What are the most unusual chart hits of all time?

I was thinking about the KLF/JAMMS' 'It's Grim Up North' and what a confrontational, strange, uncommercial piece of music it really is. Had it not been for them riding the wave of previous successes, this would never have been a hit tune. Pretty much pure industrial tech-noise punctuated by a mournful train-whistle, Bill Drummond reciting the names of northern towns in a baleful tone and an interpolation of 'Jerusalem' right at the end. It's a bit of a wonder.

And of course maybe the ultimate strange chart hit is to Laurie Anderson's 'O Superman', which somehow got to number 2 in 1981, despite being a drum-free vocodered tone poem based on a Massenet opera.

What other unlikely or unusual songs have broken through into mass appeal?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUgsmsvSYow

Bran Van 3000 - Drinking In LA. A perennial summer jam with slurred radio chatter instead of a verse and backing vocals as a chorus. A groove, but not much of a beat to speak of. Still, when I hear it I still get a chill vibe.

I always have found "To Know Him Is to Love Him" by the Teddy Bears (aka Phil Spector and two HS friends) to be a remarkably unusual #1 hit. Maybe it's not as strange as many other charting singles, but as a #1 it's really odd. Written by a 17-year-old New Yorker going to high school in LA ... inspired by the epitaph on the gravestone of father, a suicide ... recorded in about 20 minutes ... played in an odd time signature with a slow, eerie vibe, even though it's a simple 1950s teen angst, "Does Bobby even notice me?" type of lyric ... bookended as a #1 hit by "Tom Dooley" (The Kingston Trio) and "The Christmas Song (Please Christmas Don't Be Late)" (David Seville and the Chipmunks) (!).

PiL - Death Disco (made #20 in the UK chart)
Japan - Ghosts (made #5 in the UK chart)

lots of strange novelties have been hits in the uk (i'm thinking like the teletubbies single, crazy frog, everybody's free to wear sunscreen, the millennium prayer and so on) but those have become big often enough that maybe it's a stretch to consider them unusual. and they're more unusual in a lulzy way than in a musical way.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvLDm8821jQ

A charleston loop on top of a hard house beat, a top 10 hit in the UK and many other countries.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNq_DTmVCWs§

Also, this was a big hit in many countries in the early 70s (the Finnish-language version made it to the top 10 in here), basically just an endless stream of tea bag aphorisms, and percursor of the Sunscreen tune.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqD1OohY2to

And of course there's this! I don't think a more musically minimal tune has ever become a big hit?

Bound 4 Da Reload by Oxide & Neutrino? I guess that sampling the Casualty theme music means it kind of works as part of the canon of UK novelty hits as well

Japan - Ghosts (made #5 in the UK chart)

― anthony braxton diamond geezer (anagram), Friday, July 31, 2015 11:58 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This was pretty much the first thing I thought when I saw the thread title.

it seems strange that 'E-Bow the Letter' got to #4 in the UK charts and was REM's highest placing single over here until 'The Great Beyond' - this is surely a situation akin to 'It's Grim Up North', riding the wave of previous successes/first single from a highly anticipated album?

it sounds a bit like 'Cosmic Dancer' by T Rex, I don't know if that has anything to do with it? was that as well known a song before it was used in Velvet Goldmine and Billy Elliot?

Filed under "songs that don't seem that strange until you start taking them apart":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s05jcrJw0as

How was Bound 4 The Reload unusual?

"Are Friends Electric?" - six minutes long, no single edit, no chorus, still a #1

As the charts in the UK began to represent fewer sales, odd indie hits did find their way into the main, national top ten. In the same week in February 1992, Ride's 8 minute drone "Leave Them All Behind", and the Jesus & Mary Chain's glitchy shoegaze "Reverence" were both, briefly, number 9 and 10 respectively. A good week for Creation, and I'm guessing before the sale to Sony. Obviously this happened more and more as Britpop took hold, but in early '92 this did seem very weird. They're both very noisy records. Unusual? Huh, I don't know. It's rock music, I guess.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Fn36l_z3WY

I was going to post "Poing", Tuomas beat me to it.

Moon Zappa - "Valley Girl" - #32.

Pyramid Song is a weird tune to get in the top 3.

good one

#29 in the US

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYerwwTV5qc

tea bag aphorisms?

Don't know what tuomas meant by that, and I hadn't heard it before but that, along with sunscreen, thou shall always kill and fitter happier, there's a mini genre going on.

Does Baauer's Harlem Shake count as unusual?

Surely Paul Hardcastle's "19" ranks up there. #1 on UK Singles, US Billboard Hot Dance, Eurochart Hot 100, Austria, Belgium, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland charts. Electro, with found spoken lyrics about Vietnam vet PTSD.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8JlTIo--CQ

yeah, looking back there have been many spoken word hits through the years. But have there been any since Sunscreen?

Speaking of spoken word, this preachy and hamfisted bit of moralizing hit #23 in 1971.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haCqD9Ps0co

yeah, looking back there have been many spoken word hits through the years. But have there been any since Sunscreen?

