Big British pop hits that didn't make an impact in the US

I can't get past that guy's nose.

Is No. 17 a big enough hit? If so, Lost Weekend, Lloyd Cole and the Commotions.

Beat Dis by Bomb the Bass. It was a #2 smash in the UK when I lived there in 1988. Later I learned that nobody here knew it at all.

Now his son, Paul Mescal continues the story

r4 You tried.

Chain Reaction by Diana Ross was #1 in the UK. Didn’t even make Top 40 here.

[quote]Now his son, Paul Mescal continues the story

Ha - that's exactly who I had in mind when I typed Nail Mullet. Such an ugly hair style.

Let's appreciate Zoe Glover who makes a tidy income from her song's use in hygiene adverts. She didn't make any money from Naomi Campbell's cover of it.

Wet Wet Wet's cover of Love is All Around was one of the longest running No.1 singles in UK history but barely charted in the US.

This one’s especially weird because she’s totally rootsy American. Maria McKee, “Show Me Heaven.” Huge #1 smash in the UK in 1990.

The Beautiful South had one of the best selling albums of the 90s.

A Little Time is their masterpiece and I always wished a US artist covered Don't Marry Her to give it bigger exposure.

Jacqui Abbott's cover of Dream A Little Dream was on the French Kiss soundtrack and they filmed a video but never released it as a single in the UK.

Now why is this previous showing when the others didn't?

Love Maria McKee. The first Lone Justice album is one my favorites of all time.

Alison Moyet had several big UK hits, but only made it to US Top 40 once, when “Invisible” made it to #31 here.

Her biggest UK hit, “That Ole Devil Called Love”, (#2) never charted here.

How funny, the song at R9 was replaced by the song at R10, and the song at R9 came from a film with Nicole Kidman and the song at R10 features a Nicole Kidman lookalike.

And speaking of Nicole, here's Take That with Pray, the moment when people took notice and realise they weren't just a ropey covers band. Their only US hit was Back To Good which sounded very Brothers Gibb.

Speaking of Nicole Kidman, her duet with Robbie Williams was a huge hit all over Europe, but I don't think it was even released in the US.

Kylie Minogue owns this thread: HUGE in Britain, basically a complete unknown in USA.

R15 I understand she's nowhere near as big as she is practically everywhere else in the world, but weren't The Locomotion and Can't Get You Out of My Head big hits in the US?

“Vienna” by Ultravox.

[quote]Love Maria McKee. The first Lone Justice album is one my favorites of all time.

YES. Great album, and she can sing her ass off.

Dusty Springfield owns this thread

Six UK #1s, this was the first - I love these girls like they were my own children (original lineup especially so), and after watching them linger for a decade while trying to get the name back, they emerged and have been playing the festival circuit in Europe since - these are the Sugababes.

Roisin Murphy: Glorious Weirdo. This is what launched her to some level of notoriety everywhere but here, 1999's Sing It Back

R21 I also adore Sugababes so that's a good one. Shame their comeback wasn't much of a success.

Can't agree re Roisin Murphy. She's had one big hit and that was a remix. She's popular among the gays but that's about it.

Did Girls Aloud ever have a hit in the US?

Listening to a few of these answers OP's questions--unoriginal, lackluster arrangements. They sound like demos.

Millennium by Robbie Williams

Anything Cilla "Black" did comes to mind.

She was the fucking klepto-shoplifter of American music.

Singing now up the butt of a devil, I imagine.

Peace.

In 1985, the song I Know Him So Well from the movie musical Chess was a massive #1 hit in the UK. Elaine Page and Barbara Dickson sang it.

It was never even released as a single in the US.

The UK’s biggest pop hit of the whole year in 1989 was “Ride on Time” by Black Box. The song was a reworking of dance/r&b belter Loleotta Holloway’s song “Love Sensation” from 1980.

The song never even charted here in the US but i heard it a lot here in gay clubs.

Black Box (a pair of Italian DJs) then replicated the formula with a series of songs featuring singing from Martha Wash.

And the following year, Marky Mark sampled the same Loleotta track for his debut hit “Good Vibration.”

UK hits that don't or barely register in the US charts are fun. The American charts have always felt more corporate and less nimble. We're a bigger country of course. Is Billboard more rigged?

