Americans Hate Tingle / Music

• In the early 1970s, Slade were superstars in the UK, where they had a slew of hits, including "Cum on Feel the Noize," "Skweeze Me Pleez Me," "Mama Weer All Crazee Now", and "Merry Xmas Everybody". In the US, they were virtually unknown until Quiet Riot had a hit in the 1980s with a cover of "Cum on Feel the Noize." The guys in Slade were good sports about this and said they appreciated the royalty money. Additionally, around the same time, they finally had an American top 20 hit of their own, "Run Runaway".
• The Sex Pistols recorded a UK #1 album with Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols, which never cracked the top 100 in sales in the U.S. It did not help matters that the Pistols' sole U.S. tour during their original run was a publicity stunt concocted by Malcolm McLaren that saw the Pistols touring the Bible Belt to generate lots of "rednecks vs. punks" news. (One oft-shown image has the theater marquee of the Longhorn Ballroom in Dallas showing the Sex Pistols headlining that week, with the next week's show featuring Merle Haggard!) One of the only shows in punk-friendly territory was the very last in San Francisco – and that one ended with Johnny Rotten leaving the stage, and the band, abruptly.
  
  Much of this divide has to do with the different ways the US and UK punk scenes developed. Bands on both sides of The Pond drew influences from the same bands — the big American protopunk acts (The Stooges, Velvet Underground, New York Dolls, MC5, The Dictators, etc.) were widely respected in both the US and the UK, while The Ramones, an American band and firm believers in Three Chords and the Truth, played a major role in launching the British scene. Despite their shared inspirations, however, American and British punks came from very different backgrounds. The American scene was more artsy, middle-class, and bohemian, the '70s version of hipsters, while the British scene was predominantly working-class. The breaking point between the American and British punk scenes was when Johnny Rotten openly mocked Patti Smith's 1976 performance in London as pretentious, a feeling that Smith reciprocated by claiming that the Sex Pistols had no talent. (By contrast, the more equally working class but more sophisticated The Clash managed to score hits across the Pond.) Despite the development of punk scenes across the country and the British punk bands attracting cult followings, punk never had the same impact on American culture that it did in the U.K. It would have to wait until the rise of Grunge in the '90s to do that.
• One of the most prominent examples of this is Australian pop star Kylie Minogue. Throughout most of the world, she is pop music royalty, having sold more than 70 million records, was voted as the 49th greatest woman in music by VH1, has received an Order of the Arts from the government of France, and has been cited by Guinness World Records as having the most consecutive decades with a top-five album. Dubbed "The Princess of Pop", Minogue is a sex symbol and a musical and fashion icon, and her younger sister Dannii was able to become a successful artist simply by riding Kylie's coat tails.
  
  However, Minogue's international success comes with one caveat: she has never been able to crack the United States. After scoring back-to-back hits with her two debut singles "The Locomotion" and "I Should Be So Lucky", she promptly fell off the American radar and was forgotten until her worldwide smash "Can't Get You Out of My Head" became a top-ten hit there in 2002. And even then, it only reached #7 on the Billboard Hot 100, compared to the laundry list of countries where it topped the charts. It wasn't until 2009 that she toured the US for the first time, and she has only had one album go platinum there (Fever in 2001, the album that "Can't Get You Out of My Head" came off of). In most of the world, people know her on a First-Name Basis in a manner akin to Madonna, Michael, or Britney, but when Americans hear the name "Kylie", they're more likely to think of Kylie Jenner than Minogue — a fact that Minogue is not unaware of.
  
  This dissonance may be explained by how, while Europe remained friendly to pop through the early 1990s (the years when Minogue's career was just starting to take off), the US flat-out revolted against it during the same time period. When she first hit the scene in 1987, Minogue was merely a manufactured bubblegum pop artist in a market over-saturated with such. With Rhythm of Love in 1990 and Let's Get to It in 1991, she took creative control of her career and image, broke from the Stock Aitken Waterman team, and redeemed herself as a mature, credible artist while most of her peers fell into obscurity. However, Rhythm of Love suffered the worst possible timing: it was released on November 12, 1990, just two days before Milli Vanilli's manager/producer Frank Farian admitted that the duo never sang the music on their records. This created a huge backlash against bubblegum pop in America that fueled the rise of Grunge, Hip-Hop, R&B, and adult alternative, and killed the careers of just about every American pop artist who wasn't playing a more R&B-inflected sound like Mariah Carey or Michael and Janet Jackson (save for the "Queen of Pop" Madonna, and even she went through an Audience-Alienating Era around this time). By the time the backlash subsided in the late '90s, Minogue's disco and Synth-Pop-flavored style had diverged far from the new wave of American pop, which was influenced by R&B and soft rock. Even after the internet exposed Minogue to a wider American audience, she's still seen as more of a niche artist popular among gay men rather than an international juggernaut. After "Can't Get You Out of My Head," it took 21 years for Minogue to have another major hit in the US with "Padam Padam" in 2023.
• The Eagles have the best selling album ever in the United States with Their Greatest Hits (1971–1975), and it took Michael Jackson dying for Thriller to take that top spot for almost a decade. This confuses people outside North America, as even if songs like "Take It to the Limit" (#12 in the UK) and "Heartache Tonight" (#13 in Australia) managed to break out overseas, their only real international hit is "Hotel California", which came after that compilation!
• During the '90s, a wall effectively emerged between the American and British rock music worlds that very few bands successfully crossed for more than one hit.
  • In the early-mid-1990s, grunge was huge in the United States, but in the UK it received a very divisive reception. It got a lot of press coverage in the vacuum following the demise of Madchester, and for a time, almost every stand-up comedian had his own Kurt Cobain impersonation, but it never became the mainstream phenomenon it was in the States, and most Brits would have struggled to name a grunge band that wasn't Nirvana. Aside from Nirvana, Soundgarden were the only other grunge band who had success in the UK. Alice in Chains and L7 had British followings and a handful of Top 40 hits each, but topped out at #19 and #21 respectively. Pearl Jam, who remained huge stars in the US for decades after the grunge era, only had one Top 10 hit in the UK, and Stone Temple Pilots only made the Top 40 there just once. Meanwhile, the upbeat and exuberant Britpop music genre emerged as a backlash against the dourness and pessimism of grunge. However, there were some exceptions: the British band Bush, for example, continued to play music inspired by grunge years after the scene faded in the US.
  • Britpop, in turn, largely got the cold shoulder in the US, with Oasis probably the only band to have much success, and Blur becoming a One-Hit Wonder with "Song 2" (which was ironically intended as a parody of grunge). Americans who liked grunge naturally didn't take well to a genre that explicitly repudiated it, while Americans who didn't like grunge mostly turned to Country Music, classic rock, adult alternative, and bands like Hootie & the Blowfish as an antidote. While bands like Pulp and Suede gained an underground following, none of them really broke through on the alternative charts even though, just a few years earlier, Shoegazing and Madchester dance music were all over American alternative rock radio. Some of the major British indie bands from the '80s that were staples of early alternative radio in the US like Depeche Mode, The Cure and New Order remained popular, but even then their popularity seemed limited to urban areas where dance and indie rock still had significant followings.
  • This wall was especially pronounced with American and British indie music in the '90s. In the UK, Blur was the only famous British band to draw any influence from bands like Pavement, while in America, British indie music was largely ignored outside of music magazines and College Radio. These bands weren't immensely popular in their home countries, either, but they were even less popular across The Pond. This ended when The Strokes released Is This It, which had an immediate impact in the UK that was unmatched in America.
  • Semisonic's "Closing Time", one of the definitive One-Hit Wonder hits of late '90s American alternative radio (and also a big hit in Canada), was greeted with indifference in Europe, only managing to climb to #25 on the British charts and bombing elsewhere. Oddly, Revival by Commercialization in Friends with Benefits and The Office (US) led it to return to the lower rungs of the UK charts in 2011 and 2012. The band did manage a Germans Love David Hasselhoff case in 1999 when "Secret Smile", a song that flopped in the US after getting Screwed by the Network, climbed up to #12 in the UK.
  • Ultimately, both grunge and Britpop wound up collapsing around the same time (1996-97) — grunge had worn out its welcome following Kurt Cobain's suicide and was beginning to change into the (now very hated) post-grunge, while Britpop fell amidst an identity crisis, as seemingly nobody could define where the genre started and ended, combined with several badly-received albums. This along with the rap world's East Coast/West Coast feud (and subsequent reconfiguration after the deaths of Tupac and Biggie) enabled the Spice Girls to break through to America and kickstart the late '90s pop revival, thus defying this trope (at least for a little while).
