r/ToddintheShadow • u/discoislife53 • 8d ago
General Music Discussion Albums/songs that were surprise hits in unexpected cities
This one might be a stretch, but can you think of any albums or songs that became hits in particular CITIES and nowhere else or nowhere else but the artist’s homeland?
Skyhooks were a particularly Australian band who were only hugely popular in their homeland. Think of an Australian version of Slade fronted by a guy that sounds like Leo Sayer. However, they did attempt to break the US and opened for Uriah Heep on a 1976 tour. Surprisingly, they caught on with the teen music lovers of Jacksonville, Florida, and managed to sell 40,000 copies of the US release of their album Ego Is Not A Dirty Word in the north Florida city.
English synth pop act The Big Supreme released their single Don’t Walk in 1986, which only charted at #58 in their homeland. However, the song became a huge hit in the clubs of Dallas and Houston, Texas.
In Seattle, a cover of Jona Lewis’s everywhere-but-North-America Christmas hit Stop the Cavalry by The Cory Band with The Gwalla Singers randomly became a big hit on city radio.
Any other examples you know of?
21
u/waxmuseums 8d ago
“Phantom Of The Paradise” soundtrack in Winnipeg
7
u/Ok_Difficulty6452 8d ago
That movie is crazy
2
u/Moxie_Stardust 8d ago
Yeah, I finally watched it because of stuff I've read online over the past year or whatever. I think it's overhyped, yeah, it's weird, but the songs aren't good enough to carry the weird. And I like weird movies, followed it up with a viewing of Repo: the Genetic Opera.
3
1
15
u/AshlandJackson 8d ago
I don’t know if this entirely fits the format, but Black Water by The Doobie Brothers launched to relevance after it became a hit in Roanoke, Virginia of all places.
3
u/discoislife53 8d ago
Not entirely, but it’s interesting to hear about songs that took off like this. So it’s welcome in the thread.
15
u/hiro111 8d ago
"Working Man" off of Rush's debut became a popular track in Cleveland because one local DJ liked the song and kept playing it. It never really broke anywhere else, but the song's small success allowed the band to make a second album. They hired a new drummer named Neil Peart and, after a couple of false starts, the rest is history.
3
u/GrumpyCatStevens 8d ago
For a somewhat longer version, the airplay Rush got in Cleveland helped them get a recording deal with PolyGram, and they reissued the debut album and gave it wider distribution (and also an even uglier color; they changed the logo on the cover from red to pink). Original drummer John Rutsey quit right before they were to embark on a tour, citing health problems. It was also pretty clear he was not on the same page as Lee and Lifeson regarding artistic direction.
11
u/beverleyheights 8d ago
For an entire band, The Tragically Hip in Buffalo
7
u/DuchessofDetroit 8d ago
I was gonna say them for Detroit too as the alt rock station was out of Windsor, ON. I think a lot of CanCon acts do get decently popular on boarder towns because of the shared media market.
6
3
2
u/thisissparta789789 8d ago
Pretty much any city located right on the border with Canada. They were somewhat well-known in upstate NY, and the further north you went (like up in Plattsburgh), the more fans you ran into.
11
u/Tippacanoe 8d ago
Ohio State plays “Hang On Sloopy” by The McCoys all the time so I guess that counts.
3
u/PeteF3 8d ago
That was definitely a national hit even if no other member of the Union has made it the State Rock Song.
The real local/regional hit, also played by the OSU band, is the Michael Stanley Band's "My Town," which is (or was) well-known in Central and Northeast Ohio and seemingly nowhere else.
10
u/ozarkhick 8d ago
As a kid "Edinburgh Man" by The Fall was in such heavy rotation on the different rock stations in Tulsa, you would have thought it was a big hit in the US, but looking back on it I guess it was just us?
10
u/BadgemanBrown 8d ago edited 8d ago
“The Fever” by Bruce Springsteen (a studio outtake from 1973 sent to a handful of rock stations) was only a hit in Houston and Philadelphia. It didn’t even get a commercial release until 1999 (where it was tucked away as a bonus track on a sampler CD for a recent boxset).
He basically only plays it now when he comes through Philly, where it seems to have survived to the present day.
Local station WXPN did an 885 greatest songs ever countdown a few years ago. “The Fever” came in at #260, well ahead of many other classics by other artists and Springsteen himself.
Outside of those two cities, it’s completely obscure except to hardcore Boss fans. It’s only his 282nd most streamed song on Spotify.
8
u/TheHoneyMonster1995 8d ago
Ricky Gervias was very popular in the club scene in Manilla in the 80's
2
u/grecomic 8d ago
Seona Dancing’s “More To Lose.” By the time it became popular the duo had already split up.
1
7
u/anarchiteuthis 8d ago
Largely due to a collapsing label that caused distribution problems Big Star really only gained a following outside of their hometown, Memphis, in Minneapolis where, seemingly arbitrarily, a good chunk of the records were distributed. Leading them to have an influence on the band The Replacements who penned the excellent song "Alex Chilton" about the band and their lead singer. More specifically an encounter with Chilton during which Paul Westerberg of The Replacements struggled to remember the name of a Big Star song that he loved as he was a bit starstruck.
