Whats's the most surprising work of art/culture that you'd never heard of?

Cafe Society
1

So, I recently learned that Wings’s “Mull of Kintyre” is one of the best-selling singles of all time in the UK and a big hit in many other countries.

I also recently learned that Wing’s “Mull of Kintyre” exists at all. And on a quick listen, it’s not one of those “heard a million times but didn’t pay attention to” songs – I don’t think I’ve ever heard this song before.

I’m somewhat baffled by that. Admittedly, I live in the US, where it was only a minor hit. But I’m also a big fan of British music and like Wings and solo McCartney enough that I have a few of their / his albums. Apparently I missed a big one. Heck, it’s one of only two songs (along with “Yesterday”) that are mentioned “above the fold” on Sir Paul’s Wikipedia page.

So, Dopers, make me feel less lonely. Are there any wildly popular bits of culture that flew ENTIRELY off your radar much longer than should have, in retrospect, been possible?

2

I had never heard of The Dream of the Red Chamber. A quick search shows that it was first published in the 1790s, translated into English multiple times starting more than 200 years ago, has been adapted into at least two dozen movie or TV screenplays as well as an opera, and is one of the all-time best selling works of fiction.

3

Don’t mean to be rude, but this is another “I’m American and I don’t understand how I don’t know everything 100’s of millions of others know.” thread.

There are countless movies, shows, songs, books, stories etc. that are know to hundreds of millions in India, China and elsewhere around the world that we’ve never heard of. You’ve probably at least heard his name westernized name, Confucious, but do you know his name is Kong Fu and that Tzu is an honorary title for Master> And do you know anything about the Analects which is collection of his sayings. Well, just about every one of the 1.4 billion Chinese knows at least of the verses from them and if they’ve had any kind of schooling, were thought to read the verses by rote. And over 1 billion Hindus around around the world know the Bhagavad Gita, if not by heart, the tenents of it.

In popular culture, ever heard of Produce 101 - China? What about *Rocket Girls[/I, the group formed by the reality program.]Well, over 340 million viewers (more the the population of the U.S.) watched the first episode. And 4.3 billion views combined of all it’s episodes.
https://pandaily.com/produce-101-begins-a-wave-of-interest-in-chinese-idol-groups/

On a global scale, how many of the Top 100 most viewed YouTube videos have you seen? https://pandaily.com/produce-101-begins-a-wave-of-interest-in-chinese-idol-groups/. I’ve seen three (Gangdam Style, Baby Shark Dance, Bang Bang only because of my recent interest in KPop. One of my favorite KPop groups did an amazing cover of Bang Bang. And have heard Roar from this recent Top 15 list only because it was played repeatedly on the radio during my morning drive. https://influencermarketinghub.com/15-most-viewed-youtube-videos-of-all-time/

And of course there’s the mystery of David Hasselhoff’s popularity in Germany! :smack:

BTW, I’m nearing my 6th decade on Earth and was born and raised in Hawaii, so no, I haven’t been living under rock. :cool:

Oh, I’ve known about the Dream of the Red Chamber for decades, even have an English language version of it. I’ve tried reading it and watching various screen versions of it, but never got more than a few pages or minutes into it.

4

Edit: Link to Top 100 Most Viewed Youtube Videos: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most-viewed_YouTube_videos

5

Nonsense. The OP is about things that you would expect to encounter given your cultural background, but somehow do not.

6

Well, if we take the OP literally, it’s obviously unanswerable. :slight_smile:

For me, apparently, it’s Walter Mitty. I just googled terms on this message board that would remind me of big gaping black holes on cultural knowledge I would have, and, apparently (I don’t remember this), I started a thread five years ago asking about how well known Walter Mitty is. And, apparently, I completely forgot about it, because I have no clue who he is now, after starting a thread about it.

7

Given that criteria, there are hundreds of songs on hundreds of albums, B-sides of records and CDs from popular American and British artists that were big hits overseas, but not in their native country.

BTW, if you count the main members of Wings (Paul and Linda, and Denny Laine), Wings was a British, not American band. At most a British/American Band.

Same with American movies that are big flops in America, but do gangbusters overseas, especially currently in China.

8

Edit: The OP stated Wings is a British band. I thought he/she claimed it was American.