Does #Selfie count as spoken word?

I don't actually know, because I've never actually listened to that song and am not going to change that.

Just made it all the way through "Poing". I was about to go insane a few times and then the noise mercifully stopped.

I think you in the U.K. have us in the U.S. beat for the strangest hits. Over here, just about anything really weird that hit the Top 40 is either an outright novelty song, or at least "funny" in the way "Bohemian Rhapsody" is funny.

I'm convinced that the weirdest non-funny song to ever hit the U.S. Top 10 is "Tusk." At least up through the mid-'90s (when I officially became enough of an old indie fuck to pay attention to radio hits)--after that, what? Missy Elliott?

At the height of the CB radio craze back in '75-76, Convoy made it to #1 in the US. Spoken & sort of sung by 47 year old CW McCall, it was a truckers vs cops narrative in CB slang over a martial beat.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xN4XpIbEY-Y

In the weird decidedly non-funny vein is The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. A 6 minute no chorus dirge about a ship sinking in Lake Superior ... obvious hit? In 1976 Gordon Lightfoot took to #2 in the US.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vST6hVRj2A

in the us the 70s is going to win this easy

Never knew Disco Duck was a number one.

in the us the 70s is going to win this easy

Yeah, first one I thought of was this:
https://youtu.be/9NiAD17wpEY

That "Dear Mr. Jesus" song from the 80s, sung from the perspective of a 5 year old abuse victim, might be the most horrifying thing I've ever heard on the radio. In my benevolence I'll refrain from linking to it.

M.I.A. - "Paper Planes." I'm still amazed it took off, movie appearance notwithstanding.

As an American, I wonder what the impact of "Wuthering Heights" was like. I guess I wonder because of the presence of progressive rock at the time, but Genesis and King Crimson and Pink Floyd were not having hit singles in the '70s.

buchanan and goodman - the flying saucer (#3, 1956)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNOVlG1Zqq8

i haven't the faintest idea whether the success of a record like this would have seemed unusual at the time (though articles from the time do show its use of samples from other big contemporary pop songs was highly controversial in the industry -- mostly for the obvious reasons, though reportedly a few execs actually felt insulted that their records weren't sampled on it!). obviously comedy recordings and novelties becoming hits was pretty normal, but i'm still pretty amazed that a sound collage like this became the sensation that it did. naturally it dominated most on the sales survey (at the time billboard had several different pop charts rather than one integrated one, like the hot 100 now) but it broke the top 10 on the airplay listing (#9) too. bizarre.

Just saw this on an old TOTP...
Dennis Waterman & George Cole - What Are We Gonna Get 'Er Indoors
#21 in 1983

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zP8bqOcj9H8

You'll Always Find Me In The Kitchen At Parties by Jona Lewie has to be up there.

Dave Robinson of Stiff once described him as "the oddest bloke on the block", which is about right.

Steve Miller Band - 'Bongo Bongo'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gd1b7d7vj04

I can think of a ton but I generally think of them as just novelty songs.

Here's one I love: The Novas - 'The Crusher' (from 1964)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvBN3C2wepY

"Irie Feelings (Skanga)" by Rupie Edwards strikes me as an unlikely track to have reached No. 9 in the charts, Top 10 no less! It's basically a dub version of Johnny Clarke's "Everyday Wondering", and remember this was 1974, so pretty early days for dub. I guess skinheads and suedeheads or whoever must have bought it en masse.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZZlQqG7hEg

A pop-house list-song by a new wave act with the unlikely double act of Kim Basinger and Ozzy Osbourne on guest vocals, reclaimed from a much earlier version of the song

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xF86IyrxptU

Did Skanga really reach number 9? that's bananas!

It certainly did.

"Bohemian Rhapsody" has to be pretty high on the list.

Higher than Skanga, The Flying Saucer, and ‘Er Indoors?

It's all relative, I reckon.

SXM has a weekly "This Week In The '50s" countdown show, using the Billboard Pop Top 10s, and I recently learned this was huge in 1952

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnGQiSfS8XA

Johnny Standley: "It's In The Book"

It's nutty how many Spoken Word/Comedy singles were massive chartbusters in the pre- & early Hot 100 era.

In 1952, Standley wrote (with Art Thorsen) a song/comedy routine called "It's in the Book". In it, Standley plays a revivalist preacher who gives a (possibly inebriated) take on the children's tale Little Bo Peep, claiming his interpretation is in the Bible: "It's in the book!" The number (featuring Heidt's orchestra) continues in that vein, with Standley praising "Grandma's Lye Soap", while the audience cheers. "It's in the Book" was released by the small Magnolia label as a single in the fall of 1952, then picked up by Capitol Records. The routine (which, at over six minutes long, had to be split over both sides of the record) shocked industry observers as it hit the Billboard charts in October and raced all the way to the number-one spot for the week ending November 22, 1952. Aided by radio airplay and TV appearances, the record sold over two million copies, making it perhaps the mostly unlikely recording ever to receive a gold record.