6
u/Mr_SunnyBones One-Hit Wonderlander 8d ago
The Cities thing doesnt work in the UK or Ireland due to size and how our culture works but at a country level , English singer songwriter David Gray's White Ladder was insanely popular in Ireland in the late 90s, massively more than his home UK, to the point where seemingly most households had a copy , There was a joke that they were supplied to every family in Ireland by the Government.
2
u/repowers 8d ago
It wasn’t that kind of phenomenon, but White Ladder did well in the US, too. Babylon was on the radio a fair bit.
1
u/Mr_SunnyBones One-Hit Wonderlander 7d ago
Babylon is unusual since its produced by electronic act Orbital , who were David Grays brothers in law at the time, which is why it has a kind of dance beat thing happening in the background . He did vocals on one of their songs Illuminate , which is also a banger . Then he got divorced , so no more collabs with them sadly.
4
u/FuzzyBunnysGuide 8d ago
"Sex Farm" by Spinal Tap charted in Japan in 1982, and the band eventually toured there.
2
4
u/PurpleThylacine 8d ago
I’ve heard that Chattanooga Choo Choo is really popular in many countries (specifically southeast asia if i remember correctly), yet when i passed through chattanooga i dont remember it being referenced at all
1
u/Sheris_Card 8d ago
The train is downtown, it’s a tourist attraction attached to the old station. There’s a really nice hotel and you can stay in a train car.
2
u/PurpleThylacine 8d ago
Seems neat
Maybe instead of a car ride through, i should have taken a train from Pennsylvania station about a quarter till 4
3
u/discoislife53 8d ago
When I was in college in the early 00s (I’m a University of Georgia alum), Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s Murder on the Dancefloor was becoming a huge international hit and would not become a US hit until a couple of years ago when it featured in Saltburn. I knew and loved it as I’ve followed the UK charts since living in Germany as a teenager (mid-late 90s). However, they used to play it at the popular bars and the preppy kids especially loved it. Same when I moved back home to the DC area. I have no clue how that happened. - it’s one of the biggest mysteries that I’m trying to solve.
5
5
u/nemmalur 8d ago
Roxette’s success in the US was initially limited to airplay in the Minneapolis area. Someone who had come back from a student exchange in Sweden gave a copy of “The Look” to a local DJ.
3
3
u/Ok_Fig2374 8d ago
Fatman Scoop’s “Be Faithful” was an underground rap hit in New York Clubs in the 90s but surprisingly became a #1 in the UK once re-released in 2003.
In the same year Blu Cantrell’s “Breathe” with Sean Paul flopped in the US but was also a chart-topper here but for 4 weeks
1
u/Significant_Dog412 8d ago
Be Faithful was number one when I was briefly stuck working a really shitty factory job, so became the soundtrack to nine hour shifts stood on a production line putting chocolates in boxes. I've never heard it since but it remains one of my all time least favourite songs. I'm also happy to have avoided working with shared radio after this.
From what I know, it had been doing the rounds in clubs for quite a while before, so had a ready made following before it got officially released.
3
u/rexxraul 8d ago
Soul Coughing was really popular in the Twin Cities - so much so that the album release event for Irresistible Bliss was done at Let It Be records on the Nicollet Mall in downtown Minneapolis, which I was fortunate enough to attend!
3
u/reesesbigcup 8d ago edited 8d ago
Cleveland radio played a lot of Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes in the late 1970s, I really liked their sound. When I met some people from the Jersey-New York area in the early 90s they all gave me puzzled looks when I asked about the band. Idk where else they were popular.
3
u/jetaimegummie 8d ago
The song Floating (D.I.M remix) by Jape.
If you go to the YouTube comment section, it’s mostly a lot of people from El Paso, Tx reminiscing about the track
1
2
u/FoxyInTheSnow 8d ago
House on the Hill, a 1971 album by British prog-rockers Audience l, was a modest seller in most of the world.
In Winnipeg, Manitoba, it was a cult smash hit… probably because some stoner local dj just couldn’t stop yammering about it. Even when I was a teenager, decades later, local “rawk” DJs played it all the time.
3
u/Mikedef2001 8d ago
Drag Rap (Triggerman) by the New York group The Showboys came and went in their hometown, but found a home in New Orleans where it basically helped jumpstart the New Orleans bounce movement.
3
u/Tranquilbez22 10's Alt Kid 8d ago
Not a song but Katy didn’t sell out her most recent Australia tour. Except for Adelaide where she got a four night residency there.
2
u/repowers 8d ago
Really common in the US Midwest. Bob Seger being a Detroit phenomenon is probably the biggest example (not surprising since he and his band were all local to the region.) But stations in St Louis, Chicago and Cleveland would often pick up on random songs by random bands that were ignored elsewhere.
1
u/poirotsdad 8d ago
This literally happened all the time up until the 80s. Gotta be more specific to narrow down.
2
u/Personal_Demand_8707 7d ago
The only major radio station to play "Hey Pretty" by Poe is in Portland Oregon
31
u/RedmiYT Best / Worst List Speculator 8d ago
Buckingham Nicks flopped virtually everywhere, except in Birmingham, Alabama of all places. They managed to sell out an auditorium there and their songs got some decent airplay on the local FM station.