Why don't Americans "get" Cliff Richards?

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Seriously. I only know about him mainly through Young Ones episodes, and that's it.

― donut bitch (donut), Tuesday, 16 December 2003 20:59 (twenty-one years ago)

i've heard a lil bit and shuddered

― cinniblount (James Blount), Tuesday, 16 December 2003 21:02 (twenty-one years ago)

or Cliff Richard, even.

― Johnny Fever (johnny fever), Tuesday, 16 December 2003 21:03 (twenty-one years ago)

I think it's more a matter that we're never exposed to Cliff Richard...I don't think I've ever heard a song by the man....so whether that's a good or bad thing, I leave for the Brits to decide.

― Matt Helgeson (Matt Helgeson), Tuesday, 16 December 2003 21:04 (twenty-one years ago)

I mean, I know many countries enforce content laws on radio and TV such that each country has a large assemblance of musical acts that are VERY popular within the country but completely unknown outside of the country.

But I'm guessing Cliff Richard takes the prize for most chart-topping songs for any single artist in any single country but now where else. Or I could be wrong. Has Richard done well in the rest of Europe as well?

― donut bitch (donut), Tuesday, 16 December 2003 21:06 (twenty-one years ago)

(..which is kinda funny since only recently has the American top charting singles becomes almost exclusively American artists, and without laws to make it that way)

― donut bitch (donut), Tuesday, 16 December 2003 21:07 (twenty-one years ago)

Our Lady Peace and Tragically Hip are pretty big in Canada and nowhere else....also, oddly was Copperhead Road-era Steve Earle....I don't know how OLP and TH chart, though...I think Canada does have some laws about video and airplay though

― Matt Helgeson (Matt Helgeson), Tuesday, 16 December 2003 21:10 (twenty-one years ago)

we don't get johnny hallyday either.

― scott seward, Tuesday, 16 December 2003 21:11 (twenty-one years ago)

we really really really got tom jones though.

― scott seward, Tuesday, 16 December 2003 21:12 (twenty-one years ago)

did the uk ever have content laws like that?

― cinniblount (James Blount), Tuesday, 16 December 2003 21:12 (twenty-one years ago)

i'm not sure how much we really got zucchero

― cinniblount (James Blount), Tuesday, 16 December 2003 21:13 (twenty-one years ago)

Who the fuck is Cliff Richard?

― Mr. Snrub (Mr. Snrub), Tuesday, 16 December 2003 21:14 (twenty-one years ago)

it doesn't prompt me into being arrogant enough to think my opinions on british politics to post them on threads about british politics with the assumption that a complete lack of knowledge or understanding of the matter shouldn't be held to be liability

― Andrew L (Andrew L), Tuesday, 16 December 2003 21:19 (twenty-one years ago)

???

― donut bitch (donut), Tuesday, 16 December 2003 21:21 (twenty-one years ago)

me neither!

― Matt Helgeson (Matt Helgeson), Tuesday, 16 December 2003 21:21 (twenty-one years ago)

we got englebert humperdink and sheena easton and shirley bassey and olivia newton john. heck, for a minute there we got lonnie donegan and rolf harris.

― scott seward, Tuesday, 16 December 2003 21:23 (twenty-one years ago)

really? skiffle got big in the US?

― Matt Helgeson (Matt Helgeson), Tuesday, 16 December 2003 21:24 (twenty-one years ago)

Yeah, I never heard of the man until I studied in England, when people talked about him like he was Elvis, and even then, I still haven't heard a single note.

― jaymc (jaymc), Tuesday, 16 December 2003 21:24 (twenty-one years ago)

We got the Pipkins.

― Arthur (Arthur), Tuesday, 16 December 2003 21:26 (twenty-one years ago)

I only saw Donagan once, on the Complete Beatles documentary I taped off of PBS when I was a kid (yes I was a big nerd).

― Matt Helgeson (Matt Helgeson), Tuesday, 16 December 2003 21:27 (twenty-one years ago)

I wish we'd gotten the Wombles. We got Teletubbies.

― Arthur (Arthur), Tuesday, 16 December 2003 21:27 (twenty-one years ago)

i think he made the u.s. charts with does your chewing gum lose it's flavor on the bedpost overnight(is that the correct title?)

― scott seward, Tuesday, 16 December 2003 21:29 (twenty-one years ago)

But... but... but... THE SHADOWS man!

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B000000IAO.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

(Cliff Richards' backing band originally)

― Elvis Telecom (Chris Barrus), Tuesday, 16 December 2003 21:29 (twenty-one years ago)

really! well we got them obv.

― cinniblount (James Blount), Tuesday, 16 December 2003 21:30 (twenty-one years ago)

we got astrud gilberto.

