Could be anything - band, actor, other creative type, fad, movie, TV show, whatever. What do you find baffling that it never got popular in the U.S? I could probably think of a hundred things, but since I just got the new single, I’ll pick The Divine Comedy.
To my mind, it’s perfect pop, and Neil Hannon is one of the best songwriters going right now. I can’t see why he has to play the tiniest clubs on his infrequent mini-tours of the U.S. If R.E.M. can sell out arenas here, surely there’s a market for this?
While They’ve certainly been critically acclaimed and had some very moderate chart success some years back over here in the UK, they’re not exactly that hugely popular in terms of sales (their only top ten single was in 1999) so it doesn’t surprise me they they haven’t transferred elsewhere.
I’ll give you a few pop acts, all of them great song craftsmen, and, sadly, none of them ever made the big splash over here that they most definitely deserved:
Kate Bush had chart success all over the (non-US) world, and is one of the most influential artists, but she never made it in America. American radio wouldn’t play her music because she was too weird and, for American ears, too non-mainstream. I guess.
Kate’s “Running Up That Hill” charted here at like #30 or so, FWIW.
For someone more contemporary, I’d go with Porcupine Tree. When the presence or absence of an artist on modern rock radio is almost wholly is independent of their quality anymore, they never really had a chance. I went to a show here (Jax Florida) and there couldn’t have been more than 30 people in the joint.
Kate Bush, The Jam and (to a lesser extent, since “Song #2” was pretty big here, and Damon Albarn’s many other projects have heightened his profile in the U.S. considerably) Blur are all good picks - like The Kinks, who faced a similar problem, The Jam and Blur were almost “too English” (lyrically and musically) to ever make it big on this side of the pond - at least, that’s one argument I’ve heard. Kate Bush is harder to understand; too arty, I guess, though her stuff always sounded plenty accessible to me. John Cale I have a less hard time understanding; though I like him, there’s no way he was going to appeal to mainstream American tastes with the music he made.
I don’t think Kate Bush ever toured in America (or anywhere else) much. She did appear on “Saturday Night Live” once in the late 1970s host Eric Idle got them to book her) and she got polite applause. "the “Hounds of Love” album was fairly popular but she never really went past that, other than appearing in a Peter Gabriel video.
I don’t know if “Status Quo” was worth listening to: the only time I ever saw them was the Live Aid concert. Never heard a thing of theirs on the radio. They have something like 60 chart hits in the United Kingdom, 22 in the top 10.
30 years ago Pete Townshend recommended to the Jam that they should tour America more to become popular, as The Who did. But they didn’t listen to him
An obscure but puzzling one: the song “Aserejé,” aka “The Ketchup Song,” by Las Ketchup. It was a Spanish record from 2002 that went to Number One in practically every European country, the UK, Ireland, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand - so basically all the Anglophone parts of the world - except it failed to break even the Top 40 in the USA. To explain that would be to reveal something interesting about the American music business.
Wuthering Heights didn’t get played in the US. Her first album *The Kick Inside *was released on two different labels and she appeared on Saturday Night Live. But her second and third albums weren’t even released by her US label until after her fourth album The Dreaming was released.
EMI America really had no idea how to promote her. She was a cult artist until The Dreaming started getting play on college radio and much better reviews than it got in the UK. But her only mainstream success was Running Up That Hill. But one #30 single is an anomaly, giving her roughly the same US identity level as Joan Armatrading.
A quick check of Wiki shows that Kylie Minogue has scored 39 Top 20 singles in the UK and only 2 in America. That cannot be explained by her being “too Australian” or “too arty.”
Are you sure? My mom mention hearing it over and over again in this one diner where her friend was working back in the day. It’s pretty much the only Kate Bush song that my parents know–they think of her as some random artist who only had one real hit and that was it.
I came in to mention Kylie Minogue too. She is HUGE in England, most of continental Europe and of course Australia, and has been for decades. She’s a great all around entertainer and IMO absolutely fabulous.
I also think Lady Gaga channels her more than most people realize. (Caution: Major hotness, maybe NSFW.)
I was also expecting big things from Terence Trent D’Arby. I recall reading at some point that his ego did him in but I don’t remember the details. Still, the guy had real talent and IMO we’re a little worse off that he never lived up to his potential.
I like what I’ve heard of Divine Comedy but it’s not “pure pop.” More like “pop for people who hate pop.” The vocal stylings are ironically misplaced against the poppish sensibility of the beat - something pleasing to my ears but not begging to be played on Top 40 radio. I don’t think they compare to R.E.M. at all - Michael Stipe sings like a pop singer.
Asereje (The Ketchup Song) hit #1 in the U.S. Latin charts, but topped off at #39 in the mainstream U.S. Top 40. Foreign-language songs face almost impossible odds in the U.S., so just cracking the Top 40 at all is a major success.
Kate Bush. As Jim’s Son said, she’s never toured the States. Ever. And never will. That’s strike one. Two, her music videos. Rather than treating her videos as marketing endeavors - essentially commercials for her songs - she’s sought to use the video to express her creative interpretations of the material. I admire that. But the result is something that MTV wouldn’t play. In contrast, her musical soulmate Peter Gabriel broke through huge in the States with two massive singles backed by terrific commercially-produced videos (Sledgehammer and Big Time). Basically, if you don’t tour the States and you don’t get on MTV, you don’t exist as far as mainstream America is concerned. (I don’t buy the “weirdness” excuse except as applied to her videos, which are indeed way too weird).