Bands More Popular Outside of Their Home Country

I see Depeche Mode as a prime example of this. Are there any others?

Fun Lovin' Criminals, to be sure.

Remember when.

http://www.merrickmusic.com/images/BushBand.jpg

Phoenix

the japanese love themselves some MR. BIG

It seems Kings of Leon have kind of caught up here in the States, but I was shocked when they were mega-stars in the UK while floundering here.

http://www.bmusic.com.au/links/whatsnew/newsletters/archives/images/afos_2.jpg

Seem to remember The Tea Party being pretty big in Australia. Not sure if more than in Canada, but it did seem odd.

Manowar.

Anvil

King Crimson

every American jazz musician?

http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f308/lysiemichele/david-hasselhoff-07.jpg

every American jazz musician?

LOL

http://blogs.e-rockford.com/askgeo/files/2010/01/2cheaptrick_jk.jpg

Yes?

Where is Depeche Mode more popular than they are in Britain?

Slim Whitman

Yes?

Where is Depeche Mode more popular than they are in Britain?

Continental Europe and for awhile the U.S.

The Ventures

Did Fleetwood Mac only sounded like an American rock band or were they also more popular in the states than in the uk?

Also Daft Punk. It seems to me like the french stop paying attention to their artists the minute they become popular in other countries.

Dandy Warhols are apparently big-ish in the UK

I can also attest that many pop stars that noone really cares for here in Mexico are incredibly popular in Japan. Japanese dig all the musical crap from western civilizations.

Jennifer Love Hewitt

momus

Bjork
MBV

only for reason's of Ireland & Iceland's population. WHAZZAAMFL;DKAJL;KFJDLJ;LAS

Dean Reed

Boredoms

Sparks?

http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f308/lysiemichele/david-hasselhoff-07.jpg

Depeche Mode have long been huge in the UK, so while they might be huger in some other places, I don't think they really count.

Charlie Winston means nothing in the UK but is huge in France, apparently.

Supposedly Abba are way more popular in the Czech Republic than they are in Sweden.

Depeche Mode have long been huge in the UK, so while they might be huger in some other places, I don't think they really count.

I don't think they are that huge in the UK. Also, they seem to be taken a lot more seriously outside the UK.

Eddie Cochran

Correct, they are way huge and taken more seriously in Eastern Europe. They play stadiums out there. There's even a bar in Estonia or somewhere that plays nothing but Depeche Mode records. So yes, they do count.

Also, Bush.

the cannanes

Gene Vincent

That bar is in Tallin, yeah. Kids don't listen to Depeche Mode in the UK. They do east of Berlin.

Foghat, Savoy Brown, Chicken Shack, Ten Years After

Van der Graaf Generator were always more popular in continental Europe, especially Italy, than in the UK.

Faust

DM huge enough in the UK that their UK gig the other week was the O2 - there's nowhere bigger you can play in winter in the UK ...

It's London, so gig probably full of Russians, Portugese, Brazilians etc

was gonna say - they played the O2 here (Dublin) before Christmas (up to 14,000 capacity). Was visiting my sister-in-law who lives in the area that night and the tram was full of DM fans on their way to the gig, more than half of whom seemed to be Eastern European.

I retire gracefully. I burn no candles for DM. Was just looking at the album sales stats - change seemed to be before the last album, which still reached No 2 in the UK but won no certification.

Scissor Sisters

Pixies when they were together, though they seem to have a big US following now.

There was a funny story in the LA Times several years ago about the opening of a Madame Toussaud's attraction in L.A. where, due to some serious miscommunication, the museum was accidentally stocked with a number of the same celebrities as the London brach... which meant people like Jordan, some football players, and the Fun Lovin' Criminials.

Come on, Fun Lovin' Criminals aren't that popular in the UK

app. Archive are still doing big business in france.

so much so that all the mailouts are in french with no english equivalents.

Beach Boys in the UK?

Love in the UK.

Beefheart in the UK.

Zappa in Eastern Europe, there aren't any statues of him in the US are there?

Prime era Genesis were surely more popular in Italy and Spain than they were in the UK, as were probably lots of other 70s symphonic rock bands too.

I shan't go into how I know this, but for a time Apache Indian was massive in Cameroon

How big was Patti Smith in Italy back in the day? She broke her arm falling off the stage at a gig headlining a football stadium, no?

Stan Ridgeway, Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen, Jon English, Warren Zevon, Baccara, Chris De Burgh, Uriah Heep and Smokie are/were all bigger in Norway than anywhere else.

Add Dodgy to that list.

Adam Green and Calexico in Germany.

There's an animated GIF version of that Hoff picture.

Kids don't listen to Depeche Mode in the UK. They do east of Berlin.

