I know that John Peel liked Paul Revere And The Raiders, but I don’t think they were ever that big with the general public in the UK.
Kate Bush was the first person I thought of when I saw the title of this thread. I don’t think I really knew who she was until around 2008. But it turns out I had heard her singing backup on some Peter Gabriel songs as well as “Dream Away” from the end credits to Time Bandits.
I lived in England from ‘83 to ‘85, and I sometimes wonder why neither Nik Kershaw nor Paul Young ever hit the U.S. charts.
I think Aussie Kylie Monogue has a relatively low profile in the U.S other than on the dance charts. She has lived in England since the 90s and is hugely popular both there and in Australia. She has had 8 number 1 albums in Australia and is the first woman to have a number 1 album in 5 consecutive decades in the UK.
She has had 10 Australian and 7 UK number 1 singles and a total of 34 UK top ten hits.
Which is their genre. The US alternative market is probably bigger than the entire UK market, alternative and mainstream. And they have consistently been one of the biggest and, just as importantly, influential, acts there, from the 80s onwards. I think it’s a category mistake to equate “only had one mainstream Number 1” with “never caught on” in that way. C’mon, be serious, bands that “never caught on” don’t get SNL parodies (or to play on SNL, for that matter).
Again, dance is her genre. If she’s popular in the US dance charts (haven’t checked) then she’s popular where it matters.
Bros
Mel and Kim
Paul Young
Nik Kershaw
Ultravox
Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark
Shakin Stevens
The Wombles
It’s my understanding that, outside of “Ballroom Blitz”, the Sweet were never nearly as big in the US as they were in Britain.
The Incredible String Band, although I’ve recently learned that they performed at Woodstock, so I could be wrong about that.
Back in the day, MTV gave a lot of exposure to UK bands that were relatively unknown in the US. I’m thinking Dexys Midnight Runners, Soft Cell and others.
supposedly uk band the escape club had 2 hits in america and none in Britain (in fact their big video "wild wild west " was banned in the uk )
and vice versa the killers are a us band thats more popular in the uk than here
I think MrDibble and Exapno are both “right.” Popularity can be defined either in an overall, general sense, or else within a genre. The best examples for this thread will be for the overall sense, but it’s interesting to hear about some examples in the genre sense as well.
And: I think if that genre is “pop” (another loosely defined term) — or, between 1965 and 1995, “rock” — then that artist is automatically also popular in an overall, general sense.
So all of these musicians are famous?:
https://lostinthegrooves.com/lists-musical-guests-on-saturday-night-live-1975-2006/
Slade. HUGE in the UK, and the Commonwealth. Unknown in the US except for one song that was a hit cover for… Quiet Riot?
Interestingly, among their few fans in the US are Kiss, who clearly modelled their early hits on Slade.
“Famous” and “caught on” are not synonymous to me, but in any case, why don’t you tell me which of the foreign acts on that massive lazy list dump were not well-known yet playing SNL.
Esther Phillips, Betty Carter, Phoebe Snow, Stuff, Donny Harper, Roslyn Kind, Alan Price, Stephen Bishop, Desmond Child, and The Specials are examples of ones I have no memory of. And, before you say that I wasn’t even born yet when they were on the show, let me mention that I was 23 when SNL premiered. If I went through all of their musical guests over all 46 years of the show, I could find many more examples. Being a musical guest on that show proves nothing except that somebody on the show’s staff decided that you were well known for maybe the past month or so.
All American, and so not what I was referencing.
But you do know who The Animals were, yes?
They are well-enough know in the USA to have sold-out tours and have their own dedicated day in LA…
Not by the list you gave, it doesn’t. Not for foreign acts. For American flashes in the pan, sure.
“Second-wave” ska? Madness had a hit or two in the US but were never anywhere near as big as they were in the UK; and other British ska/pop bands from the 80s were even more unknown over here in the US.
I saw them in 1973, when they opened for Argent and the Beach Boys. They were better than Argent, another group that was more popular in the UK, though they only had one big hit, “Hold Your Head Up.” Rod Argent did plenty of fancy keyboard work but as a whole they were kind of a disappointment after The Zombies.
SNL has always been known for the flavor of the moment and/or ultra-hip bands that somebody on staff pushed. That first season included plenty of hip. How many other places gave Gil Scott-Heron a showcase? Almost nobody knows him but lyrically he’s up with Dylan and a tiny few others. The Cure were on in the same 1995-6 season as SIlverchair, who had five #1 albums in Australia but I’ve never heard of them.
The Rock and Rock Hall of Fame is rightly derided, but it gets around to the most popular groups eventually (except for boy bands and girl groups). It also has a noted American bias, so it works as a gauge of how big a group was in the U.S. Usually, the longer it took for a group to get in, the less popular it was in American eyes.
The Cure, eligible in 2003, didn’t get in until 2019, same year as Roxy Music, first eligible in 1995. Roxy was huge in the UK, not so much in America. Full disclosure: Def Leppard, eligible a year before The Cure, also had to wait until 2019, and they did much better on the U.S. charts than the British ones. (I don’t cherrypick the evidence; I lay it all out.)
The Cure are huge only if you listen SiriusXM’s First Wave (Channel 33). Did they catch on in America? I’d put them in the same second-tier category as Roxy Music or Kate Bush, major names to fans but never quite meeting high expectations.
Several years ago, Kylie Minogue did a US tour. My wife got us tickets to her show in San Francisco for my birthday. In San Francisco before the show, we happened to mention to a waiter that we were going. We asked him what kind of crowd we should expect. “Many, many gay men,” he said.
He was right. I think we were the only heterosexual couple in the theatre.
It was a great show, though.
OMD is doing a US tour next year. Playing medium sized theaters. I got tickets.
Not entirely unknown in the U.S. for their own recordings. Slade did have two hits in the US in 1984: “Run Runaway,” which reached #20 in early '84, and “My Oh My,” which got to #37. Both songs were released in the U.S. not too long after Quiet Riot had a #5 hit with their cover of “Cum On Feel the Noize.”