u/discoislife53

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?

What are some songs that you know of that have co-writers you did not expect?

Young at Heart by The Bluebells was first recorded and co-written by Bananarama on their debut album Deep Sea Skiving. At the time, Siobhan Fahey was dating Bluebells guitarist and songwriter Robert Hodgens (aka Bobby Bluebell). The Bananarama version is credited to Hodgens and the trio, but the Bluebells version that became a big European hit was credited to Hodgens, Fahey, and session musician Bobby Valentino, who performs the violin solo on the song.

It really shouldn’t surprise me as before he became a soul-lite balladeer, Michael Bolton tried his hand at becoming a lite metal singer. But I was surprised to learn he co-wrote Cher’s I Found Someone (previously recorded by Laura Branigan) and KISS’ Forever.

I was surprised to learn that English singer/songwriter Beverley Craven (famous for the 1991 European megahit ballad Promise Me) wrote one of the follow-up singles, Woman To Woman (#40 on the UK charts), about her friend Alison Goldfrapp. Craven wrote the song about how every time Goldfrapp would fall in love, she would neglect their friendship.

Any other songs you know about a person, place, thing, subject, etc. that surprised you?

One singer who I believe fits this category is the late German schlager singer Roy Black. Born Gerhard Höllerich in 1943 in Bobingen, Bavaria, he took his stage name from his favorite singer (Roy Orbison) and his jet black head of hair. He began performing rock and roll with his band Roy Black and the Cannons and gained notoriety which led to a record contract with Polydor Records. However, producer Hans Bertram decided he wanted Black, but not his band, and that instead of rock and roll, he was going to sing ballads, which led to him being typecast as a schmaltzy ballad singer. He racked up several German hit singles in the mid 1960s and early 1970s, including “Ganz in Weiß” (“All In White”), “Du bist nicht allein” (“You’re Not Alone”), and “Dein schönstes Geschenk” (“Your Most Beautiful Gift”) and had a simultaneous career as an actor, starring predominantly in musical comedy films. His career declined in the-mid 1970s after he got married and started a family, but it picked back up in the mid-1980s and continued on that path until his death in 1991 at the age of 48 from heart failure caused by alcohol abuse.

Behind the scenes, Black is said to have struggled with separating his professional persona as Roy Black with his private self as Gerhard Höllerich, which led to depression, alcoholism, and fractured relationships with his first wife and son. I wonder if being shoehorned into this ballad singer persona contributed to the problems in his life which led to his eventual death.

Before becoming internationally known, actor Christoph Waltz portrayed Black in a made for television movie titled Du bist nicht allein - The Roy Black Story, released in 1996 and broadcast on Germany’s RTL network.

Are there any other artists who you suspect didn’t or don’t really care for the music they perform?

This one might have been posted recently, but there’s a Hulu docuseries coming out about this cult, so I thought I’d repost.