I stand by my assertion that the OP reads like “I’m American and should be aware of everything that’s popular anywhere in the world!”, especially if the band, movie, TV show, book, etc. originated in the West. SIGH

9

Still nope. You just seem to want to talk about your hobby horse of cultural parochialism, but that’s not what the OP is about.

Although OP is American, he said quite clearly that he’s a fan of British music / Wings / McCartney, and that’s why he’s surprised he never came across it before. The OP is about works that are generally extremely well known to everyone else with your cultural background, whatever that is, but that somehow (oddly) you never encountered until much later.

10

I was surprised that I didn’t know anything about the Beatles. I’d heard of /She loves you yeah yeah yeah/ in '68 (although I didn’t know it was the Beatles), but after that I just thought they were some historical group.

Years later I found out that they broke up in 1970.

Ok, I was pre-teen, my parents didn’t have any interest in that kind of music, and I was off-grid in 1969, but it was a surprise when I realized that I had overlapped with ??? one of the great music sensations of western music in the 20th century ???, whose music clocked a generation, I was there and didn’t even know it was happening.

11

I first heard the Queen song Don’t Stop Me Now when it was used in the movie Shaun Of The Dead. I am very familiar with Queen, and I thought I at least had heard of, if not thoroughly enjoyed, all their successful hits, but I had absolutely never heard Don’t Stop Me Now ever before then. I don’t know how I missed it, especially as it’s on their notoriously popular Greatest Hits album.

12

That’s happened to me a couple times. Probably the most telling one would be the 1968 movie Head. It was a film that starred The Monkees that was made shortly after their TV series ended. I was unaware of its existence until I found a copy on video tape in the 90s. It has since become one of my favorite films.

13

GuanoLad, same! I was even in a bit of a Queen phase when that movie came out and had been listening to a bunch of their stuff. That song completely caught me off guard.

lingyi, nope. For me not to know a popular work in China is completely unsurprising. I don’t know Chinese culture / literature very well at all. This isn’t “what’s the most famous work you never heard of.” It’s “what work is most surprising to you that hadn’t heard of.” The song I mentioned in OP is a *massive *hit by an artist I like enough that I wrote a homework biography of him, dressed as him at a costume party, and actually own and listen to his lesser-known solo work. That’s flippin’ surprising to me.

14

A couple of years ago, I wound up working security for a Michael Jackson musical. Obviously, this featured a collection of his best known hits, but, oddly, this being after his death, there was one new one. This confused me (especially by the 5th show I worked). Maybe some obscure song never released in the UK? Possibly they’d dredged it up from some written-but-never released stuff? But the audience all seemed to know it :confused: Maybe they were all just huuuge fans (for all they seemed like a bunch of drunk hen nights, hence the security)?

Alternatively, I somehow never heard ‘Billie Jean’ until I was in my late 20s. It’s everywhere. They play it all the time on local radio. I still don’t understand what happened there.

15

A few weeks ago my husband and I were listening to the radio and Billy Joel’s Keeping the Faith came on. My husband had never heard it before. We are both Americans who don’t live underneath a rock; I have no idea how he freakin’ avoided this tune since 1984.

16

OK, so it’s down to me to say that, until post #2 above, I had never heard of Dream of the Red Chamber.

Yeah, but I think is a close as we can possibly get.

j

17

When Rickrolling first became popular I didn’t have a clue who Rick Astley was, although I think I’d heard the song before.
I never heard of Roy Orbison until after he died.
Re: Dream of the Red Chamber. Honestly I can think of at least three popular Japanese stories I’d be willing to bet a vast majority of Americans have never heard of.

18

When did we land in Japan? :slight_smile:

I hear Legend of the Eagle-Shooting Heroes has finally been translated into English? If nobody translates these kinds of novels, then it is not surprising if they fail to capture a completely global audience like Harry Potter which is even available in bad Latin.

19

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(I’m amassing a collection, in everything from Welsh to Esperanto)

20

Shh…we’re only supposed to talk about American / British-centric things. :smiley:

I just checked and yes, it’s available on eBay on Amazon. It’s only two volumes though, where the Chinese versions have four, so don’t know if there’s two more coming. Vol. 1 is reasonable st <$10 used, but Vol. 2 is $20. I’ll wait until it’s available as an eBook anyway.

As for Japanese stories, the only novel off the top of my head is Tale of Genjil and several short stories like Momotaro, The Snow Woman and The Man with a Wen, though I’ve read a lot more.