I am going through my CDs and making mp3s in anticipation of getting an mp3 player, anyway I was looking for some new songs to add and I decided to look at the Number 1 hits in the United States.
There was a song in 1979 called Pop Muzik by an artist called “M”
Even though it went to #1 I never heard it before a few days ago.
I had NEVER heard that song before. I was talking to someone and she says "How could you possibly been alive at the time and NEVER have heard that song.
And I was really into music at the time, being a teenager. Even today when I don’t listen to much radio, I know of huge hits like Bad Day by Daniel Powter. It would be pretty hard NOT to hear that somewhere.
Anyway my question what very popular songs just shot right by you and you missed hearing for a long time?
I’m good at this. I tend to “discover” music about ten years after it was the hip new thing.
Anyway, I never heard Outkast’s “Hey Ya” that one summer it was everywhere. I knew of it, but I never heard it. I finally sought it out on YouTube about a year later, and I fell in love with it just when everyone one else was ready to shoot somebody of they heard it one more time.
Yeah, honestly, I don’t know what I was doing, but apparently I wasn’t anywhere that anyone was playing music. Or perhaps I went temporarily deaf.
Similarly, I heard Rhianna’s “Umbrella” for the first time around last summer. I thought I was getting better, but apparently it came out about a year before that.
In my defense, I have both heard and seen the video for “Single Ladies,” but only after Beyonce was on SNL a few weeks ago.
I’m almost jealous that you’ve never heard Pop Muzik before - it’s so fun! And you can discover it for the fist time!
Several years ago I travelled from London to Paris with a friend and while waiting for the bus I started singing that song (it seemed appropriate). She too had never heard of it, although to give her credit we were only about a year old when it came out. For some reason finding out she didn’t know it filled me with the near insatiable urge to sing it repeatedly, and try to describe it to her (impossible). We were on a hugely long bus ride and of course had no internet access, so we couldn’t hear it. After the 5th or 6th "New York, London, Paris, Munich! she must have been getting pretty damn annoyed but I couldn’t get it out of my head.
It’s a real credit to our friendship that she didn’t kill me that day.
I have been pretty much out of touch with popular music for at least ten years. Sometimes I know the song. Sometimes I’ve heard of the artist. Rarely can I match up the two. For instance the domestic violence incident with Rhianna and Chris Brown has been in the news. No idea what either of them have done.
I first heard Freebird while watching The Texas Chainsaw Massacre in a hotel room a couple of years ago. I had also never seen any version of TTCM and didn’t realise that’s what I was watching until the end credits.
This is how it always goes. I post about how clueless I am about most popular music and two posts later you talk about one of my favorite groups. I think officially they only had one mainstream hit.
According to its page on Wikipedia the idea for YouTube was developed in February 2005. The beta test of the site was in the following May with the official launch in November 2005.
The one song I didn’t know existed until a few years ago is Baker Street by Gerry Rafferty.
I’m an American 39 year-old male and I still wouldn’t recognize “Freebird” if I heard it. Something tells me if I heard it my reaction would be “oh, that song? yeah, I heard it before, just never knew what it was called, just something they play a lot on the classic rock stations.”
Another popular one I never heard until a couple months ago where people here overwhelmingly voted it the worst Xmas song ever was “The Christmas Shoes”. Agreed, it is horrible.
I’ve still never heard “Hurt.” I heard a few seconds of Kermit the frog playing it, but it sounded stupid. Plus, I hate Johnny Cash and NIN doesn’t do it for me.
The thread title is nice. Popular Songs You’ve Never Heard Of. That’s kind of like asking for Things You Don’t Know You Didn’t Know.
Anyway. Mariah Carey is (I think) the most successful female singer of all time. The only thing by her I know is “Vision of Love.” My sister put it on a cassette for me 14 years ago and I finally listened to it earlier this year. It’s not bad.
I must have heard Celine Dion’s “Our Love Will Go On” but I couldn’t tell you a thing about it other than the title. I couldn’t tell you anything at all about Ms. Dion’s other songs.
