Oh, I have one:
The Romantics: (That’s) What I Like About You.
A toss-off song by the band, the only one sung by their drummer, it was a fun, new-wave hit in the 80’s. But it has stayed around, used as the name for a TV series with a watered-down cover for the theme, and popped up in commercials.
It’s kind of like the Louie, Louie of the 80’s - simple three-chord song that a lot of folks still know. I love the song; can’t think of a band I haven’t played it in.
I would have expected “The Chipmunk Song” (1958) to be only a fond memory of baby boomers by this time. Boy did that song have legs.
Smells Like Teen Spirit peaked at #6 on the Billboard, and now it is the most played on Spotify song of the 90s by an enormous ~30% margin. No one could have predicted that. It may have been a transformative bombshell at the time, but there are countless such sitting in the dustbins of history.
Village People “YMCA”
I wholeheartedly disagree. I understood at the time it was a huge, huge deal, and had you asked me what songs then would last, I’d have picked “Smells Like Teen Spirit” without hesitation and I’m not a Nirvana fan.
It was at about that time that the Billboard charts started getting split up into different charts - not as much then as now, but it was starting, so “alternative” rock was not really represented correctly by the Billboard Hot 100, and today the Hot 100 is entirely comprised of dance pop and soft hip hop. As it was the Hot 100 was already seriously flawed as a method of measuring popularity, largely because it doesn’t count album sales and is heavily affected by the way a record label will elect to maximize revenue.
Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer.
I was 10 years-old when this song came out and even then I thought it was a dumb novelty song that would get a lot of air play that year and then hopefully die a quick death.
But here it is 35 years later and it still makes it into the holiday stations rotation every year.
Windy, by The Association. Embraced by punk rockers, Drew Carey, South Park, and eventually, meth manufacturers.
Great choice! Loved that song when it first came out and yeah, it shows up in surprising places.
Kung Fu Fighting by Carl Douglas and Cherokee Nation by Paul Revere and the Raiders are both pretty un-PC if not downright racist but I still hear them on the radio from time to time, and, I’m sorry, they’re not even that catchy.
“Cherokee Nation” (or “Indian Reservation”) is un-PC, if not downright racist when it recounts the removal from native lands in the 19th century “Trail of Tears”? Trying to force them to speech English?
I swear there are large numbers of Dopers who yell “Racist!” (or fascist!, homophobe! or sexist!) if you say something like the sun rises in the east and sets in the west.
Is it possible that someone was thinking of “Indian Outlaw,” by Tim McGraw, which interpolates “Indian Reservation”?
Such assumptions you make about me, sir. How dare you! I don’t even self-identify as a Doper.
Today nobody would have a hit song containing fake Native American music, the term “red men” or, for that matter “Indian”. It is not part of today’s sensibility and would be considered just as racist as the the line in the other song I mentioned that refers to a “Funky Chinaman in Funky Chinatown”.
The assumption I make about you is that you already knew that.
No, I’m thinking of the one from the early 70’s which has a fine message but is full of what some people would call micro-aggressions, such as the terms “Indian” and “red men” and fake Native American music such as one might find in a Western movie from the late 50’s that’s almost as bad as chanting “hi, how are ya”.
It’s the one that goes “Cherokee pee-po-ohl! Cherokee Tri-ibe! So proud to li-ih-iv! So proud to die!”
I was thinking of the oldest songs that most Americans have heard. Some Christian hyms go way back. The Star-Spangled Banner, sure, but that’s cheating.
Yankee Doodle - Colonial era
Auld Lang Syne - 1788
Twinkle Little Star - 1806
Oh Susanna - 1848
Camptown Races - 1850
I Wish I Was in Dixie - 1850s
The Battle Hymn of the Republic - 1861
When Johnny Comes Marching Home - 1863
Nursery rhymes tend to be pretty old.
Right, the one written by a guy, John Loudermilk, who was later given a medal for it by a group of Oklahoma Cherokee. (Both he and Mark Lindsay of the Raiders claimed Native ancestry.)
Also, the same song that was covered again by Billy Thunderkloud and the Chieftones.
Yes, and that is exactly the part swiped by Tim McGraw for his far more offensive creation.
I don’t know that I’ve ever heard the Shocking Blue version except when I’ve actively looked for it.
However, the 80’s cover of the song by Bananarama I do still hear on occasion.
I have never heard a song by Tim McGraw. And I don’t just mean this one.
Booker T and the MG’s - Green Onions
Glenn Miller - In the Mood
Jimi Hendrix cover - All Along the Watchtower
The Eagles, “Hotel California.” Until very recently, it was almost unheard of to walk into a bar in Thailand without hearing that played at some point.
J.S. Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor is familiar to just about everyone.