Kate Bush is the obvious answer indeed. Huge in Europe (not just in the UK ;)) for almost 15 years and still on regular rotation on “Classic” Radios.
Although I was right in the target audience (turning 20 in 1994), I absolutely hated the whole Britpop phenomenon.
Pulp’s sort of blasé-sarcastic schtick was endearing but even that got tiring quick. Yet even then, I thought of Suede as apart from it. The Britpop bands were either silly-goofy or boorish-arrogant, but there wasn’t much meat there in spite of the attitude. Suede’s songs however, were refined, slightly sleazy AND catchy, much more interesting to me. IIRC, they also predate the movement by a couple of years - I first heard of them in early 1992. I listened to a couple of their songs recently and they definitely hold up.
My younger brother was a big fan of the whole shoegazing scene and I’m familiar with a lot of those bands thanks to him. I remember liking The Jesus and Mary Chain quite a bit.
Were Primal Scream ever big in the US?
Their album Screamadelica was huge in the UK and has topped, or appeared on, all sorts of UK based lists
Going back a bit, Marmalade had a string of UK hits in the late 60s/early 70s but only Reflections of My Life seems to have made any serious impact in the US. Mind you, apart from their # 1 cover of the Beatles’ Ob-Li-Di Ob-Li-Da they’re almost forgotten here, too!
I don’t think they got anything beyond college radio play around here. I am familiar with them through the albums Screamadelica and XTRMNTR, but I came into them a bit later, like 2002 or so when I was actively trying to fill in my musical gaps.
According to Wikipedia, not one of Roxy Music’s albums cracked the Top 20 in the USA and no single of theirs achieved a placing higher than 30 on the Billboard Top 100. Relatedly, to the thread title, Roxy Music were tremendous. Similarly for Bryan Ferry - not one album placed higher than 63, not one single higher than 31. He’s perhaps more of an acquired taste but his best stuff is great.
Presumably this level of US success is why Roxy Music aren’t in the RnRHoF, because, imo, they’re more than worthy of their place.
They may not have gotten much contemporaneous play, but they’ve entered the “alternative classics” type playlists, as I hear their music on the local alternative station fairly regularly. Looking through this week’s playlist of WXRT so far, Roxy has been played five times, and Brian Ferry once, so not too bad.
That’s interesting. Maybe there is time for them to have a bit of resurgence - it’s a minority view but I find more of interest in RM’s discography than I do in much of Bowie’s early 70s output, and think they need a bit more recognition for the art school stuff they were doing in the early to mid 70s, whilst everyone else was tooling around with glam rock guitars. I found out after I wrote my previous post that RM did manage one Platinum album in the US (Avalon), so they found a small measure of success at least, even if they never really broke big.
On my DVD of Almost Famous, there’s a set of extras which are interviews with Lester Bangs, who proceeds to run down Bryan Ferry as a terrible example of a rock star. I think Bangs was wrong but, if people were listening to him, that maybe didn’t help RM at the time.
Some great ones mentioned here already, but how about The Stranglers? According to their wiki page, they have “some 23 UK top 40 singles and 17 UK top 40 albums”, but I don’t believe they had any success at all in the States.
Pulp had been around since 1978 {!) in one form or another, and although they hit it big when Britpop broke, they were always standing off to the side, sneering slightly: I can admire Jarvis Cocker’s writing, but after a couple of songs it’s always, “I get it, you’re smarter than everyone else”. Too cold to love, ultimately. Still preferable to Oasis’ galumphing laddishness now, which is just painfully dated: they were always the band for people who wanted to pretend they were in a gang at school. Too dumb to love, in the end. Suede had that louche androgyny which never really goes out of style, and they weren’t afraid to wear their heart {or at least Bryan Ferry’s heart} on their sleeve: by mooring themselves somewhere between Aladdin Sane and The Queen is Dead, they managed a kind of timelessness.
I was going to say Buzzcocks, but checking their discography they weren’t as popular even in the UK as I’d assumed. They were a major feature of our lunchtime school discos though*, up there with Blondie and Adam and the Ants in the jumping around stakes.
Fair to say quite a few US bands of a slightly later era had heard them right enough
I know that sounds weird, but there were lunchtime discos when I started secondary school, where the older kids played their records in the big assembly hall. There was a sensible reason for this.
I agree. I wasn’t even really into that style of music in the 1980s, but I certainly recognize the names of both bands, and I know and like several New Order songs (Blue Monday, Bizarre Love Triangle, True Faith). From Joy Division, I think I’m only really familiar with “Love Will Tear Us Apart.”
Probably cult status here, too. I mostly remember them getting broader exposure for a little while in the late 80s, particularly with the songs “Mayor of Simpleton” and “King For a Day.”
I posted based on the Subject Line but yeah, Kate was popular all over the world, except America.
To try and illustrate her fame (everywhere else), Kate played a 22-date residency at the Eventum Apollo (formerly the Hammersmith Odeon) in 2014. She had not performed in concert since 1979. The first batch of these precious tickets sold out in 15 minutes, the second batch of tickets sold out almost as fast.
Here’s the thing.
Kate ONLY ever announced the residency on her web site, yet media outlets picked it up and broadcast news of it all over the world. It was BIG NEWS, yet Kate never sent out one press release. Kate never made one ad for the shows. Kate never did one interview of any kind. For the 22 days of the concerts, her name wasn’t even on the marquee, just the name of the show, Before The Dawn. EVERYBODY took their picture in front of the sign. Us too.
A few months before the concerts, she wrote something on her web site about how nice it would be if people didn’t take pictures during the show, just enjoyed the show as it was happening. Very short, very polite. Media outlets picked THAT up and broadcast it all over the world, and people got the message. Even though she hadn’t toured live for 35 years, and people came from all over the world to see her, you never saw anyone taking video or pictures with their phones. Sure, a few people made a few circumspect phone videos here and there, but they were stealthy about it.
Shortly before the residency began, Kate had eight albums in the Official UK Top 40 Albums Chart.
Most Americans would say “Kate who? Is she related to the former presidents?” (no, unless very distant).