• In Israel, Richard Wagner's music is very unpopular, mainly due to the composer's virulent (but not murderous) anti-Semitism and, more importantly, his popularity within the Nazi Party inner circle – the death camps were known to blast Wagner over the speakers. After the War, many Holocaust survivors moved to Israel, and took their newfound (admittedly understandable) hatred of the composer with them, allowing it to become official state policy. When a travelling orchestra attempted to play Wagner in Tel Aviv, it was met with massive protests and a boycott. The unofficial ban is slowly being lifted as Holocaust survivors die off, and his music is slowly gaining more acceptance. Ironically, Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism and father of the modern Jewish state, was an admirer of Wagner's music.
• Even The Beatles were victims of this, in a few different places, in 1966. The most famous one involved John Lennon's infamous "we're more popular than Jesus" comment, which was more or less dismissed as harmless in the Beatles' native Britain, especially after Lennon clarified it... but this was not the case in America. There, a few radio stations in the South held burnings of Beatles records, and the whole ordeal turned into a media ruckus. The anti-Beatles sentiment wasn't actually very widespread, but there was enough of it in some areas that the Beatles had to cancel a few tour dates due to threats. Far worse was the reception they received that year in the Philippines, when they were essentially chased out of the country for refusing to play for Imelda Marcos^note by some sources, they didn't refuse, but simply weren't informed they were expected to appear at a big party hosted by Marcos and perform some songs, so they simply didn't show up due to a communication mishap, and to a lesser extent, the controversy in Japan from their appearance at the Budokan (which is now a popular concert venue, but at the time was reserved for martial arts, and many saw the Beatles' appearance there as disrespectful). All of these incidents, along with the increasing complexity of their music, made 1966 their last tour.
  • While 'The Beatles were not hated by the Israeli people, they were banned from performing in the country in the 1960's due to the Israeli government thinking they'd be a bad influence on the country's youth. The government's opinion on them have softened, eventually.
• Country Music outside of Southern and Middle America.
  • In the Northeast and other "blue state" parts of the U.S., being a fan of country music carries many of the same connotations as being a fan of NASCAR – unless it's a hip alternative country act (like Ryan Adams, Neko Case, Jason Isbell, or — stretching the definition of "country" — Uncle Tupelo or Wilco), a crossover pop artist (e.g. Taylor Swift, Lady Antebellum), an underground artist with significant ties to other genres (e.g. Hank Williams III, Woven Hand, or Slim Cessna's Auto Club), an artist whose sound could broadly be described as "Americana" instead of country (e.g. Lyle Lovett or Lucinda Williams), or a legend with universal appeal (like Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, or Dolly Parton), admitting to being a country fan will most likely get you called a redneck, a hillbilly, or some variation thereof. The New York City area, for example, did not have any country stations whatsoever between 2002 and 2013, despite it being the largest radio market in America and country being, by some measures, the most popular genre of music in America.
  • It's similar outside America. When the Country 2 Country music festival was held in Britain, for instance, many critics' discussions of the event focused on the "American" nature of the music and its association with stereotypes of Type 2 Eagleland. There are only a few other countries that can be said to have significant country fandoms — Ireland (whose own tradition of folk music fed into Appalachian folk, which is an ancestor of modern country), West Africa (where the banjo originated), Brazil (a mishmash of American and local subculture, including rodeo acts and even the descendants of ex-Confederates), Canada, and Australia (both of which have frontier histories and vast rural areas not unlike those found in America). Country music is also surprisingly popular in the Caribbean, where from the 1950s-1970s it was some of the only American music imported into the area. Japan has its own country-equivalent genre called enka.
    • If the Eurovision Song Contest is to be believed, the Netherlands has somewhat embraced country music. Three of its last six entries have been American-style country songs, and one of them even finished in second place!
  • In Canada, you tend to find either a gentler brand of country (i.e. Anne Murray) or a more folk-infused style (like when Great Big Sea or Barenaked Ladies make occasional forays in to the genre) being heard universally – although country stations exist, and more hard-core country groups are out there; they tend to stay in and around the central and western provinces that like to identify with the culture, such as Alberta (it's not called "Canada's Texas" for nothing), Saskatchewan, and Manitoba. There is, however, a curiously large aboriginal following of country music.
• The Move was beloved in the UK, notching seven Top 10 hits, but never developed much beyond a cult following in America, with "Do Ya" (which in the UK was just the B-Side of "California Man") being their only single to chart in Billboard, peaking at a mere #93. Which made Electric Light Orchestra becoming a reliable FM rock favorite in the US a genuine surprise. Even more surprising: ELO's version of "Do Ya" became a hit in 1977, reaching #24 on the Billboard charts.
• Power Metal bands (of the European style) often do well in the Europe, placing high on the charts and playing stadiums and arenas. They do even better in Brazil and Japan. In the U.S. however, they're lucky if their CD gets a release, let alone charts, and the few bands that do tour the States are reduced to playing small clubs. DragonForce is the exception, having been made popular thanks to Guitar Hero. A prominent example is Kamelot, a power metal band founded in Florida. In their native US, the band has an enthusiastic but still niche following, while in Europe, it's one of the biggest names in music alongside such well known giants as Nightwish and Helloween.
• The British rock magazine Q acknowledged this in their list issue, where they listed 10 British artists/groups who wouldn't get free drinks at any American bar, and 10 American artists/groups who wouldn't get free drinks at any British pub.
• PSY's memetic hit "Gangnam Style" has been popular everywhere in the world... except Japan, where he received a horrible reception. This article explains this as being due to PSY not fitting the stereotype that the Japanese have of Korean pop stars being incredibly good-looking, on top of anything that isn't mainstream not doing well (PSY's song was a parody of K-Pop, and he normally does genres that aren't mainstream pop), as well as a surge of nationalistic flame wars between Japanese and Koreans.^note  Motivated by a South Korean Olympic soccer player demanding that Japan return a number of disputed islands to South Korea, as well as South Korea's president (at the time when the song was popular) saying that the Japanese emperor should apologize on behalf of Japan for its past colonial rule of Korea.
• British boy bands have had a notoriously tough time breaking into the American market. Take That, for example, were the biggest boy band in UK history. While they didn't have the same popularity worldwide, they were at least able to have some moderate success internationally... everywhere except the United States, where their 1995 album peaked at a dismal #69, and "Back For Good" was a radio-friendly enough ballad to give them a top 10 hit, but it was their only song to even make the US chart. Bands like East 17, Westlife, and Boyzone all tanked miserably as well. Bands of the 2010s like JLS and The Wanted also experienced little to no success stateside (aside from one big hit for the latter). One Direction, however, was successful in the United States, possibly more so than in the UK.
  • One British boy band that warrants particular mention is Blue. In 2001, they traveled to New York City to film a music video just in time to witness the September 11th terrorist attacks. A month later, the boys were interviewed by a British newspaper and bandmember Lee Ryan was quoted saying that the "New York thing" was being blown out of proportion and that the world should focus on other matters. To the other members' credit, they tried getting him to shut up, but the damage was done, and the group faced considerable backlash that led to them losing their distribution deal in the US, blowing to hell what little chance they had of being successful stateside.
• Former Take That member Robbie Williams has fared similarly to Kylie Minogue. He's one of the greatest-selling solo artists of all time at over 75 million albums around the world, and is the most popular English-language artist in Latin America, but the price of his fame is that he has never been huge in the United States. He's had some minor hits stateside, namely "Millennium" and "Rock DJ," but even those are better remembered for their creative music videos while charting poorly.
  
  Among the reasons why Robbie was so unable to find a stateside audience, first of all, he got his start in a Boy Band during the early '90s, a period when America still harbored a lot of resentment towards dance-pop music. Because of this, he did not have the chance to cultivate a large audience through Take That and establish himself to American audiences. Furthermore, a large part of his fame during his solo career was built specifically off of his maturation as a person, as well as all the drama he stirred in the press. Without that narrative already well-defined, Americans saw him as just another esoteric British singer rather than a burgeoning force of personality rising above his manufactured roots as fellow Brit pop idol George Michael had been a decade earlier. It also didn't help that Robbie's lyrics were laden with odd quips and self-aware arrogance that, while charming to British and Latin American audiences, did not resonate with Americans' more earnest sense of humor.
  
  Robbie's first major attempt to crack America was in 1999 with The Ego Has Landed, a compilation of the most popular songs from his first two albums. Its two singles were only minor hits, both failing to hit the top 40 of the Hot 100, while the record itself only went Gold. Due to its disappointing performance, Robbie decided to focus his promotional efforts purely outside of the US, and as a result, none of his subsequent albums made much of a splash whatsoever in America. His next big hit "Rock DJ" was barely even released as a single in the US, and that it got any attention at all was largely because of how huge it was everywhere else (and due to its aforementioned video, where he tears his skin off).