― scott seward, Tuesday, 16 December 2003 21:32 (twenty-one years ago)

i think he made the u.s. charts with does your chewing gum lose it's flavor on the bedpost overnight(is that the correct title?)

my grandma used to sing a song like that around her house...so it was probably a big hit if it was Lonnie....she wasn't a big music person or anything...

― Matt Helgeson (Matt Helgeson), Tuesday, 16 December 2003 21:32 (twenty-one years ago)

donut bitch are you sure cliff richard(s) didn't score hits outside the uk? i'm a lil skeptical of this

― cinniblount (James Blount), Tuesday, 16 December 2003 21:32 (twenty-one years ago)

No, "Devil Woman" was a big hit in the Seventies. But he's not an institution, that's for sure.

― Arthur (Arthur), Tuesday, 16 December 2003 21:37 (twenty-one years ago)

Americans - everything you need to know about cliff is here:

wired for sound (by cliff richard)

― weasel diesel (K1l14n), Tuesday, 16 December 2003 21:44 (twenty-one years ago)

Sorry, I cut and pasted something Blount typed on the ILE Bin Laden thread just 'cos I thought it was sort've funny in the light of this thread. It's like when you'd be reading a DC comic in the UK and not know who the FUCK Don Rickles was, and why shld you.

Cliff Richard is a former fith-rate Elvis impersonator turned Christian 'family' entertainer - I'm trying to think of an analagous American figure - Pat Boone, maybe?

― Andrew L (Andrew L), Tuesday, 16 December 2003 21:44 (twenty-one years ago)

i have a great 70's concept album he did about the stae of israel. actually, i think it might have been a weird soundtrack to some christian movie about Israel.

― scott seward, Tuesday, 16 December 2003 21:54 (twenty-one years ago)

state of israel.

― scott seward, Tuesday, 16 December 2003 21:55 (twenty-one years ago)

But I always got the impression that Cliff Richard is still relevant (in the UK) in the sense that even if he's no longer as popular as he once was, EVERYONE knows about him, people make jokes about him, he's part of the culture -- in a way that someone like Pat Boone isn't (I don't think) (for as much as Boone's metal album was haha and put him back in the public eye for a moment, for a lot of people there's a very specific association w/ Boone = "the white guy who sang 'Tutti Frutti'")

― jaymc (jaymc), Tuesday, 16 December 2003 21:57 (twenty-one years ago)

Blount, as i said above, I could be wrong. I'm thinking he may have had some hits in Europe.. but so far no reports of that, HOWEVER a hit report in America. But just once... compared to the... what... high double digits of hits he had in the UK?

― donut bitch (donut), Tuesday, 16 December 2003 22:08 (twenty-one years ago)

i see him on tv every single time I go to london, without fail.

― anthony kyle monday (akmonday), Tuesday, 16 December 2003 23:39 (twenty-one years ago)

For once, Americans prove good taste at least in one case. :-)

― Geir Hongro (GeirHong), Tuesday, 16 December 2003 23:52 (twenty-one years ago)

are his records even available over here? Never heard a note meself.

― Shakey Mo Collier, Tuesday, 16 December 2003 23:53 (twenty-one years ago)

There's got to be dozens of massively popular/successful American acts that Brits have never even heard of (i mean from the early days of Billboard to now).

― pete s, Tuesday, 16 December 2003 23:59 (twenty-one years ago)

The coolest thing about Cliff Richard appreciation in the United States is that for a long time, he tended to have a hit about once per DECADE. But then he kind of screwed that up in the early '80s:

1959 Living Doll Pop Singles No. 30
1964 It's All In The Game Pop Singles No. 25
1976 Devil Woman Pop Singles No. 6
1980 Carrie Pop Singles No. 34
1980 Dreaming Pop Singles No. 10
1980 We Don't Talk Anymore Pop Singles No. 7
1981 A Little In Love Pop Singles No. 17
1981 Suddenly Pop Singles No. 20
1982 Daddy's Home Pop Singles No. 23

― chuck, Wednesday, 17 December 2003 00:32 (twenty-one years ago)

there, see, we got him after all! This thread is a sham!

― scott seward, Wednesday, 17 December 2003 01:50 (twenty-one years ago)

Ar, foiled again. And if wasn't for scott and his meddling hound, I would have gotten away with it.

― donut bitch (donut), Wednesday, 17 December 2003 01:54 (twenty-one years ago)

haha, "scott" --> "chuck"

― donut bitch (donut), Wednesday, 17 December 2003 01:54 (twenty-one years ago)

Lonnie Donegan's "Rock Island Line", a far more important record than the one mentioned in this thread, got to #8 in the US although I'm not sure which chart that was, it being pre-1958 and thus pre-Hot 100. The chewing gum song got to #5 in 1961, a good couple of years after its UK success.