They still do in the U.S. but not to the extent that you see in eastern Europe.

Stan Ridgeway, Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen, Jon English, Warren Zevon, Baccara, Chris De Burgh, Uriah Heep and Smokie are/were all bigger in Norway than anywhere else.

I can't really speak for the popularity in Norway, but Cohen is pretty much a god in his home country.

A couple of years ago when I was Rostock, Germany, my German friends took me to a local club that had a "Depeche Mode night", where the DJs played nothing but Depeche Mode. Then a few days later we went to Berlin, and there I saw an ad for a club that had a "Depeche Mode night" every other Friday!

But yeah, nothing beats that bar in Tallin where they play Depeche Mode all day, every day. IIRC the bar is even called "Depeche Mode". I wonder how long you could work in such a place before you went crazy?

(x-post)

Yeah, I was gonna question about Leonard Cohen being more popular in Norway than anywhere else. When he had a European tour a couple of years ago, in Finland he played at the largest inside venue in the whole country, and it was sold out. And I think it was the same in many other countries too.

We all love Lenny

I can't really speak for the popularity in Norway, but Cohen is pretty much a god in his home country

His popularity all over North America started to climb with I'm Your Man and reached a peak in the last couple of years, but for the whole of the 70s and most of the '80s he was pretty much ignored there. Various Positions wasn't even released in the USA.

Two Canadian examples: Saga and Danko Jones. I think Nomeansno may actually be far more popular in eastern Europe than they are in Canada, too.

!: The band has been constantly successful in Germany since its inception. It is also very popular in Puerto Rico: Saga has visited the island twelve times. Saga's second concert in Puerto Rico (1981) caused riots from fans trying to crash into a sold-out concert that sold over 10,000 tickets. Most of the inner cover photographs from the original vinyl release of In Transit were taken in Puerto Rico, including a live photograph from the 1981 concert. For a few years, a keyboard riff from their song "No Regrets" became the background music for station breaks at WCAD-FM in San Juan. The band received formal recognition as distinguished visitors from the Puerto Rican legislature in February 2005. Their concert on December 9, 2007 (at the Pier 10 Arena club in Old San Juan) was the last concert that Michael Sadler did with Saga.

Beach Boys in the UK?

a-what? they couldn't possibly be more popular than they are in the states

he Beach Boys have often been called "America's Band",[2][3][4] and Allmusic has stated that "the band's unerring ability... made them America's first, best rock band."[1] The group has had thirty-six U.S. Top 40 hits (the most of any U.S. rock band) and fifty-six Hot 100 hits, including four number-one singles.[1] Rolling Stone magazine listed The Beach Boys as number 12 in the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.[5] According to Billboard, in terms of singles and album sales, The Beach Boys are the No.-1-selling American band of all time.[6]

I think that the Beach Boys outsold the Beatles in the UK during the mid-60s, which is impressive, but still does not disguise the fact that they were just as huge in the states.

I think that the Beach Boys outsold the Beatles in the UK during the mid-60s

They can't have done. All the Beatles' mid-60s albums reached No.1, whereas the Boys' albums were placed at Nos. 6, 4, 3 &c. Even Pet Sounds "only" peaked at No.2. I haven't checked the singles charts, but I imagine they would tell a similar story.

american music club

anagram, i thought i read that Pet Sounds outsold Revolver by some margin in England. maybe i made that up!

how about Grandaddy?

It's already been mentioned, but The Tea Party being popular in Australia always kinda confused me. They suck.

Peaches and Skinny Puppy come to mind as Canadian artists who are/were more popular abroad.

Maybe Drake? I'm not sure how popular he is in Canada. He's still Jimmy Brooks, the kid in a wheelchair from Degrassi:TNG, to me.

The Outfield? Bad Company?

i'd always assumed that japanese bands that get any degree of popularity here are basically unknown in japan. but i don't know what i'm talking about really.

e.g. Guitar Wolf?

The Birthday Party. In fact most Australian/NZ groups I would have thought.

yeah them, cibo matto, all the psych & noise stuff. granted it's not like that stuff is exactly "popular" in the US/UK either.

xp

kinda true imo, i had to DRAG two of my complete maniacal music loving friends to see Boredoms in Japan circa VCN. they were equally skeptical about nissennenmondai and ooioo. rovo is (was?) more popular than these bands which is kinda lol. tho i think people have come around to EYE/Boredoms, there was a pretty big stretch of critical revisionism in the early 2000s thanks mostly to Studio Voice.

guitar wolf is way bigger than boredoms for sure. they headlined the 10th anniversary show at shinjuku loft (pretty big 90s rock club in tokyo).

cibo matto is from nyc which is pretty different territory imo.

cibo matto is from nyc which is pretty different territory imo.

haha see the part when i said i don't know what i'm talking about

i'm thinking back to when a japanese student gave a friend of mine a CD by X (Japan), trying to explain how it was the hugest most mindblowing thing ever, but that's an opposite example.