  
  Despite his lack of American success, Robbie doesn't mind and actually uses it to his advantage; he lives in the USA—Los Angeles specifically—precisely because it's the only place in the world where he and his family are able to live anonymously.
• British girl groups have been spectacularly incapable of achieving success in North America since the demise of the Spice Girls. How much so? There have been no significant top 40 hits by any girl group from the British Isles there since B*Witched's "C'est la Vie" reached #9 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the spring of 1999. The closest exception is Mis-Teeq's "Scandalous," which reached a modest #35 on the Hot 100 in 2004, although it did peak at #11 on the Mainstream Top 40 chart. Unlike the '80s and '90s, during which the biggest British girl groups scored at least one major hit in the United States, their successors from the 2000s and onwards, such as Atomic Kitten and The Saturdays, are almost completely unknown in North America, despite scoring numerous major hits all across the rest of the world. Two of the biggest groups, Girls Aloud and Sugababes, are adored by American music critics, but they've both failed to catch on with both mainstream and indie music fans in the country. While Little Mix's albums have sold respectably enough in North America that they occasionally tour there, they have still never had a top 40 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 or Canadian Singles Chart and are completely overshadowed by fellow X Factor alumni One Direction and Fifth Harmony.
• Despite their TV show and management under Spice Girls and American Idol mastermind Simon Fuller, S Club 7 didn't have much traction in the United States. They only had one Billboard hit, "Never Had a Dream Come True", in 2001, and even that song is largely forgotten these days. In Canada, their albums sold well despite their lack of pop hits, but in the US, their only certification was their 7 album (the one that contained "Never Had a Dream Come True") going Gold. Their most famous songs ("Bring It All Back", "Reach", "S Club Party", and "Don't Stop Movin'") all failed to chart stateside, even on the niche charts, although they aren't unrecognizable to millennials who grew up watching the show. On One Hit Wonderland, Todd in the Shadows blamed the group's relative obscurity in America on Max Martin-produced teen pop idols like Britney Spears and Backstreet Boys simply outmuscling their sugarcoated, '70s-inspired style, which didn't register with US audiences by the late '90s. It also probably didn't help that the Spice Girls (and thus British pop in general) were just starting to become extremely unpopular in America around the time S Club first turned up, due to Hype Backlash and the departure of Ginger Spice. Ultimately, they received little push from Interscope Records and got pretty much exclusively consigned to the kids' music market, in contrast to their legitimate superstardom overseas. Their TV show was screwed thanks to airing on the rather-unpopular Fox Family Channel, then seen largely as a cut-rate Nickelodeon clone with little appealing programming. Ironically, despite the group's young demographic, "Never Had a Dream Come True" was a major hit on the Adult Contemporary chart, where it lingered for nearly an entire year.
• On a similar note, Steps was one of the biggest pop acts from the turn of the millennium in the UK and the rest of Europe, but never had a single charting song in America, where even S Club 7, Five, B*Witched, and Westlife made the top 40 on respective occasions. Even after touring with Britney Spears, the extent of their American fortunes never surpassed a localized version of their Step One album peaking at #79 on the Billboard 200. Their stateside failure could be due to their ABBA-inspired eurodance sound being more out-of-touch with American tastes in music than their more pop and hip hop-oriented contemporaries.
• 1814, an American Rock Opera about the War of 1812, toured Canada, only to find the audience cheering the redcoat characters' songs and booing the American characters, despite the fact that the Americans are written as the opera's heroes and the redcoats as the villains. This is because, in the War of 1812, Canadians fought on the British side against the Americans. What makes this a sticky subject for most Canadians is that Canada was an important front in that war, which played a large role in the development of Canada's national identity, which American depictions rarely even hint at.
• The Tragically Hip had a career that spanned 30-plus years, and were hugely successful and are revered in Canada to this day, but were treated with outright indifference or irrelevance in the United States. They were never able to break through into the American market, despite appearing on at least one episode of Saturday Night Live (albeit chiefly at the insistence of Dan Aykroyd, a Canadian and diehard fan of the band) and doing several American tours, and more or less gave up on trying to make it south of the border. The announcement that The Hip's frontman Gord Downie had terminal brain cancer was headline news across Canada, with their final concert in 2016 attended by the Prime Minister and aired live, without commercial interruption or commentary, on CBC across all of its platforms (TV, radio, web) to an audience of a third of the country... and it was barely covered even by the music press south of the border. Part of this likely has to do with their songs, which are heavily dependent on references and plots taken from Canadian poets and historical events.
  • The lone exception to The Tragically Hip's inability to break into the US, and one that proves the rule, is the state of Michigan, including the area around Detroit. Many of the music radio stations in the Detroit market are actually based across the border in Windsor, Ontario, and therefore play The Hip's music (in large part to satisfy Canadian Content requirements), thus familiarizing their American listeners with the sound. Incidentally, this is also one reason that Michiganders have a tendency to like Barenaked Ladies, The New Pornographers, and other Canadian bands; the state is sometimes jokingly referred to as "Canada's 11th province" due to the Canadian influence in music, sports, and other elements of its culture. They also have a following in and around Buffalo, New York, which is another big border community where Canadian culture has seeped in (trolls occasionally refer to Buffalo as "a suburb of Toronto" to get a rise out of the locals—and to be fair, T.O. is like six times larger and is only about an hour and a half away).^note Perhaps more to the point, Hamilton, Ontario, which is about half an hour closer to Buffalo, is about twice the size of Buffalo and pretty much really is a glorified suburb of Toronto.
  • This article by Adam Kovac of The A.V. Club goes into more detail on the divide separating the Canadian and American music worlds in general. The short answer is that, in terms of size, Canada is the equivalent of an American regional market like the Southwest or the Mid-Atlantic, yet it has its own music industry and media structures separate from those of the US. Since it's easier to get big in the smaller Canadian market, which has strong government investment in the arts, than it is to risk it all for American fame, many Canadian musicians stay home and cultivate their fanbases in Canada.
• Another Canadian victim was Leonard Cohen, who was renowned in Canada and in Europe but had sporadic success in the US. His song "Hallelujah", on the other hand, has met with widespread success owing to being Covered Up by over two thousand artists and bands, as well as having been featured in the film, Shrek, and its popularity reached its peak during the year of his passing in 2016.
• In a lesser case, Midnight Oil are music legends in their native Australia, with their album Diesel & Dust even being listed as the country's best ever, beating AC/DC's Back in Black. Internationally, they are either a One-Hit Wonder for one of the singles off Diesel & Dust, "Beds are Burning", or have just a small amount of extra hits on the rock charts, such as "Blue Sky Mine". Granted, they at least managed what The Hip couldn't: scoring worldwide doing songs relying heavily on local matters - namely Australian politics and occurrances, usually in a negative manner.
• Likewise, Jon English is another music icon in Australia who was incredibly successful as a singer and actor throughout The '70s and The '80s. However, mentioning him in the United States will likely get you the response "Who?" This likely has to do to his music being largely unavailable in the US. It wasn't until the streaming era that his music could be heard on platforms like iTunes and Spotify. And even in those cases, there are still some of his albums where only one or two of his songs is playable, if that.
  • Conversely, he is quite popular in Sweden, with his appearance at the Sweden Rock Festival in 2013 being one of his last live performances before his death in 2016.
• The Scottish band Texas were enormous in the UK during the late '90s and early 2000s and achieved decent success in most other countries. In North America, however, they were never anything more than a minor blip on the alternative rock scene at the end of the 1980s and only had one extremely minor pop hit there in the late '90s ("Say What You Want", which was a smash in Europe). Their only album to chart on the Billboard 200 was their debut record Southside, which only reached #88, while White on Blonde, their most popular record worldwide (which featured "Say What You Want"), missed it completely.
  
  Probably the most obvious reason for their struggle to crack the US and Canada is their name, which was specifically derived from a 1984 movie but deceived several people into thinking they were a country group. While their early material such as "I Don't Want a Lover" was indeed country-influenced, they reinvented themselves as a trip hop band on White on Blonde, from which point none of their major singles were even remotely country. Because of this, they were a severe case of false advertising in a region where country music is a thriving industry, in contrast to the genre's obscurity in Europe. The fact that Texas weren't even from their namesake only poured salt on an open wound, as the state of Texas is highly protective of its cultural identity and also comprises an enormous chunk of the United States' population.
• Shakin' Stevens was one of the biggest hitmakers of the early 1980s all over the world, rivaling previous Welsh music legend Tom Jones in chart consistency and success. Unlike Jones, however, he failed to crack the top 40 of the Billboard Hot 100 even once and his only song to chart at all was "Cry Just a Little Bit", which only reached #67. He didn't fare much better in Canada, either, where he only scored two moderate hits in "This Ole House" (#17) and the aforementioned "Cry Just a Little Bit" (#30), while the rest of his discography was left overseas.