You can see songs having a smaller impact in the US right in the current UK top 100. Gigi Perez has the current UK #1, it peaked at 28 here. Taylor Swift opener Gracie Abrams has the #3 and 4 songs in the UK. Only one of those is stalled out at #19 in the US.

R28 - the 2 big US hits for Black Box (Everybody Everybody and Strike It Up) didn't make the top 10 in the UK.

When I used video America's Top 10 with Siedah Garrett they were at great pains to state that the Guadeloupe tranny was in the video but the singer was Martha Wash.

R30 I remember that! The Everybody Dance Now! video controversy.

There was this whole “show us the fat lady who actually sang!” pushback.

R29 - streaming has totally fucked up the charts.

The Sugababes should have been a success in the US. The Diane Warren ballad from Love Actually felt like it was recorded solely for the US market.

Their greatest pop moment About You Now was re-recorded by the vapid Miranda Cosgrove and a moderate hit in the US.

I never understood why the hit single “There’s a Gnat Wrigglin’ in Me Marmite” never caught on here

The brits like singers and soul and stuff. Teddy Swims - Lose Control was a huge worldwide hit summer 2023 but the first song from his upcoming album is already registering more over there. I was primed to look for a difference because I talked briefly to a British couple in Spain this summer who were very bullish on Teddy Swims.

Love Affair, "Everlasting Love". Two subsequent covers, including one by Gloria Estefan. The singer was a cutie.

Vienna Video.

I unapologetically love Ronan.

If The New Radicals/Gregg Alexander had released this after You Get What You Give would they have been one hit wonders?

He’s On the Phone by Saint Etienne (top 10 UK in 1995) is the prize jewel for me. Shimmering pop-disco gorgeousness and lyrics that were all at once cool, smart, sexy and wistfully depressive.

Pulp - Common People

Shakin' All Over by Johnny Kidd and The Pirates was a number one hit in the UK but didn't become a hit in the US until The Guess Who recorded it. Great song.

Robson (Green, of "Grantchester" fame) and Jerome (Flynn), "Unchained Melody." #1 for 7 straight weeks in the UK; number 1 selling single of 1995.

O Superman

[quote]Chain Reaction by Diana Ross was #1 in the UK. Didn’t even make Top 40 here.

Diana's two biggest hits in the UK were Chain Reaction and I'm Still Waiting neither of which were appreciated by the US. And in the early 90s When You Tell Me That You Love Me was a stonker of a hit, so much so re-recorded it with Westlife 15 years later. And Steps had a huge hit with a cover of Chain Reaction where a then closeted H changed the lyric from swallow slower to follow slower as he didn't want anything thinking he was singing about cocksucking.

And Celine's biggest hit in the UK remains Think Twice (Look Back Before You Leave My Life) which spent 2 months in the top 10 before 7 weeks at number one. I doubt it's a song American gays are overly familiar with.

Oliver's Army by Elvis Costello

Up the Junction by Squeeze

The US was one of the few countries where "Wuthering Heights" wasn't a hit. Kate didn't break America until "Running Up That Hill".

I love these compilations, then again I do read charts on discography sections of Wikipedia pages out of interest.

The great Nina Simone zoomed to the top of the charts with “My Baby Just Cares For Me” after it was featured in an ad. Can’t see that happening in the US

If Americans know it at all, they only know the Tracy Ullman version.

Our Lips are Sealed covered by Fun Boy Three (1983) -

produced by David Byrne

Fade to Grey/Visage

[quote] If Americans know it at all, they only know the Tracy Ullman version.

Kirsty’s original was never a hit in the UK either

R12 - Alison has said numerous times that she was too lazy to crack the US market and refused to put in the work even though she was sent to the US by Colombia records for a period of time.

She just isn't the type who was interested and she was under a very unpleasant and strictly controlled 4 album ironclad record contract with the option for several more albums with Sony Colombia. They had all the power and she had none. When she wanted to try new things they said - if you won't record the music we give you and sing it the way we tell you to sing it then you won't work at all. They refused to promote Essex and Hoodoo. They refused to release her from the record contract and told her she should just sit at home doing nothing. That ironclad contract went from1983 to 2001 when they finally released her so it essentially destroyed her career. Sony Columbia did that out of spite and it took Alison a decade of litigation to be released. A similar thing happened to George Michael at the same record company and that's why he refused to appear in his music videos etc. Sony/Columbia were an extremely unpleasant record company.