Richmond Fontaine

my brazilian friend from work claims that all that tropicalia stuff is not really that well known in brazil compared to other brazilian music that is not well known here.

In the mid-nineties, Rocket From the Crypt may have played on an MTV Spring Break stage and the Jon Stewart Show, but in Englande they played on Top of the Pops and placed #13 on the UK singles chart. Whether or not they sold more records domestically, I dunno.

Depeche Mode are definitely huge in Germany. The only band to have had more top ten hit singles than DM in Germany is the Beatles. Depeche Mode nights in clubs are quite common, in both east and west Germany.

Chicago's Green was relatively popular in Holland and Belgium in the late 80s/early 90s, while completely ignored in the US.

True. Jeff once told me that at one point they were in the Belgian top 10 alongside Madonna.

More U.S. bands that are bigger in the U.K.:

Dandy Warhols
Lambchop

Sonic Youth were a lot bigger in Europe for a while. Now it's probably about even.

xp

Also:

Scissor Sisters
The Gossip

my brazilian friend from work claims that all that tropicalia stuff is not really that well known in brazil compared to other brazilian music that is not well known here.

in Caetano's book he talks about how he is a famous pop musician in Brazil primarily for his later music, the only song from the tropicalia days which is particularly popular is Alegria, Alegria. So in a way he fits in this thread, and in a way he really doesn't.

says tom ze is about as famous here as he is in brazil, that is the kind of ppl digging on him

thin lizzy. i think.

I spent summer 1986 in Portugal and the front windows of every record shop in Lisbon were plastered with pictures/album covers of The Dream Syndicate's Out of the Grey album.

I don't know about popular, but I'd say that Can, Faust, Neu etc., the classic Krautrock bands, are more critically revered / oft-cited in the UK, US than they are in Germany

Jon English,

how on earth are you measuring this?

Seems like most of the NYC punk/new wave groups were, at least initially, more popular in the UK than the US — Ramones, Blondie, Television, et al.

Bob Marley?

And Depeche Mode sold 85,000 tickets at the Rose Bowl in 1988. I don't know if there were any other acts on the bill, but it wasn't a one-day festival type thing.

Dead C

The Beach Boys seem bigger in the UK because they are so popular there among critics. You can trace the Beach Boys' current influence in the U.S. more to the UK press I think.

Olivia Newton John?

doubt it

on that note, kylie?

how are you going to measure it? Gold Logie and highest selling single of the 80s here, against higher sales in a larger population in the UK? Her last album went #1 and platinum here on 70k, #4 and platinum in the UK on 400k, but double platinum in Columbia on just 20k.

Bob Marley?

I don't think so... IIRC his support for a Jamaican prime minister candidate back in the 70s helped to seal the deal for the guy, so he must've been pretty big there. Dunno what the situation is now though.

Scott Walker!!!!!!!!!!

Add Dodgy to that list.

No, they never had a top 20 hit here, while they had 5 in the UK, including #4 for "Good Enough". :)

As for Norway, UK band Broken Home also did quite well here in 1982. I believe they were never even close to anything in their own market.

I can't really speak for the popularity in Norway, but Cohen is pretty much a god in his home country.

Cohen is highly respected all over the world, but no other country is close to giving him a hitlist career like this one:
http://lista.vg.no/artist_info.php?ArtistOp=show&artistId=2586

"I'm Your Man" spent 16 weeks at the very top of the Norwegian album list:
http://lista.vg.no/album_info.php?AlbumOp=show&albumId=5940&albumtype=album&albumtype_id=1

I would have never guessed Cohen was more popular anywhere other than Canada but that does appear to be the case: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_Cohen_discography

Disturbing.

All 80s UK metal bands, who played theatres at home, and enormodomes in the States; had hits at home and smashes in the States. Especially Def Leppard.

The Fixx
Love and Rockets

Swans.

― Tied Up In Geir (Geir Hongro), Wednesday, 7 April 2010 19:37 (Yesterday)

― Tied Up In Geir (Geir Hongro), Wednesday, 7 April 2010 19:38 (Yesterday)

― Tied Up In Geir (Geir Hongro), Wednesday, 7 April 2010 19:41 (Yesterday)

Jon English,

how on earth are you measuring this?

― one of the jones boys (sic), Wednesday, 7 April 2010 09:05 (Yesterday)

keep reading this thread title as Bands More Popular Outside of The Home Counties

Savage Republic (the reformed 80s L.A. tribal punk group) were in their first decade and remain far more popular in Greece than on their home turf.