• Although BEMANI unit Prim is particularly popular amongst Japanese players, they cause quite a Broken Base amongst Western BEMANI fans.
• Although Glam Rock bands had a lot of success in their native UK, the genre struggled in America, for a variety of reasons (many Americans just found their looks much too effeminate, while their rock sound was a bit too heavy for mainstream Top 40 radio, but considered a bit lightweight by album rock fans). T.Rex managed to have a hit with "Bang a Gong (Get it On)", and David Bowie and Roxy Music also had a couple of hits in the US later in The '70s (and even then that only happened once they shifted away from glam rock, though Roxy Music started to garner commercial attention in America during the tail end of their glam rock phase), and Sweet had a few big hits (though they'd evolved into proto-Hair Metal by that time). Americans at the time generally preferred more macho British hard rock acts like Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, and The Who. Glam had a following on the East Coast, particularly New York City, as reflected by native artists like Lou Reed, the New York Dolls, and Wayne (later Jayne) County, plus cult followings of the British artists. It didn't get much traction out West, although Los Angeles did produce Sparks. The American bands naturally were much more popular in Europe. Queen managed to break through on the strength of their hard rock sound to massive success in America. San Francisco's The Tubes had glam tendencies but were too late and too out-of-the-loop to capitalize. The movement did serve as an inspiration for Hair Metal.
• Songs sung in languages other than English are a tough sell in the US. Even singing in English with a recognizable accent, such as ABBA, is enough to get a backlash. British acts tend to sing in an American accent (though plenty of UK-based singers do this naturally without any thought of making it across The Pond). There is some room for novelty hits, such as PSY's "Gangnam Style," the music of Rammstein, who seemed to crack the code, and the occasional Spanish-language act due to the USA's sizable Hispanic population. English-language media, however, prefers to ignore them if they can.
  Every once in a while, though, a Spanish-language song – often from Puerto Rico but sometimes from Mexico or a Hispanophone enclave within the States – will become an unexpected crossover hit. A good example is Los del Rio's One-Hit Wonder "Macarena", the only Spanish language song to hit #1 in the US mainstream charts - until 2017 when "Despacito" took over, and the success of that song may well be due to Justin Bieber collaborating on a partially English version. Plus, both of its artists, Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee, are also from Puerto Rico, which the song mentions half a dozen times.
• Japanese music, whether it be pop, rock, metal, hip-hop, etc., largely falls into this with American audiences.
  • The big acts are Household Names in their native Japan and have a large amount of crossover appeal in other Asian countries, and even a fair amount in Europe and Latin America (enough that they can tour those areas to large crowds). In the US, however, most artists don't even bother releasing their material for Americans because when they do, they almost never chart anywhere. The few Japanese artists that do tour the US find themselves relegated to small venues. This is largely due to the aforementioned problem songs sung in another language besides English have with appealing to Americans, as well as the general perception of the people who listen to Japanese music^note They're often labeled "weeaboos" for it. and even the Totally Radical style of Japanese music and its marketing tactics, particularly in mid-late 2010s. In fact, often the only way a Japanese act can play to a fairly large audience stateside is by doing so at anime conventions. No Export for You is also a major issue, with artists and labels not bothering to make their music accessible to those outside of Japan. Most infamously, LDH region blocked some of E-Girls music videos on YouTube and Johnny & Associates refusing to export any of their artists for the longest time. This issue has lessened with streaming services such as Spotify and Apple Music, but you’re hard pressed to find any kind of English social media presence or merch for Japanese artists outside the country.
  • The only Japanese act to have any success, relatively speaking, in the US as of late is BABYMETAL, largely due to the Memetic Mutation of a Teen Pop Idol Group performing Heavy Metal music. They opened for, of all people, Lady Gaga, and they actually got their debut album to chart on the Billboard 200... at #187... though their next two albums fared much better, debuting at #39 and #13, respectively, with the latter becoming the highest-ranking Japanese-language album on the chart. One song historically, that managed to reach the #1 spot was "Sukiyaki" by Kyu Sakamoto way back in 1963 and now become a Tough Act to Follow. This might be changing with a few Japanese acts (namely One Ok Rock and Crystal Lake) doing big tours in America and Europe and opening up many outside of Japan to Japanese rock and metalcore. However their success can largely be attributed to good timing and better marketing outside of their home country.
  • A particular genre that’s had a lousy time getting traction outside of Japan and South Korea is “Kawaii Metal,” which is a blend of Japanese Pop Music or Korean Pop Music with Heavy Metal elements. Think BABYMETAL, Dreamcatcher, and Broken By The Scream. In addition to the aforementioned issues, the pop elements of the music are a turn off to metal heads, and the metal elements are off putting to non-metal listeners. Not helping is many artists playing the style having to come after BABYMetal’s international success, and being compared unfavorably to them. The only band besides BABYMetal to have any sort of international interest is Hanabie, who went viral on TikTok and YouTube with their song “Osaki ni Shitsureishimasu/Pardon Me, I Have To Go Now.”
• Yellow Magic Orchestra is an exception to the typical rules of why Japanese acts typically struggle to crack the American market. Rather than being the result of a language barrier (most of their songs were in English) or the Occidental Otaku stigma (which mostly took hold after their heyday in Japan), their difficulties in America were owed to a mix of xenophobia, Orientalist Marketing, and the backlash against disco (their disco-inspired debut album released just two months before Disco Demolition Night). These factors resulted in a good deal of Bad Export for You, their American label ultimately dropped them in 1981, and after a failed Stateside CD reissue campaign in the early '90s, the band's distributors have consistently avoided the US market.
• Rap music is an interesting case. The genre itself averts this trope — it was born in the US, but just about every country on earth has a homegrown rap scene by this point. Even Mongolia has incorporated hip-hop into its traditional throat-singing. However, it is damn near impossible for non-American rappers to cross over stateside. Two British exceptions are the Stereo MCs and Floetry, but Americans associated them with other genres — the MCs' one hit "Connected" is considered more of a dance song, and Floetry was seen as an R&B group. The reasons for this have been stated before: most non-American hip-hop artists rap in their native language, and the ones that perform in English will have a noticeable foreign accent, two traits unpopular with American listeners. There is room for Canadian rappers due to the similarity in speech, with Drake being the most famous example, but only if their preferred language is English rather than French. Australian Iggy Azalea is the exception that proves the rule; she left home as a teen in order to move to the US for the specific purpose of making it big internationally, and she goes to great lengths to hide her native accent in favor of sounding like a black girl from Atlanta. Perhaps the only international rap group to be successful in the US with their native accent is the South African duo Die Antwoord.
• Black Metal is commonly associated with Scandinavia, but this is almost entirely due to Norway. While the black metal scene was quite big in Norway, especially at its peak in the late '80s and early '90s, it was hated in Sweden, where Death Metal ruled the metal scene. In fact, the Fandom Rivalry between the Norwegian black metal and Swedish death metal scenes was so fierce that there were reported incidents of Swedish death metal fans plotting to bomb and assassinate Norwegian black metal bands, and vice-versa.
  • Black metal was also notably unpopular in Germany, where thrash, speed, power and death metal all flourished, but black metal never took off much. It's possible that too many black metal musicians flirting with or even outright endorsing neo-Nazism, or at least Germanic paganism often associated as such, was too much of a sore topic there.
  • Finns love Hero Metal and Heavy Mithril, whilst those genres are not that popular elsewhere.
• In the early '80s, Queen lost much of its popularity in the US thanks to their 1982 album Hot Space because of its heavy disco influence (not very appealing to Americans at the time). The second single "Body Language" made to #11 on the American pop charts, but its synth-heavy sound and eschewal of the verse-chorus-verse song structure confounded or even angered their longtime fans in the country, and it vanished from radio shortly after its peak. Their 1984 music video for "I Want To Break Free", featuring the band members dressed in drag, also squicked out American audiences, who were unaware that the video was parodying the British soap opera Coronation Street. In October of that year, they garnered controversy being one of the few major acts who chose to perform at the infamous Sun City resort in apartheid-era South Africa. Their shows at the resort proved to be a mini-Role-Ending Misdemeanor for the band: They were fined by the British Musicians Union and lost considerable face with critics and the general public in both Europe and America. The band told the press that they were promised that they'd be playing to an integrated crowd, although this was something that the organizers often told big-name acts to lure them to play there, and it's entirely possible that they were duped. While the band's popularity in Europe was relatively unaffected, and they were all but forgiven there by the time of their iconic performance at Live Aid a few months later, the controversy was another ding on their American reputation. They did not regain their popularity in America until Freddie Mercury's untimely death in 1991.
