“Recently” would be kinda relative - about a year ago I heard this tune on the radio, and when I was informed it was McCartney’s “Another Day”, I was like - buh?
I thought I had the whole post-Beatles catalogue thing down, but lo and behold…absolutely positive I’d never heard it before. I even knew about Lennon’s “How Do You Sleep?”, but not its lyrics well enough to spot the (heh, I’ll bet cynical!) lyric referencing Paul’s song. I even grew up with Ram - the only Wings album my family ever owned - and the tune was evidently recorded at the same time as that album, but was released as a separate single.
I checked wiki and it says it got to no. 5 in the US.
Confounding.
The Queen song Don’t Stop Me Now, which is included on the Best Of album - but only in some markets. Not, it turns out, in mine (NZ/Aus). So when I first heard it, in Shaun Of The Dead, and subsequently then hearing that to many people it’s a classic that everyone knows, I was mystified for quite a while as I had not ever heard of it at all.
I only recently discovered true colors by Cyndi Lauper it was before my time in the 80’s but I guess they’ve been playing it on the radio a lot because Justin Timberlake had a cover version. Not my usual cup of tea but I actually like it.
(Not me, because I was THERE, back in the day,) but the Pet Shop Boys ‘Opportunities’ in that car commercial - some people think it was written FOR the commercial. No, 30-some years ago, it was a great dance song. I think it’s a bit odd of a choice for the gentleman driving…
Neil Young’s “Like A Hurricane”. It’s the final track on Jason Isbell’s “Live From Alabama” album, and the more I listened to it, the more it sounded to me like something Neil Young could have written. Then I checked the songwriting credit in the liner notes.
Around the same time, there was a thread here about songs played on a pipe organ, and someone posted a video of Neil playing “Like A Hurricane”.
Same thing for me. I mean, I was very aware of Queen before that- “Another One Bites the Dust” was one of the top 40 songs when I got my first radio as a boy, and I’d seen Wayne’s World and heard “Bohemian Rhapsody”, as well as a lot of other songs like “Killer Queen”, “Somebody to Love”, “Crazy Little Thing Called Love”, etc… that are on the rock stations. I had also watched Highlander and had a college roommate who had “A Kind of Magic” and played it all the time. I had a different roommate in college who had the “Classic Queen” album and played it all the time (which doesn’t have “Don’t Stop Me Now” included). I even loved Flash Gordon as a kid, including the soundtrack.
Somehow, I managed to have “Don’t Stop Me Now” fail to register until I saw Bohemian Rhapsody, which is totally weird because I had seen Shaun of the Dead already as well.
All I can figure is that it somehow skated just outside of my awareness, having been a radio hit a few years before I got my first radio, and managing not to make it into any movie soundtracks or anything like that until Shaun of the Dead, and didn’t manage to otherwise get any radio play or anything like that. It’s like it fell into a black hole, and then I got wind of it with SotD, and finally was fully aware of it in Bohemian Rhapsody.
Very strange stuff, as pretty much every other Queen hit was well known to me by that time.
Queen’s “Don’t Stop Me Now” didn’t break big in the U.S. (#86 on Hot 100) or New Zealand (didn’t chart), but was a Top 10 hit in the U.K and Ireland. The song was also not included on the North American 1981 version of Queen’s Greatest Hits, but was included on the 1992 re-release. The U.K. versions of Greatest Hits have always included “Don’t Stop Me Now”.
How familiar one is with that song might track closely to (a) where you lived when the single was released and (b) which version of the Greatest Hits album you’re familiar with. There have been many Queen compilation albums since the 1992 re-release mentioned above, and the newer compilations typically do include “Don’t Stop Me Now”. For many casual Queen fans in North America, Australia, and New Zealand … older fans might well be less hip to a track like “Don’t Stop Me Now” than younger fans who’ve heard the newer compilations.
Somehow, I completely missed hearing Billy Joel’s Scenes from an Italian Restaurant until several years ago. After I first heard it I had to replay it multiple times.
Pretty sure the first time I heard “Don’t Stop Me Now” was a few years ago in a television advertisement.
McCartney’s “Single Pigeon,” from his 1973 Red Rose Speedway. First heard it in a YouTube documentary. Great tune. A couple of friends hadn’t heard it, either.
Also, “Little Green Bag” from the Tarantino film. I thought it sounded familiar, but no.
About 5 years ago, my SO was singing Black Betty by Ram Jam. That was my first exposure to that song and I was alive in the 70s. Everyone else I know, including my sister was shocked I had never heard it before.
I don’t think I ever heard, or even heard about, The Kinks’ “Waterloo Sunset” until about five years ago. I discovered it as I perused Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 best songs ever. It was #42 on that list, and I think the only one in the top 100 I was completely unfamiliar with. It immediately became one of my favorites.
I am an American in my mid 40s and I don’t remember ever hearing the song “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” until last winter’s kerfuffle about the song condoning rape.