Alison does have a Grammy award though so she has something American.

No, Alison has a Grammy nomination.

Fans of Invisible will be disappointed she won’t be performing it on her upcoming tour because she hates it.

Sorry yes nomination I meant R54. Invisible was one of the initial reasons she got into such a mess with Colombia. She says she became embarrassed to sing it in front of her peers and audiences in the eighties because the woman in the song was weak and pathetic and nothing like her. She has repeatedly stated she will never sign it again. She didn't write Invisible- it was written by Lamont Dozier.

I love Steps, but no one here has even heard of them.

You’re all focusing on the good. Don’t forget the bad, like Shakin Stevens bad. Girls Aloud, Bros, PJ & Duncan (Ant & Dec), Mr Blobby, Peter Andre. For every brilliant Olive “You’re Not Alone” you have to wade through a pile of shit.

So true, R57. I was coloring within the lines, OP said "post your favorite" examples but there's always been some WTF patheticness floating around in the UK Top 40.

R57 Girls Aloud are not shit. They're critically acclaimed.

R57, how dare you insult Shaky? And this close to Christmas, no less!

If it’s utterly ridiculous shite you want, here is one of the UK’s biggest hit songs of 1984. Agadoo by Black Lace

So bad.

[quote]You’re all focusing on the good. Don’t forget the bad, like Shakin Stevens bad. Girls Aloud, Bros, PJ & Duncan (Ant & Dec), Mr Blobby, Peter Andre. For every brilliant Olive “You’re Not Alone” you have to wade through a pile of shit.

Girls Aloud with Xenomania produced some of the most inventive pop music of the 00s. They are the reason Pet Shop Boys wanted to work with Xenomania for the Yes album, and why PSBs asked Girls Aloud to record The Loving Kind.

[quote]The great Nina Simone zoomed to the top of the charts with “My Baby Just Cares For Me” after it was featured in an ad. Can’t see that happening in the US

[quote]If it’s utterly ridiculous shite you want, here is one of the UK’s biggest hit songs of 1984. Agadoo by Black Lace

Throughout the 80s there was a combination of crap novelty records and classic reissues introduced to a new generation through tv adverts.

The Levis adverts alone were responsible for Marvin Gaye, Percy Sledge, The Clash, Free, Ben E King and Steve Miller becoming huge hits again.

The silliest things have made it to the top of the UK pop chsrt.

Like this recording of a schoolchildren’s choir singing “There’s No One Quite Like Grandma.” #1 in 1980!

I know of Steps R56!

Shite number ones of the 80s:

There's No One Quite Like Grandma - St Winifred's School Choir ft Sally Lindsay

Shaddap You Face - Joe Dolce

Save Your Love - Renee and Renato

Spitting Image - The Chicken Song

The Firm - Star Trekkin'

Fairground Attraction - Perfect.

And then there were all the charity records that were big hits. Starving Africans, ferry disasters, football disasters, more starving Africans.

Lonnie Gordon's "Happenin All Over Again". Big hit in the UK....number 98 in the US.

champagne for lulu

Lulu features in the "Big American pop hits that didn't make an impact in the UK" thread - To Sir With Love was never released as a single in the UK.

Another ridiculous #1 from the UK, 1982. A band/act was thrown together and called Tight Fit and they put out a cover of The Lion Sleeps Tonight. a-weemaweh, a-weemaweh...

Jane's Getting Serious

Kate Winslet does Westlife

A few Christmas bells and this could have become a seasonal standard

Passions/I'm in Love with a German Film Star

Kylie Minogue for sure

24 Hour Party People / Happy Mondays

Appreciate the history Eldergays, but some recent examples:

Tinie Tempah: Girls Like & Drinking from the Bottle w/ Calvin Harris

Raye seems to finally start slowly crossing over.

Billboard is more corporate as American record labels are a bit protectionist with regards to what we Americans get to hear from overseas.

Imagination, a British Caribbean guy group. First heard about from a shipmate on my first Navy ship…ran into him years later in Peacock Alley.

Great musical memory, R66! Your list made me laugh on this less-than-thrilling morning.

Rat Trap by Boomtown Rats in 78