Standley continued touring with Heidt's stage show, but would release only two more records, neither of them hits: "Proud New Father" b/w "Clap Your Hands" (Capitol 2569) in 1953, and "Get Out and Vote" (with Jimmy Sheldon's Orchestra; Capitol 3544) in 1956. (The latter was later re-released by the California Republican Party, of which Horace Heidt Jr. was a member.)

Sombre Mancs and Scousers do spoken-word verses and wistful choruses to strange but magical effect

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jehlXSr-x8

It's nutty how many Spoken Word/Comedy singles were massive chartbusters in the pre- & early Hot 100 era.

Top 5 hit in 1955 featuring the great Ken Nordine.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2JWarqOS2A

Toast by Streetband is pretty unusual, No 18 in 1978, in the UK

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ayx6jDJ-Hu8

An unknown force compelled me to listen to The Ballad Of Tom Jones, a number 4 UK hit in 1998 for Space & Cerys Matthews. Not sure how much this qualifies, but there's a lot of strangeness going on on here, not least the explicit murder threats and the fact most of the lines don't rhyme or fit into any particular metre

“Ballad of the Green Berets” by Sgt. Barry Sadler seems like an odd tune to become an am radio hit.

Oh man, 1966 was the year I started listening to top 40 radio. All I wanted to hear was Monkees and Paul Revere and the Raiders, and then “Green Berets” would keep popping up.

Sparks - This Town Ain’t Big Enough For The Both Of Us (UK #2 1974). their Top Of The Pops appearances were talk of the town, with people of all ages (especially kids) loving Ron’s strange demeanour. un-rockstar look, moustache, serious face, shifty/darting eyes.
they were seen almost as comic silent film stars like Laurel & Hardy, who were undergoing a mid-70s UK revival.

One of my favourite novelty hits is "Car 67" by Driver 67, which was a top ten hit in 1979:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKm_GNOiu1A

I always think about this one from 30ish years ago, which for a while seemed inescapable

"Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm" is a song by Canadian rock band Crash Test Dummies, and written by its singer Brad Roberts. It was released in October 1993 by Arista and BMG as the band's lead single from their second album, God Shuffled His Feet (1993). The song received positive critical reviews upon its release, though retrospective reviews have been more negative. The song reached number four on the US Billboard Hot 100 and topped the national charts of Australia, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Iceland, Lithuania, Norway, Sweden. In the band's native Canada, it stalled at number 14 on the RPM 100 Hit Tracks chart

We Canadians had already had our fill of Crash Test Dummies by that point, we weren't going to send them any higher on the charts than that.

XXP - I remember reading that Jeff Lynne is the voice of the controller, certainly could be him.

We Canadians had already had our fill of Crash Test Dummies by that point, we weren't going to send them any higher on the charts than that.

Sadly that isn’t true, this is prob the weirdest/worst/flimsiest top 10 (CAN) single I can call to mind

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCKoub_8Y48

You're right, that was the fifth of five subsequent top ten hits!
One of the saddest interviews I ever read was keyboard player and singer Ellen Reid talking about how she had invested six figures worth of savings in recording and promoting a solo album - not that I assumed it would be bad, but that I couldn't see how that risk could possibly pay off.

Sparks - This Town Ain’t Big Enough For The Both Of Us (UK #2 1974). their Top Of The Pops appearances were talk of the town, with people of all ages (especially kids) loving Ron’s strange demeanour. un-rockstar look, moustache, serious face, shifty/darting eyes.
they were seen almost as comic silent film stars like Laurel & Hardy, who were undergoing a mid-70s UK revival.

― Paul, Wednesday, January 24, 2024 8:06 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

this is a cool example because the song itself I don't think is all that odd for a hit - I mean, it's an undeniably great tune - but yeah all accounts of the era point out that it wasn't so much the music as it was their bizarre stage presence. a lot of the talking heads in the documentary say something to the effect of "I didn't know if they were a real band or something just invented for TV"

Was anybody else on the UK charts singing complicated arpeggi in falsetto with such wordy lyrics? Even by glam standards, it must have stood out.

the song that comes to mind for me is "Push th' Little Daisies" by Ween, though I guess here it only got as high as 21 on the Modern Rock chart. it was a bona fide hit in Australia for whatever reason. maybe the fact that my generation was raised on Beavis and Butthead re-runs convinced us the song was more popular than it actually was. but yeah kind of funny situation, Electra signs this band with basically no commercial potential and are essentially forced to come up with **something** as the single

(xp) 70s charts in the UK were full of weird (mostly terrible) one-offs - not that Sparks were a one-off, of course (or terrible).

this was the moment my brain broke in half

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=askJED2-_l4

No Weenin' the Juice

Thsi Town Ain't Big Enough is definitely a weird song

Friends and I still quote this shreds of Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm years later....cannot resist to post

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1IhhdsKXAQ