• British singer Lily Allen was an international pop superstar all over the world in the mid-00s to early-10s... except North America. In Europe, Asia, and Australia, she's performed in massive venues and has frequently toured those areas. In the U.S., her tours are brief and she's often relegated to small clubs. The funny thing is, there's a pretty good chance that people in America have heard about her, just not know a whole lot about her other than being a British pop star. As of late, her only claim-to-fame stateside is being the sister of actor Alfie Allen and cousin of Sam Smith, both of whom are better known than her.
• DJ Mark Ronson is a superstar in in the UK — but in the US, he is only known as the brother of Lindsay Lohan's ex-girlfriend Samantha, his work with Amy Winehouse and for "Uptown Funk", a mega-smash hit that is primarily associated with superstar guest vocalist Bruno Mars, of which it was the biggest hit of his career as well. Despite being a 14-week #1, "Uptown Funk" is still Ronson's one and only top 40 chart entry as a lead artist in the US (and was his only chart entry for nearly four years), and its parent album is one of the lowest-selling albums featuring a US #1 hit.
• MAGIC!. In their native Canada, they're consistent hit-makers who aren't going away anytime soon. Everywhere else? Their song "Rude" has become one of the biggest examples of a One-Hit Wonder in The New '10s, with none of their other songs even scraping the bottom of any American chart. Ironically, "Rude" itself was actually bigger internationally than it was back home.
• James Blunt is often seen as a textbook example of a 2000s One-Hit Wonder for his chart-topper "You're Beautiful", which is often brought up for snarky reasons. They may not know that the album it came from, Back to Bedlam, was the best-selling album of the '00s in his native UK and the 16th best-selling album of all time there.
• Likewise, most Americans who remember Spandau Ballet would think of "True" first and last, and wouldn't be able to tell you that the in the UK and Europe they closely rivaled Duran Duran as the biggest pop band of the early 1980s.
• Before it became popular worldwide, Electronic Music and its sub-genres were only known across Europe, to the point where they were classified as Pop music. Other countries such as Australia, East Asia, and South America had fanbases after this. In the United States, it was a niche genre at best, and unless you went to specialized events, nightclubs instead preferred to play pop and hip-hop music. Later, Calvin Harris, David Guetta, Hardwell, and Skrillex began treating electronic music as an art form and were the ones who brought it to America from the 1990s to the 2000s. They pioneered the commercialized EDM sound and because of this, Electronic Music has been accepted in America at last.
• Jess Glynne is one of the fastest rising pop stars in the UK, with a whopping five #1 hits in just over a year, all of her singles going Top 10, and her album I Cry When I Laugh went straight to #1. In the US? Not so much. Her only claims to fame across the Atlantic is being the lead vocalist on Clean Bandit's #10 hit "Rather Be", and having her Signature Song "Hold My Hand" appear in a Coca-Cola commercial (which only peaked at #86 in the US, after the fact).
  • However, her single "All I Am" seems to be popular with YouTube viewers, due to the excessive amounts of Ms Fan Service.
• Guano Apes is a perfect example of this trope in action. The female-fronted band from Germany has been massively successful in their homeland and the rest of continental Europe, but they've failed to make even the slightest impression on the United States. Their debut single "Open Your Eyes" made them into superstars back home, going Top 10 in many countries, and paved the way for their album Proud Like a God to sell three million units. In the US? "Open Your Eyes" only reached a measly #24... on the rock charts. Afterwards, they never charted anywhere again (neither singles nor albums). Most Americans nowadays don't even know they exist as the aforementioned "Open Your Eyes" is mostly forgotten in the US today. This trope is in effect so hard that, while they're fully capable of playing to giant crowds back home, they haven't even officially toured the US since the early-2000s (they occasionally play a show there, but it's once in a blue moon).
• The national anthem of Kosovo is popular in Albania and Turkey but has a lot of hatedom as the videos of the anthem due to a lot of dislikes. What is the hatedom composed of? People who lived in Slavic countries including Serbia and Russia.
• Kimigayo is a highly-respected national anthem back within Japan, and has their fans in the Americas and Europe. However, the song has many detractors in South Korea and China, due to being associated with a very violent Imperial Japan.
  • Likewise, the Japanese navy anthem, Gunkan no koshinkyoku (Warship March). The Far East outside Japan does not take it lightly.
• The GDR anthem is a very odd example, as it was banned in its own country while still being the national anthem. You see, the lyrics contained the words "Deutschland einig Vaterland" ^note  Germany united fatherland - word which are often quoted in German nowadays or slightly modified for a pun, however, by the 1970s, the GDR had given up any pretense of a united Germany instead striving to cement the status quo of "two German states", while the West never gave up reunification. When Willy Brandt quoted the line on a state visit, the GDR regime noticed how dangerous their own anthem had become and instead chose to play it instrumental only from then on. The GDR is probably the only country in history where singing the national anthem could get you in trouble.
• Die Ärzte and Die Toten Hosen are two relatively similar sounding German rock/pop/punk bands (though for a long time they had a rivalry that the media and some Fan Dumb took more seriously than the bands themselves), but their success abroad is vastly different. Die Ärzte are close to unknown outside of the German-speaking countries and in fact once did a tour in Latin America as an opening act for another band (who returned the favor for them in the reverse in DACH) Die Toten Hosen, on the other hand, are very well liked and comparatively well known in Latin America. Nobody really knows why as Die Ärzte actually have a band member who was born in Chile and both bands mostly sing in German with only Die Toten Hosen throwing in an English song here or there (many of them cover versions).
• In the United States (but nowhere else), purely instrumental music has not been popular in the mainstream since the '70s. From the '80s to the '90s, the vast majority of instrumentals that cracked the Top 20 have been theme songs to movies and TV shows, such as "Axel F." (aka the Beverly Hills Cop theme, considered by many to be the anthem of the 80's). The only exceptions are a few one hit wonders and Kenny G, who performed the last instrumental to be a major hit in the US: a rendition of "Auld Lang Syne" (aka "The New Year's Song") released in December 1999. But even that included audio clips of major events from the 20th century, meaning the song relied on more than just the instruments to be successful. A lot of this can be chalked up to the intertwined rise of the music video, which lends itself better to songs with lyrics, and the fragmentation of American radio into different genres. In the days when Top 40 radio was dominant and more eclectic, it was easier for an instrumental get exposure. Another element may well be the rise of synthesizers in pop music, which aren't vehicles for virtuoso performance and melody hooks in the same way traditional instruments are. And, in general, modern American music fans seem more into lyrical content, regardless of subject matter.
• Extending from the above, in the United States, Ambient music artists such as Tangerine Dream, Jean-Michel Jarre, and Jan Hammer are frequently known only for their contribution to TV and movie soundtracks during The '80s. In Europe, these artists are recognized for regular studio album releases and productions as well as concert performances, along with influencing several different genres and artists. Americans often associate the style of these ambient artists with New Age or "Space Music"; both are terms that occasionally have derogatory connotations, especially among the mainstream audience. Progressive Rock, such as Yes, has a similar reputation in the States and one stereotype seems to be that it does not appeal to girls. There may be an element of truth to this conception as Prog Rock focuses on the music instead of the artists' stage presence or charisma, while in America, a performer's swagger is part of the attraction and female groupies are part of the culture. Prog Rock bands, in comparison, generally maintain low key personas both on and offstage and are not known for freewheeling lifestyles. Also, along with extended instrumental segments, Prog Rock lyrics are more abstract, cerebral, and conceptual. Americans perceive Prog Rock and Ambient music as taking themselves too seriously and appealing more to introverts. Another reason is yet another cultural difference between the U.S. and Europe. At the time, musicians' unions enforced restrictions on "needle time," or the amount of records they could play on public stations like those of The BBC at a time when governments operated them as monopolies on broadcasting, making clubs the place to hear new music. U.S. commercial rock radio stations had no such restrictions and a different pattern emerged: fans would buy records and go to shows based on what they heard on the radio. With FM stations transitioning from freeform into tightly-formatted "album-oriented rock" stations over the course of the '70s, there was less tolerance among radio programmers for experimental music. This made prog's base of support the U.K. and continental Europe rather than the U.S. For these reasons, the more popular prog acts in the States like Pink Floyd, Yes and Rush (Band), had a more conventional rock element to their sound.
