I remember 7 of the 12 on the radio. It was a huge record.
Some Girls: Only Lies seems deep to me, but I had a friend who got dumped and it was his theme song. Faraway eyes is quite famous; and Before they make me run will be on Keith’s headstone if he ever dies. It’s played a lot around here. It’s like a symbol of the man.
Yes, this is where I am coming from. With the Pretenders, songs like The Wait and Mystery Achievement got huge play when I was in High School and university.
Rolling Stones - really?! I agree the Lies is less common, but all the others got a lot of play.
Oh well, worth a try! 
I’d of thought Bob Seger “Night Moves” would be mentioned by now.
Rock And Roll Never Forgets
Night Moves
Fire Down Below
Sunburst
Sunspot Baby ( I believe he wrote this about my first ex)
Main Street
Come To Poppa
Ship Of Fools
Mary Lou
I believe the only two that didn’t get a lot of air play are Come To Poppa and Ship Of Fools.
I’m with you. I heard every track one time or another. Some girls the song was a national crisis in the US too. So to speak. Whip was my favorite, Just my imagination was played to death. Respectable got a lot of play and media use too because of Micks public persona.
Night moves is a good one. Come to Poppa is familiar.
The only song I know by Bob Seger isn’t on that album. I looked a few of those songs up and didn’t recognise any.
Sure, but I don’t think it still gets as extensive airplay. I’ve heard maybe four, possibly five, of those songs as stand-alone on the radio over that last 10 years or so, but there’s still albums like many of the Beatles albums, the Fleetwood Mac album, and a few more where you still can hear most of the songs on the radio at some point. I guess it’s a matter of how we’re defining the question. In my generation, there’s probably 7 or 8 songs off Pearl Jam’s Ten that most people who grew up in that timeframe and listened to rock would know, but nowadays, there’s just perhaps four songs off that album that I’d expect to hear on the radio.
Maybe. But I weigh in favor of earlier LPs. It was rarer and harder to get Pretenders style radio play. When Michael Jackson made an LP and released 5 or 7 or even 9 singles, clearly there was a different game going on having to do with business and superstardom. I find it hard to care.
I admit I am slanted against Pearl Jam, but I just looked up Ten on Wiki. I was listening to rock radio a fair amount and I only recognize 4 of those songs from back in the day, and I don’t hear them at all anymore. Zip. Nevermind, is a better bet.
If you’re talking about old LPs that are entirely famiiar to young people regardless of original reception, that has to be very rare.
I got one. Thick as a Brick by Jethro Tull:
Track Listing:
BTW You up there…You never heard Night Moves?!
Around here, the classic rock station (zheesh, I remember when “classic rock” was late 60s and 70s, and I know you lived through “classic rock”) will play “Alive,” “Jeremy,” “Even Flow,” and “Black.” (Just out of curiosity, I checked the playlist for today for 97.9 WLUP, and it looks like “Jeremy” was played today, and “Even Flow” was played yesterday (plus a couple songs off other albums). I’m sure I wouldn’t have to go back too much farther to hit “Black” and “Alive.” I hear Pearl Jam as much as Nirvana around here.
ETA: And it looks like “Alive” was played this morning on WXRT, our “alternative station” which will play songs ranging from the Beatles to the Pretenders to Iggy Pop to Muddy Waters to Wilco (all of which were represented on today’s playlist.) Chicago might be more of a Pearl Jam town than most, though, as I see four songs on their playlist today.
What about U2’s Joshua Tree? I don’t own the album, but looking through the tracks and listening to clips on Youtube, it seems I’ve heard all of them except for “Trip Through the Wires” and “Exit” on the radio at some point. (Then again, Chicago alternative/classic radio is also fairly heavy on U2.)
“Darkness on the Edge of Town”*
Side one
Side two
*Nope. Never could get in the door where he played. Never met him. Never even shook his hand. When my hands were clean, his weren’t. Now that mine have soot & grease, his are way too corporate & clean.
But its all good. Some people in this world were never ever meant to meet. He does his job, I do mine, and in some gyroscopic spin Beyond the Ken of Man, This Place… it still works.
These days Stick, Mig, and Tig are probably just guys he tips to carry his amps. Save you a pie at Delicious Orchards or a Beer at The Saw Mill. Your Call.
** I just don’t know an Abrams Bridge. I might know George’s bridge. There IS a Darkness on the Edge of Town.
And I can be easily found.
This has to be the ‘winner’, I think. If you’ve listened to AOR radio for any length of time over the past 40 years, you know all of these songs by heart.
More Than a Feeling
Peace of Mind
Foreplay/Long Time
Rock & Roll Band
Smokin’
Hitch a Ride
Something About You
Let Me Take You Home Tonight
I’d put forward A Hard Day’s Night. Looking through the track list, there’s not a single song I don’t hear on the radio:
Appetite for Destruction (Guns n’ Roses), Bringing it all Back Home (Bob Dylan), The Bends (Radiohead),… I guess 90% of those are all known songs.
Rancid: …and out come the wolves
Lynyrd Skynyrd’s second album, Second Helping, features:
Sweet Home Alabama
I Need You
Don’t Ask Me No Questions
Workin’ for MCA
The Ballad of Curtis Loew
Swamp Music
The Needle and the Spoon
Call Me the Breeze
The only one that doesn’t get airplay is “I Need You”.
Only in America would those be considered well known.
I’ve only heard one of those songs.
I think this thread is useless without a clear definition of who is exactly supposed to know the songs. If it is USA citizens that listen to radio then that is one thing. If it is worldwide recognition without necessarily knowing the titles or artists then that is another thing entirely.
Most of the ones mentioned so far seem to require someone to be a listener to AOR or similar. I mean really, The Pretenders? Pearl Jam? Bob Seger FFS?
No, it has to someone far more universal than that. Not sure quite who fits the bill.
Perhaps a soundtrack album? Grease? Saturday Night Fever?
Well, Pearl Jam wasn’t an actual example of what I believe answers the OP–that was part of a side discussion. I think the Beatles most closely fit the bill. Maybe Michael Jackson, too, though I don’t know how big he was in the UK, but in other parts of Europe, he was pretty big. I think I listen to a fair amount of music, and most of the albums in this thread I know maybe a third of the songs on. Some not a single one.
ETA: I was thinking earlier in this thread about soundtrack albums, specifically the ones you mention, and I agree those are good candidates, if allowed.
Worldwide recognition of all the tracks without knowing titles or artists? I know someone who grew up in Alabama in the 60s and never listened to the Beatles. He was black. This thread is all predicated on radio play IMO. It might be a US construction in that way, I don’t know. Very few of us are “World Citizens” without a country.
Why don’t you give us an LP that fits the bill from your country? Make it an artist and not a soundtrack. Jump right in.
I would think almost all of the Back in Black album from AC/DC is pretty well-known.
Appetite For Destruction. Guns N Roses
Welcome to the Jungle
It’s So Easy
Out to Get Me
Night Train
My Michelle
Paradise City
Mr Brownstone
Think About You
Sweet Child O’ Mine
Rocket Queen
There were two more, I can’t think of them now.
Anything Goes
Your Crazy