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Really big songs (and other pop culture hits) that you've totally missed out on...
I was giving my wife one of her standard 2-hour massages tonight while we were in bed watching TV. Since nothing was on, we turned the "dial" (digital cable) to the band of channels that covers the various music genres, from a Big Band channel to a Hip Hop channel to "decade" channels, etc.
Anyway, towards the end of the rub/scratch/hairbrushing One Sweet Day came on, a 1995 song by Mariah Carey and Boys II Men. I remark first...
"Huh. I've never heard this song."
"... You've never heard this song?!?"
"Did I stutter?", with a wink, "No, it doesn't sound familiar at all."
"No way! This song was HUGE!"
Her surprise seemed a little out of proportion for what was sounding like a pretty basic ballad with a fair amount of caterwauling, so I decided to look it up in my copy of Joel Whitburn's The Billboard Book of Top-40 Hits, an invaluable reference guide to what was hot and what was not in the world of pop music.
Holy freakin' Shiite, this song was big! Apparently, not only did it spend 16 weeks at #1, not only was it just the biggest song of 1995 (coulda fooled me), but according to this book, it was the biggest charting song of all time*, beating out Elvis, the Beatles, and the Macarena (which I had heard
).
Who knew?
So, what big songs or other pop-culture things did you totally miss out on? Not because you weren't interested ("I have no desire in seeing that boat movie... we all know that it sinks in the end"), but because, well, you weren't paying attention. Or you were too busy. Or something.
*However, I think the all-time list is a little suspect because the top-9 songs are all post 1992. Did Billboard change the way they figured their charts or something?
Anyway, towards the end of the rub/scratch/hairbrushing One Sweet Day came on, a 1995 song by Mariah Carey and Boys II Men. I remark first...
"Huh. I've never heard this song."
"... You've never heard this song?!?"
"Did I stutter?", with a wink, "No, it doesn't sound familiar at all."
"No way! This song was HUGE!"
Her surprise seemed a little out of proportion for what was sounding like a pretty basic ballad with a fair amount of caterwauling, so I decided to look it up in my copy of Joel Whitburn's The Billboard Book of Top-40 Hits, an invaluable reference guide to what was hot and what was not in the world of pop music.
Holy freakin' Shiite, this song was big! Apparently, not only did it spend 16 weeks at #1, not only was it just the biggest song of 1995 (coulda fooled me), but according to this book, it was the biggest charting song of all time*, beating out Elvis, the Beatles, and the Macarena (which I had heard
). Who knew?
So, what big songs or other pop-culture things did you totally miss out on? Not because you weren't interested ("I have no desire in seeing that boat movie... we all know that it sinks in the end"), but because, well, you weren't paying attention. Or you were too busy. Or something.
*However, I think the all-time list is a little suspect because the top-9 songs are all post 1992. Did Billboard change the way they figured their charts or something?
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