• VOCALOID does not have the same craze-level following or cultural relevance in the West as it does in Japan. The Japanese music scene is comfortable with the idea of manufactured Idol Singers, but the American music scene is still dominated by discussions of 'authenticity' to the point where it's still somewhat controversial to use electronic instruments or Auto-Tune. Japan also has a robot-focused culture, viewing automata as objects imbued with life by human ingenuity, so a singing computer seems like a joyful, utopian idea. In the West, where robots and AIs are viewed as creepy and soulless creations of hubris, synthetic singers are Nightmare Fuel. Lastly, making convincing synthesised speech is easier in Japanese, with its low number of phonemes and syllable-based writing system. English has a lot more phonemes and spelling quirks, meaning that even VOCALOIDs designed for English speech seem to have thick, unidentifiable accents if they're even intelligible at all. This is even noticeable with English VOCALOIDs like CYBER DIVA and Sweet Ann who were designed specifically to have American accents. While Hatsune Miku has managed to gain some traction in America (enough to appear on The Late Show with David Letterman in 2014 and for her video games to get localized), her popularity in America is very niche compared to her near mainstream level of popularity in Japan.
  • Ironically, Japan is not as robot-focused and tech-savvy as it may seem, and isn't developing AI and robotics on the same level as Silicon Valley, so it's more complicated than "Japan loves robots, the West fears them."
• While the Christmas novelty song "Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer" is a favorite of many Americans, Canadians find it to be one of the worst Christmas songs of all time. On many lists of that type made by Canadians, the song is often placed at a higher rank than "The Christmas Shoes". It's for this reason that the animated special of the same name has rarely aired in Canada. For background on why the song is hated in Canada, it is due to the fact that deer and moose were the most common animals to get involved in more than 25,000 wildlife collisions in the country. This statistic has been recorded by the Traffic Injury Research Foundation. Accidents like these have caused the song to become a Trauma Button for most Canadian listeners (especially those who are victims of these collisions). The nation thus seemed to have a collective Dude, Not Funny! reaction to the song.
• Swedish pop singer Zara Larsson is one of the biggest new names of the 2010s and a dominant force all over the world, except in the United States, where her only notable charting song is "Never Forget You", which only hit #13 despite going top 10 almost everywhere else it charted. Larsson never had another top 40 hit in the country, despite continuing her domination throughout the rest of the world.
• That being said, Larsson's success in the States is still far greater than that of her collaborator on "Never Forget You", British EDM singer MNEK, as outside of that song his only other notable chart hits anywhere in the world are his guest appearances on other EDM producers' tracks, namely Gorgon City's "Ready For Your Love", which was a #4 hit in his homeland but failed to make an impression anywhere else, Joel Corry's "Head and Heart", which was a chart-topper at home and reached the top ten in multiple countries, but only peaked at #99 in the US, and Jax Jones's "Where Did You Go?", which also charted in multiple countries and reached #7 at home. MNEK is primarily a producer and has had far more success as such.
• Due to their history, Turkey and Azerbaijan aren't exactly fans of the Armenian national anthem.
• Similarly, System of a Down, an American band with members of Armenian descent, has a large number of Turkish detractors partly due to their political stances.
  • System of a Down also has a large number of Azerbaijani detractors partly due to their political stances.
• The Smiths is widely considered one of the most definitive bands of the 1980s, and while popular in Europe at the time, have a completely different effect in the United States. Whilst all of the group's studio albums reached the top 2 on the British albums chart, their highest charting album is their last one Strangeways, Here We Come which reached number 55 in America. Also, they only had two charting singles in America, which both hit the top 50 of the dance chart. ^note  This is especially ironic since both Morrissey and Johnny Marr have made disdainful remarks on that specific genre - they even wrote a song called "Panic" which had the prominent refrain of "Burn down the disco/Hang the DJ". This could be linked to the trend of most bands that charted in the United States were more hard-rock/new wave oriented than the Smiths' indie and jangle pop sound (though it could also have something to do with the popularity of another band with a similar sound at the time). Time has been very kind to The Smiths in America, and nowadays anyone with a basic knowledge of alternative rock music knows who they are...they're just not the definitive band of the 80s in the genre like they are in the UK.
  • Lead singer Morrissey zigzags around this trope. In the early 90s, he was one of the biggest cult acts in music in America, with his fans swarming him wherever he went. It got to the point where TV news stations began to run stories about his appearences and Johnny Carson was drowned out by screaming fans while introducing Moz for his first American live TV performance. However, all that attention did not translate to chart success: He had plenty of alt-rock radio hits, but just one Hot 100 chart appearance. After 1995, his American popularity significantly cooled and he only had a resurgence in popularity when he released 2004's You Are the Quarry. Nowadays, he's more Overshadowed by Controversy due to his extremely polarizing public comments and political stances than he is for his actual music.
  • However, both he and The Smiths are still considered rather popular among American Latinos, especially in East Los Angeles, though that's a different trope altogether.
• German Europop/disco/reggae act Boney M. ^note yes, there's officially a period after the M ranks as the one of the biggest selling acts all-time worldwide, with over 150 million albums sold. They were big in Britain even at their peak in The '70s, with nine consecutive Top 10 hits. In America, they had just one Top 40 hit, "Rivers of Babylon", which peaked at #30. This actually played a role in the scandal involving Boney M. mastermind Frank Farian's next big project: Milli Vanilli. People in Europe were already familiar with Farian's Boney M. methodology of recording studio tracks and then having a "group" lip-sync the songs live, but Americans weren't.
  • At the time, perhaps, but Retroactive Recognition via their song "Rasputin" (aka "Ra-Ra-Rasputin") has given them increased stateside recognition, particularly when "Rasputin" became a popular song to dance to on Dance Dance Revolution.
• Patsy Gallant's 1976 disco song "From New York to LA" hit the top 10 in her native Canada, plus the UK and Australia. Ironically, the only major English-speaking country where it flopped was the country whose two biggest cities were mentioned in the song's title.
• With the exception of "Annie's Song" and "Take Me Home, Country Roads", most of John Denver's work is known to British audiences primarily through British cover versions.
• In the United States, Phish were one of the biggest touring music phenomenons of the 1990s. They gained a reputation for being a superlative live act, and they built their devoted fanbase through touring despite minimal radio airplay and modest album sales. In the 2010s, they remain popular and respected in the US and are one of the few rock groups that can still consistently sell out huge arenas like Madison Square Garden. In the rest of the world? They are barely known, and receive absolutely no coverage from the music press. This partly had to do with the fact that they almost never toured outside of the US, except for a couple tours of continental Europe and Japan, where they have pockets of support.
• Sevendust are described by AllMusic as 'one of the rising acts in late 1990's heavy metal'. In their native US, they have a solid fanbase, consistently play in sold-out theaters, received gold records for their first three albums and even were nominated for a Grammy Award; they're also pretty well-known in Australia. However, they have always largely ignored by European metalheads, as the very few tours the band did there were either cancelled, shortened, or poorly attended.
• Don't even think about playing the national anthem of Israel in Iran nor any countries that don't recognize Israel.
• Jamala's song "1944" was widely hated by Russia because of the backstory of its lyrics. Its Eurovision win was in fact widely seen as a politically motivated shot at current Russian President Vladimir Putin by much of Western Europe.
  • To a degree, sure, but that isn't reflected in the full voting results of that year's Eurovision: while the Russian jury gave it no points, the Russian televote put it in second place, only behind Armenia. (Ukraine and Russia's televotes have been significantly kinder to each other than their respective juries.) Russia’s own entry actually won the televote but its weak jury showing created an opening for Ukraine to win.
• "Ode to Joy" was hated in Zimbabwe because of its association to Zimbabwe's former white-minority government.
• It took until 1987 for Heart to have a major hit in Britain.^note  Their LP Dreamboat Annie haad been critically well received and did respectably in the LP charts, but the single Magic Man was never more than a very minor hit despite lots of radio airplay. The later single Barracuda was also critically received but only grazed the lower end of the British charts. They had originated as a '70s hard rock band with heavy influences from Led Zeppelin, themselves far more popular in America than the UK (despite being British themselves). At that time, the British rock scene was dominated by glam rock and eventually punk, while bands with earthier aesthetics rarely found nearly as much success. Even after their smash comeback Self-Titled Album in 1985, they still didn't find their footing in the UK until "Alone", a power ballad with huge mainstream appeal that went to #1 in the US. The success of that song led to their biggest hits from their self-titled record also becoming hit singles in Britain years after they were on the American charts, but the band's '70s period remains relatively obscure there.
• British New Wave diva Kim Wilde had just two North American hits in the early-mid '80s, "Kids in America" and "You Keep Me Hangin' On", then quickly dropped off the radar there afterwards. As with the aforementioned Kylie Minogue, the 1990 Milli Vanilli scandal sealed her fate Stateside.