Princess Superstar

The Cramps

Wang Chung

Oh... and.... Every single 80s Italo Disco act which didn't perform their songs in Italian.

Wang Chung

― Tied Up In Geir (Geir Hongro), Thursday, 8 April 2010 13:25 (14 minutes ago)

Oh... and.... Every single 80s Italo Disco act which didn't perform their songs in Italian.

― Tied Up In Geir (Geir Hongro), Thursday, 8 April 2010 13:32 (7 minutes ago)

Jon English,

how on earth are you measuring this?

― one of the jones boys (sic), Wednesday, 7 April 2010 09:05 (Yesterday)

You want me to answer that, it seems?

Well, Jon English had a slight hit with "Six Ribbons" from "Against The Wind", which may also have topped the charts in Oz alongside Norway from all I know. But in Norway, he'd continue having huge hit albums and hit singles for the next year or so.

So two hit albums in Norway in, what, 1979? somehow makes him bigger there than having multiple #1s in Australia from 1974, winning the Best Male ARIA in 1976, the Countdown Best Male in 1978, four consecutive Best Entertainer "Mo"s in the 80s, being constantly employed on TV from 1975 to 1982 or so, touring the country back to back from 1982 to 1988 in Big River and Pirates, having his own sitcom from 1991 to 1993, being constantly on stage in either G&S or his own shows from 1993 to 2003, and the 90s telly version of his Pirates becoming the highest-selling musical theatre VHS and DVD of all time.

Again, how does the measurement work?

I'd never heard of this guy till this thread!

You're not missing out tbh.

Jon English, secret rock star.

So two hit albums in Norway in, what, 1979? somehow makes him bigger there than having multiple #1s in Australia from 1974, winning the Best Male ARIA in 1976, the Countdown Best Male in 1978, four consecutive Best Entertainer "Mo"s in the 80s, being constantly employed on TV from 1975 to 1982 or so, touring the country back to back from 1982 to 1988 in Big River and Pirates, having his own sitcom from 1991 to 1993, being constantly on stage in either G&S or his own shows from 1993 to 2003, and the 90s telly version of his Pirates becoming the highest-selling musical theatre VHS and DVD of all time.

Again, how does the measurement work?

In Norway, he is (was) a rock star. In Oz, he is an actor.

The Gun Club were bigger in the UK, the Netherlands and later on, in Japan, than they were in the U.S.

dead moon!

thin lizzy. i think.

― Zeno, Tuesday, April 6, 2010 9:23 PM (2 days ago)

um, there is a statue of phil lynott off grafton street in dublin. doubt they have a profile anywhere that is higher than it is in ireland.

In Norway, he is (was) a rock star. In Oz, he is an actor.

In Norway, he had a slight hit with "Six Ribbons" from "Against The Wind". In Australia, he'd had #1s up to SEVEN YEARS BEFORE, won the Best Male ARIA five years before, the Best Male Countdown Award three years before, and HAS CONTINUED RECORDING AND PERFORMING AS A MUSICIAN* IN AUSTRALIA FOR THIRTY YEARS AFTER his "slight hit" in Norway. Seriously, what's the metric?

*both stage and "rock"

OK, sounds like he is more of a music name in Oz than I thought. He had more than just that one hit in Norway, though. "Get Your Love Right" was huge even.

Clancy Brothers?
Rolf Harris?

Lumidee

I thought Lumidee had just one hit single (that "Uh Oh" tune)? Was it not popular in the US?

Tragically . . . The Sound

Placebo are far more popular in France than in the UK.

Oddly enough, so were Shed Seven!!!!!!!!

And for a time in the late 80's, The Jesus And Mary Chain were Les Gods Du Monde En France, compared to UK anyway!!!! Tu Le Monde from France wot I parlyed avec thought they were jolly brillibobs!

Not bad for a bunch for a bunch of spotty moptops from East Kilbride!!!!!!!

Swervedriver (or so I hear--more popular in the U.S. and I think even Australia than in the U.K.)

I thought Lumidee had just one hit single (that "Uh Oh" tune)? Was it not popular in the US?

Lumidee made it to #3 in the US but had 2 #1 singles in Belgium

Afric Simone

Xinlisupreme are pretty unknown in Japan... almost all their records are only available as imports there from UK/US labels.

Gene Pitney
Scatman John

I was just minding my own business browsing a thread I hadn't looked at before, thinking I might mention The Runaways or something. Now I must go and scrub my optic nerve & brain with steel wool & bleach to see if I can get rid of that Hasselhoff image. And I was going to go out tonight too.

Thanks to 69 for mentioning Dead Moon. Freakin amazing band! Pierced Arrows is good too, but I'm not sure why they felt they had to stop being Dead Moon to do it.

RIP Jon English.