If you’re familiar with popular music from the last 50 years, you’ll notice that most songs that get at least a fair amount of radio airplay and record/CD sales generally don’t depart too far from wherever the mainstream is at the time. However, there have been occasions where a song and/or artist was so different than anything else out there that you’d never think it would achieve anything more than cult interest at best. Yet, much to your (sometimes pleasant) surprise, the song becomes a hit and/or the artist becomes successful. For this thread, I’m not referring to novelty songs which, by their very nature, are supposed to be funny or different. I mean music that should not have been popular because it was too controversial, long, arcane, deep, or abrasive to most listeners but, nonetheless, still was.
Anyway, my pick is Lou Reed’s Walk on the Wild Side. One would think a non-judgmental song about New York’s transvestites, hookers “giving head,” and speed freaks by the former lead singer of the Velvet Underground–a group that never had more than a small cult following when they were active–would never receive any airplay outside of a few college radio stations at 2 a.m. But, it made the Top 40 in 1974.
Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone” is the archetype of this. It was way too long, too convoluted, too quirky, too unmusical for AM radio in 1965. But it went to #2 on the charts. It allowed songs like Reed’s (which hit #16 in 1973 to nitpick) to become successes by forever changing the rules of radio.
The flip side of Dylan is something like Paul Mauriat’s “Love Is Blue.” Admittedly, it’s a hypnotically lovely instrumental, but why a French orchestral ballad would be number for for five weeks in the middle of 1968 is still a mystery to me.
“Under the Milky Way” by The Church. It never fits in on the “Best of the '80s” comps it turns up on. It sounds like a college radio hit, but not like a #26 on the Billboard Hot 100. It’s so sad, not mired in cheesy production and features (fake) bagpipes!
Also, “Once in a Lifetime” by Talking Heads. I don’t think this was a chart hit, but it’s well-known enough to end up on movie soundtracks and '80s comps (I’ve heard it’s the theme song for Numb3rs, as well). David Byrne chanting bizarrely about capitalism and suburbia = hit?
I was extremely surprised to see Alice Cooper’s “I’m Eighteen” appear on the charts. Being a fan of Frank Zappa, I knew of the group, and they seemed to weird to be anything more than a small cult act.
It was the same with Pink Floyd. I was a big fan long before “Dark Side of the Moon” came out. Prior to that, I would never have expected them to have anything like a hit. As soon as I heard Dark Side, though, I thought they had watered down their music to be more accessible, and sure enough, they hit it big.
How about Blondie’s “Rapture”? A 1# hit, the first rap song to hit #1, and it’s performed by a blonde white chick and a new wave rock band! As it came out in 1980-81, it must have been the introduction to rap for a lot of people.
I’ll have to slightly disagree with you on that. “Rapture” came out after Blondie already had a string of hit records so its success wasn’t too surprising. Also, rap at that point was still regarded by many (if not most) people as a novelty so there’s the whole “novelty record” factor as well.
As for another pick, I’m still rather surprised “Sultans of Swing” by the Dire Straits managed to hit the Top 5 in 1979. To me, it didn’t sound like anything you heard on the radio at that time.
Don McLean’s “American Pie”–a very too long song by a total unknown with intellectual references abounding not only makes it onto the charts and stays on them for 48 weeks, but also reaches #1.
And people are still [url=http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a3_398b.html]writing[/url about it.
I agree with “Walk On The Wild Side”. It’s off-key and badly produced. The only decent part of it is when the “colored girls sing” and it segues into a sax riff.
I was pretty surprised when Kraftwerk’s “Autobahn” took off.
And a little before that, Mike Oldfield’s “Tubular Bells”–a twinkly instrumental with alternating cycles of 14 and 16 beats–was an unlikely hit, although the tie-in with a massively successful and controversial movie had everything to do with it.
Not so. The “Light My Fire” single was cut down to be under three minutes for radio airplay. They removed the self-indulgent organ solo and cut right to Robbie Krieger’s guitar just before the final verse. You don’t hear it on classic rock stations nowadays, but you might on oldies stations.
I don’t see what’s wrong with the song. The group yes, but not the song. It’s a typical teen anger song. I didn’t grow up at that time so I don’t know what was playing but I can see it happening, much like Nirvana did in the early 90s.
This is one of my pet peeves, I’m afraid. As Chuck already said, “Light My Fire” was severely cut for release as a single. And besides, Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone” was 5:59 and released a full two years earlier. “House of the Rising Sun” was about 4:30, true, but “Like a Rolling Stone” is almost universally considered the breakthrough long single.
Any single that required both sides of the 45 - Split up into Part 1 and Part 2 on the flipside.American Pie by Don McLean
and
Switch Into Glide - This Beat Goes On by The Kings Are the 1st two that come to mind.
Which is part of the reason why it was a hit. People who liked Top 40 music were getting sick of disco. This song was a breath of fresh air.
When I think of this song, I also think of other non-disco hits of that year: “Don’t Do Me Like That” by Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers and “My Sharona” by The Knack.