• Similar to Kylie Minogue, Australian singer Jason Donovan wasn't too popular in North America. He attempted to conquer North America, and signed a deal with Atlantic Records for a brief time, but Stock Aitken Waterman acts as a whole were declining stateside amidst the rise of hip hop and new jack swing by the time he debuted, so he never made it onto the Hot 100 even once (fellow S/A/W newcomer Sonia suffered the same fate, despite her world-conquering "You'll Never Stop Me Loving You"). The 1990 bubblegum pop scandal explained above certainly didn't help his chances.
  • He also wasn't too popular in Italy, where the previously dominant Italo disco movement (the primary influence to Stock Aitken Waterman) had fallen out of the mainstream by the time he arrived onto the scene. Despite his weaker popularity there, his music videos have still aired on Italian music channels (including Videomusic) and he still has some fans in this country.
  • He used to be popular in the United Kingdom, until the time he sued a magazine for accusing him of lying about his sexuality in 1992. Luckily, he didn't alienate all of his fans, as there are still some fans who are fond of him to this day.
  • Similar to Italy, he also had a weaker popularity in Germany.
• Nik Kershaw was extremely popular for a brief time in his native UK, with "Wouldn't It Be Good", "I Won't Let the Sun Go Down on Me", and "The Riddle" becoming international smashes. Stateside though, he never saw the top 40, only managing to chart one song on the Hot 100 ("Wouldn't It Be Good", at #46) and not faring any better in album sales, either. His inability to resonate with Americans at the time was probably due to the playfully sarcastic tone of his lyrics, making him too enigmatic for mainstream audiences, yet too lightweight for fans of alternative music.
• In regards to the Eurovision Song Contest:
  • In Europe and Australia, Eurovision is a major event on the same scale as sporting events like the Euro Cup and the World Cup. However, by virtue of the contest not being shown extensively or consistently in most non-European countries and the majority of official clips from the last four contests being geoblocked, Eurovision has never been incredibly popular outside of its continent. It's considered niche in most of the world, and its biggest supporters outside the participating countries are either curious world music fans or European ex-pats. While the Contest has been shown sporadically by TV stations in non-European countries, very few have done so for more than a few years at a time. The one major exception is Australia, who started broadcasting the show in 1983, came to love it as much as the Europeans, and eventually became the first non-EBU member to become a participant. No other country comes remotely close.
    • Both the USA and Canada broadcast the Contest for a few years on LGBT-specific TV channels (Logo TV in the USA and OUT TV in Canada), but seeing as neither channel was well-watched and catered to very niche audiences, neither one broadcast it for long (Canada did it for two years, the USA three). Both put it on streaming services without commentary in 2019. At the very least, Will Ferrell's upcoming movie about Eurovision on Netflix is a potential gateway to build interest in the States, but the postponing of its release doesn't help.
  • In regards to specific songs:
    • The two big favorites in 2018, Israel and Cyprus, didn't award each other a single point from their national juries (although curiously enough, Cyprus awarded Israel its top score in the semi-final, and just narrowly missed voting for them in the final). Meanwhile, Cyprus' televote awarded Israel ten points, and Israel only gave Cyprus two. It's a bit odd, as both countries are known for appreciating Mediterranean music, but the latter could at least be seen as Israeli televoters not wanting to shoot their own entry in the foot when they didn't know how many other countries would vote for it. (And for what it's worth, "Fuego" did wind up making it to #10 on the Israeli singles charts).
    • Italy was the only country that didn't award Sweden's record-breaking champion Loreen any points in 2012. Ironically, "Euphoria" became one of the few recent Eurovision songs to chart in Italy (#27), and while Italy gave twelve points to the next four winners (although "1944" only received 12 from Italy's televote), only "Rise Like a Phoenix" charted higher than "Euphoria" (#26). "Heroes" only made it to #87 and the other two didn't even chart.
    • Germany's champion "Satellite" almost entirely missed out on votes from Eastern Europe and Eurasia, save for Ukraine, Russia, and (barely) Azerbaijan. Pointedly, Israel was one of those countries, although they had given Germany high scores several times (including for their last winner).
    • San Marino spent two years in a row being one of the only countries not to award any points to the winner, and were in fact the only country to snub Denmark in 2013. Most of the other countries that failed to vote for Austria in 2014 were Eastern European countries, although several of these were in spite of high scores from the televotes (Armenia gave Austria 10 points in its televote, while Poland and Belarus each gave it eight, but the juries weighed the votes down so much that Austria didn't score at all with those countries).
    • Ireland's run of victories in the '90s were met with little opposition from the international votes. The only country that didn't vote for them in 1994 was Greece, while Malta only gave them five. Next time they won, five countries didn't vote for them, the most surprising of which being the usually-charitable United Kingdom.
    • In several cases, one of the only countries that failed to vote for the winner or a high-ranking country were actually their nearest neighbors. Among them were Sweden being among the few not to vote for Norway in 1995 (partially out of protest for their sending a mostly-instrumental), Luxembourg failing to vote for 1990 runner-up France, and Austria and Switzerland either towards each other or Germany several times.^note Austria only gave one point to Germany for "Ein bisschen frieden," their first winner, and no points at all to Switzerland's "Ne partez pas sans moi" in 1988. Switzerland was the only country not to vote for Germany in 1981, a year where they were one of the favorites, clearing the way for the United Kingdom to take it, and neither country voted for Germany in 1985, a year when Germany was seen as a clear winner before Norway snatched it.
    • Notably subverted in 2003: Political tensions between the two countries mean Cyprus and Turkey rarely vote for each other, but Cyprus actually awarded Turkey eight points, helping them get closer to their eventual victory. The following year would be the only one in which Turkey and Cyprus both voted for each others' songs.
    • Similarly, Albania and Serbia can sometimes be very hesitant to vote for each other, but at least a few times when the other has had a particularly good song, they'll make an exception.
• Ironically, one of the few countries where George Ezra's "Budapest" wasn't a huge hit was Hungary, where it stalled at #19 on the singles charts and #25 on the streaming charts.
• Dutch Eurotrance act Alice Deejay, a Two-Hit Wonder in the US with "Better Off Alone" and "Back in My Life", fizzled out there with their third single, "Will I Ever", perhaps due to it sounding too much like the Vengaboys (both it and "Back in My Life" were produced by Vengaboys founders Danski & Delmundo), who had already fallen out of favor in America, hence Alice Deejay's subsequent singles "The Lonely One" and "Celebrate Our Love" remained exclusive to Europe and Australia.
• Van Halen are one of the most influential hard rock bands in history in the United States, but in the UK, they never found much of a fanbase. Their only two hits there are the pop crossover "Jump", as well as Sammy Hagar's first single with them "Why Can't This Be Love", while only two of their records got as much as a Gold certification. A major reason for their lukewarm success in Britain is that their rise to fame coincided with the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, which leaned more towards the UK-centric punk rock scene, in contrast to Van Halen's southern rock influences.
• Similar to how Progressive Rock and Glam Rock struggled to find a foothold in the US, Arena Rock as a whole found very little success outside of North America during its late '70s/early '80s heyday. The reasons were the same as why prog struggled stateside. American hard rock, as American popular music was as a whole, was heavily influenced by the blues, which despite having a cult following in Europe, wasn't as well established in the culture as classical music, so audiences gravitated toward music influenced by classical and jazz. Despite liberalization of broadcasting allowing for private radio stations, radio was still mostly dominated by government broadcasters like The BBC who remained resistant to the music with restrictions on "needle time", or records that could be played. The emerging private broadcasters faced the same restrictions on playing records and weren't interested in American hard rock in the first place, preferring pop music, both in the UK and on the European continent. The pirate radio station Radio Caroline, whose very existence was illegal, was the only station to make a serious effort to market the music to the UK as they obviously didn't pay any attention to any broadcasting restrictions. Styx, for example, had several years of hits at home but were a One-Hit Wonder band for "Babe" in the UK. Journey, despite being one of the most popular rock bands of the early '80s in America, were totally obscure everywhere else aside from Japan until Glee popularized their signature "Don't Stop Believin'" to a whole new generation in 2009. Boston sold several million albums in the US but only found minor success in Britain. Survivor's only two international hits were "Eye of the Tiger" and "Burning Heart", both of which were fueled by their appearances in the Rocky movies. The only real exceptions to the rule were Queen, who were from the UK and had a more glam aesthetic than other arena rock groups, as well as Toto, whose heavy jazz rock influences made them more appealing to foreign consumers than their heavier counterparts. The Who, Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd had evolved into the style over the course of the '70s, but the former two were founders of the hard rock movement in the '60s, being considered elder statesmen of the genre. Pink Floyd was a key psychedelic band who had enough progressive rock trappings to remain popular on both sides of the Atlantic as well, while David Gilmour's bluesy guitar work appealed to American rock sensibilities. Another reason is that the U.K. was having its own major hard rock movement, with the New Wave of British Heavy Metal in full swing.