As for Cliff Richard, he had the commercial nous to record in other European languages in the days before English-language dominance of Europop - two of his German-language recordings hit #1 there. In terms of British influence on the US charts, his career mirrors a full circle, in that he had his first massive UK success in the first five years of the Hot 100 (1958-63), the last time it was as Americocentric as it is today ... his place in the British psyche is akin to that which the Queen Mother held here for the generation before the "Cliff generation", revered because he's the one link to an utterly vanished world, and a lot of people (perhaps especially in the UK) find that psychologically reassuring. Like the QM, he's hated with a rare venom by those who oppose that kind of yearning / clinging to the past.

― robin carmody (robin carmody), Wednesday, 17 December 2003 02:30 (twenty-one years ago)

it's so funny, how we don't talk anymore ... and beware of devil woman!

(both of which were hits in the USA, you know)

― Eisbär (llamasfur), Wednesday, 17 December 2003 04:31 (twenty-one years ago)

four years pass...

For once, Americans prove good taste at least in one case. :-)

-- Geir Hongro (GeirHong)

BURN!

those 2 or 3 70s hits CR had in the US aren't bad, really well-produced and hooky, iirc

― gershy, Friday, 4 January 2008 05:45 (seventeen years ago)

more discussion of wired for sound pls

― electricsound, Friday, 4 January 2008 05:48 (seventeen years ago)

he's really creepy looking in those videos. i don't know Wired For Sound, was it his last major hit or something?

― gershy, Friday, 4 January 2008 05:56 (seventeen years ago)

certainly one of his last, if not his best

― electricsound, Friday, 4 January 2008 06:05 (seventeen years ago)

those 2 or 3 70s hits CR had in the US aren't bad, really well-produced and hooky, iirc

Those few Cliff Richard songs that have become hits in the US are probably among his very best. I know "Devil Woman" was his biggest hit over there and "We Don't Talk Anymore" sort of cracked the US market too, didn't it?

― Geir Hongro, Friday, 4 January 2008 09:34 (seventeen years ago)

There's this one guy who comes into the record shop and ALWAYS asks me if we've gotten any new Cliff Richard 45s. I point him towards the few dozen boxes of $0.50 singles and tell him to have at it. Then he'll ask about UK pressed Cliff Richard 45s specifically, because he "has all the American ones", and I'll say "I haven't seen any lately."

Then he asks about the Peter Criss picture disc.

― ian, Saturday, 5 January 2008 05:54 (seventeen years ago)

Is he Cliff RIchard?

― Alba, Sunday, 6 January 2008 11:06 (seventeen years ago)

"Do you have 'Fly Fishing' by JR Hartley? It is very old..."

― snoball, Sunday, 6 January 2008 14:35 (seventeen years ago)

I have no idea who the fuck this guy is save from "Suddenly" from the Xanadu soundtrack which is probably the perfect song. And from Young Ones refs.

― Abbott, Monday, 7 January 2008 00:31 (seventeen years ago)

i don't know Wired For Sound, was it his last major hit or something?

-- gershy, Friday, 4 January 2008 16:56 (3 days ago)

OMIGOD, it's ace, it's got roller skating and WALKMANS and corduroy and aviator sunglasses and ill-fitting cardigans and small speakers and tall speakers and wall speakers. How does anyone manage to miss something as perennially cool as this??

― Autumn Almanac, Monday, 7 January 2008 00:38 (seventeen years ago)

D everything else he ever did though.

― Autumn Almanac, Monday, 7 January 2008 00:38 (seventeen years ago)

Even Devil Woman?

― Herman G. Neuname, Monday, 7 January 2008 00:39 (seventeen years ago)

How does anyone manage to miss something as perennially cool as this??

-- Autumn Almanac

well, the whole premise of the thread is that americans never really heard his stuff except for a few years in the mid to late 70s. i know him a little better than most because of frequent trips to the uk in my youth to visit family, but i haven't heard anything from him post 80s.

― gershy, Monday, 7 January 2008 03:23 (seventeen years ago)

Yeah, it was more a rhetorical point than anything. Images of the guy skating around with that walkman on the go were seared into my brain at a very early age.

btw everything post-80s is rubbish.

― Autumn Almanac, Monday, 7 January 2008 03:28 (seventeen years ago)

Cliff Richard's duet with Janet Jackson on her 1984 album Dream Street is just sooo bad it's not funny.

― Bimble, Monday, 7 January 2008 06:52 (seventeen years ago)

everything post-80s is rubbish.

This applies to most pop music.

― Geir Hongro, Monday, 7 January 2008 07:08 (seventeen years ago)

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