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

[pulykamell]

@Ludovic

Similarly, last month I heard “Big Yellow Taxi” by Joni Mitchell for the first time, and I’m pretty sure I hadn’t heard it in the background somewhere along the line, because while I recognized the lyrics of the chorus from having read them, the melody of the chorus seemed completely new to me. But Big Yellow Taxi was a bit before the years in which I would have been expected to have heard it constantly, and it may not have had the staying power to stay on the radio until I could hear it.

There were a couple of semi-popular-to-popular covers of it in the 90s and 00s. I remember in the mid-90s, Amy Grant’s version seemed to get a lot of play, at least around here, although it only seems to have hit #67 on the Hot 100. Then, in 2003, Counting Crowes had a cover which hit #42 on the Hot 100, and I still hear that version on those 90s throwback stations. (This version in particular was panned by many critics, making a few “worst of 2000s” lists.)

[Thudlow_Boink]

@GuanoLad

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.

There have been multiple incarnations of their Greatest Hits. “My” version was the 1981 U.S. version, which didn’t have “Don’t Stop Me Now” (nor “Seven Seas of Rhye”), so I wasn’t familiar with those songs until a lot later when I dug deeper into their catalog.

[pulykamell]

@pulykamell

Then, in 2003, Counting Crowes had a cover which hit #42 on the Hot 100, and I still hear that version on those 90s throwback stations

Wait, that doesn’t make sense. I guess I hear it on stations that do 80s, 90s, and touch into the early 00s. Like I said, that song was 2003, but I always think of the Crowes as mid-90s, hence the 90s throwback station comment.

[dorvann]

@typoink

It’s big enough that I’m pretty sure you win the thread so far. It’s a wildly ubiquitous song and has been for a long time, although it did get a big bump in popularity after the move “Elf” came out and Zooey Deschanel’s version got put into holiday rotations. And this is at least the third or fourth year where its “date rape” vibe has been a talking point.

I find Will Ferrell to be really annoying so I’ve never watched “Elf” and I don’t think I’ve ever heard Zooey Deschanel singing before. I didn’t even realize she was a singer. (I stopped following popular music closely when Grunge music died and Hip-Hop/Rap took over.)

Also I really don’t listen to the radio so most of the Christmas songs I know are the more traditional ones.

[Banquet_Bear]

@typoink

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.

…holy coincidink! I literally opened this thread as “Mull of Kintyre” starts playing on my Spotify playlist. My jaw just literally dropped.

Nothing else to add: but this just happened and I had to share

[lingyi]

@Jet_Jaguar

I’ll check it out. I’ll also ask my in-laws if they have seen it. They also live with us and watch a lot of singing competition shows.

Oh, since you and your wife are KPop and IOI fans, I highly recommend King of Mask Singer (which puts the American version to utter shame) if you haven’t already seen it. Lots of KPop stars prove they can really sing. So far from IOI, everyone except So Hye, Somi and Chae Yeon have appeared on the the show.

[DPRK]

@Rysto

I had never heard of the short story The Little Match Girl before I saw a reference to it in an anime a couple of years ago. It was a bit odd learning about a fairly famous Christmas story by a Dutch author in a Japanese work. Then, a couple of weeks later, I saw the story referenced in a completely different anime. Later on, I realized that a third anime that I had seen previously had also made an oblique reference to it that I didn’t catch at the time. I guess the story made an impression on Japanese culture for whatever reason.

What Dutch story do you suggest Andersen ripped off?

I have definitely had the odd experience of some random story sounding a little bit too familiar, and, yes, it turns out it was stolen from One Thousand and One Nights or a Russian fairy tale or something similar.

[Rysto]

@DPRK

What Dutch story do you suggest Andersen ripped off?

Uh, none. Like I said, I’m not very familiar with the story. I misremembered the author as Dutch rather than Danish.

[lingyi]

@Rysto

I had never heard of the short story The Little Match Girl before I saw a reference to it in an anime a couple of years ago. It was a bit odd learning about a fairly famous Christmas story by a Dutch author in a Japanese work. Then, a couple of weeks later, I saw the story referenced in a completely different anime. Later on, I realized that a third anime that I had seen previously had also made an oblique reference to it that I didn’t catch at the time. I guess the story made an impression on Japanese culture for whatever reason.

I suspect it’s because the story fits well into Asian culture (I’ve seen Chinese, Korean and Japanese live action takes on the story), because it questions what is reality? Most of the great Asian philosophers (Buddha, Confucious, Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu and more) struggled with this.

Bringing back a little bit to this thread, it wasn’t until I read Chuang Tzu’s works (short stories unlike the short poems of the more well know Tao de Ching by Lao Tzu), that I learned the origin of the man who dreamed he was a butterfly, only to awaken and question if he wasn’t really a butterfly dreaming he was a man!

[lingyi]

Okay, I’ll contribute something, even though it’s about a Korean variety show. I didn’t know anything about Running Man, the Korean variety / comedy / action show until 2015 when my friend wouldn’t stop talking non-stop about it.

HEY lingyi! There you go spouting about things only Koreans know about! Nope! It’s an international phenomenon that was ranked #9 in a Business Insider article about the “20 Most Popular TV Shows Of 2016” which had Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead as #1 & 2. The data is based on Parrot Analytics which…"uses a a metric called “demand expressions” to quantify the intensity of interest in a TV show. It’s derived from all the ways consumers express themselves — via Tweets or Facebook posts, through internet searches or even streaming it on sites like Popcorn Time.

This measurement provides another tool for studios, networks and platforms looking to understand audiences and make informed decisions about distribution, said Parrot Analytics CEO Wared Seger CEO, Parrot Analytics."

https://deadline.com/2018/07/cbs-studios-international-partners-parrot-analytics-global-viewer-insights-1202432912/

Running Man was actually slated for cancellation at the end of 2016 due to low South Korean viewership and started a run of final episodes, but the international community spoke up and forced SBS (the Korean network) to revamp and continue the show, which has risen in the ratings in Korea since. There’s now a Chinese version, Keep Running and probably somewhere in the works is an American version. BIG SIGH

[GuanoLad]

@Thudlow_Boink

There have been multiple incarnations of their Greatest Hits. “My” version was the 1981 U.S. version, which didn’t have “Don’t Stop Me Now” (nor “Seven Seas of Rhye”), so I wasn’t familiar with those songs until a lot later when I dug deeper into their catalog.

Oh! That’s a relief to know there’s a logical reason why I overlooked it.