, but what I’m so excited about is how people are engaging with the band’s entire world.”

That world will also expand when the follow-up to Submarine arrives: The Marías spent some time at New York’s famed Electric Lady Studios in January and are planning on more sessions following their festival gigs in the spring.

“We were pretty surprised at how experimental things were in the studio,” says Conway of the recent sessions. “I think ‘No One Noticed’ helped pave the way for us to let our guard down a little and do whatever we want.”

This story appears in the Feb. 8, 2025, issue of Billboard.

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