• Cliff Richard in the United States. In his native UK, he's a music legend with half a century's worth of hits and was one of the major pioneers of British rock 'n' roll. He's pretty popular in most other countries, too. Stateside though, he's insignificant and obscure. During his late '50s/early '60s height, he only had two marginal Billboard hits ("Living Doll" at #30 and a version of "It's All in the Game" at #25). This is due to the fact that the British rock 'n' roll scene developed very differently than it did in America, taking longer to become fully mainstream and being generally less edgy and rebellious than its American counterpart. It especially didn't help that Cliff Richard as a person was much more like Pat Boone than he was Elvis Presley, making him too backwards and stodgy for rock 'n' roll's core fanbase, all while being too foreign for more conservative listeners. Although Richard and his band The Shadows were important to the development of what would ultimately produce The British Invasion, rock historians in the States usually skip him before reaching Beatlemania.
  
  Richard eventually overcame this when "Devil Woman" became his first smash hit in the United States in 1976; while he subsequently entered a brief slump, he soon scored a large streak of American hits during the early '80s on the heels of "We Don't Talk Anymore". Despite this belated breakthrough though, Richard is largely forgotten in the United States nowadays, with "Devil Woman" and his early '80s hits being seen as cheesy products of their time rather than classic rock staples.
• Cliff's backing band, The Shadows, outdo even Cliff in this trope. Working as an instrumental combo without Cliff, in their native UK the Shadows had dozens of top 40 hits in the 1960s and 1970s — at one point, between 1960 and 1963 they had a dozen consecutive top UK 10 hits, including five number ones. And they were absolutely massive not just in terms of record sales, but also in terms of their impact on the British Invasion and UK music in general ... virtually every UK guitar player you've ever heard of (including George Harrison, Eric Clapton, David Gilmour, Brian May, Mark Knopfler, Peter Frampton, Roy Wood, Tony Iommi, Pete Townshend, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page) cites Shadows' guitarist Hank Marvin as a huge primary influence. The Shadows were stars with big chart hits in Europe, Australia and New Zealand, too. In the US? Nothing. Complete, total, utter obscurity. The Shadows didn't just miss hitting the US top 40, they missed the hot 100 and even the "bubbling under the Hot 100" charts. In the UK and many other countries, The Shadows are an absolutely seminal 60s group; in the US, they are thoroughly unknown.
• European dance music in general is less popular in America than it is elsewhere, even as it was a staple of early Alternative Rock stations, but a notable low-point for its popularity in the States was during the 2000s decade. After the demise of TRL pop, radio stations briefly experimented with dance music imported from Europe to fill in the void, including a comeback from the aforementioned Kylie Minogue, but eventually abandoned it by the middle of 2003. For most of the decade, "dance" music in America was primarily hip hop-oriented, especially after Lil' Jon brought Crunk rap to the mainstream. Songs such as "Everytime We Touch" and "Listen to Your Heart" were extremely rare exceptions that stood out like a sore thumb compared to the rest of the American pop scene at the time, while monster hits like "Call on Me" and "Murder on the Dancefloor" failed to even chart on the Billboard Hot 100. To get a gauge of how bad it was, Madonna's European-flavored Confessions On A Dancefloor album sold 10 million copies and produced one of the biggest global hits of the entire decade with "Hung Up", yet Todd in the Shadows still qualified its predecessor American Life for his show Trainwreckords (which focuses on albums that either killed careers or pushed them out of the mainstream) because, from his American perspective, he considered Madonna to be "ignorable" during the Confessions era. America's resistance to European-flavored dance music, however, would finally subside after the release of Lady Gaga's The Fame, eventually paving the way for the EDM explosion of the early 2010s.
• Jamelia's 2003 single "Superstar" was a monster hit pretty much everywhere except North America, where it didn't even appear on the niche charts. The only other place it wasn't a hit was Denmark, where the original by Christine Milton came from and reached #1, and even then, Jamelia's cover sounds literally identical to Milton's version aside from the swapped out, yet still similar-sounding vocalist.
• Kent are wildly successful in their native Sweden, but not known that much elsewhere outside of the Nordic countries. They attempted to break into the American market with English versions of Isola and Hagnesta Hill, but these sadly failed to bring them any attention and the band returned to their native language for the rest of their career.
• Ice (a.k.a. Iceloki), a Hongkonger in Taiwan who mainly makes music for Rhythm Games:
  • He is absolutely hated in mainland China due to the song "Telegraph : 1344 7609 2575", which was discovered to contain a "free Hong Kong" message in Morse Code (in response to the 2020 Hong Kong protests), and "Hong Kong should secede from China" is regarded by mainland Chinese folks as an extremely toxic opinion. Despite the song not being made for any rhythm game, the damage was enough that Ice resigned from Rayark, and some of his songs were removed from the Chinese version of Cytus II, making him literally Banned in China. This opinion is generally not shared by the rest of the Asian rhythm game community, where he and his music continue to be positively-received, and his songs continue appear on rhythm games made by developers based in Japan (CHUNITHM, Takumi Cubic) and South Korea (DJMAX, KALPA).
  • He is not well-liked amongst American and European rhythm game communities either due to his outspoken interest in shotacon fiction and art (which is a far more touchy subject in the West than in East Asia); he was in charge of the Retro chapter in the original Cytus and it features an Easter Egg message that reads "SHOTA4EVER", and he's released an album called Shota Paradise. That said, the backlash isn't as strong as it is with Chinese gamers, and one American-produced rhythm game, NOISZ, does feature his songs.
• A two way example happened with Welcome to the Internet, a collaborative EP between Russian rave band Little Big and American singer Oliver Tree. Western fans of Oliver Tree did not like how the hyper, energetic contributions of Little Big contrasted Oliver's typical music, which is more mellow and serious. Meanwhile, Russian fans of Little Big felt Oliver's presence was shoehorned in, and that he was only present in an attempt to give Little Big a western audience. As a result, the EP isn't well regarded by either fanbase.
• While the reception for the They Might Be Giants kids' albums "Here Come the ABCs" and "Here Come the 123s" is somewhat mixed, but mostly positive in Western territories, the albums both sold horribly in Japan when they were released on DVD in 2010. This is due to the fact that TMBG is rather niche in Japan, as well as the teaching methods and English lyrics being considered too convoluted for Japanese toddlers.
• Maroon 5 was a phenomenon in Chile for many years and they were loved in past concerts there and having a massive fandom. That, until 2020 version of Viña del Mar International Song Festival, one of the biggest Latin American music festivals of the world, where they were invited as the only Anglo band. Their poor performance and a reluctant Adam Levine, who also threw up negative comments after the show, were object of a big polemic even covered by BBC. Since then, and despite the apologies Levine gave (various weeks) after the show, all that fandom was gone and now the band is completely hated in Chile, at the point every certain time Adam's been trolled in Twitter by Chileans. Even more, when Americans ask questions about countries, one of the most seen in Google is "Why does Chile hate Maroon 5?"
• British metalcore act Architects Zig-Zagged this issue with American metal fans:
  • When they first started out, they had a rough time winning over listeners in America, and even noted they were losing money whenever they toured the states. By 2013, there was serious debate that they would stop touring America all together. Thankfully, after they grew the beard with Lost Forever // Lost Together they won over many fans in America and would tour there for years to come.
  • Their 2022 album the classic symptoms of a broken spirit ^note capitalization intentional was a dud in America. Architects was already suffering a Broken Base due to their genre shift from metalcore to alternative and industrial metal on For Those Who Wish to Exist, and the follow up only worsened the issues. For comparison, the classic symptoms of a broken spirit went to number 8 on Australian Albums (Aria) and number 1 on UK Rock and Metal Albums (OCC) whereas it only went to number 24 Billboard’s Hard Rock Albums. Architects only did one North American tour on the album and have mostly stuck to touring Europe and Australia.
• Japanese music promotion Realising Media have noted that spacier, softer Progressive Metal acts such as The Contortionist, Tesseract, or Sky Harbor don’t have much of a fan base in Japan. Most metal listeners in the country prefer harder music such as Hardcore Punk or Deathcore, or Avant-Garde Metal, and that style of progressive metal doesn’t quite land with that audience.
• The quirky Genre Roulette-laden Power Pop stylings of Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich made them a reliable favorite in their native UK in The '60s, scoring eight Top 10 UK hits in the 1966-68 period, with much of that success translating well to the rest of Europe, especially Germany. But they had trouble in other countries that were usually receptive to British acts at the time. They only managed two Top 10s in Australia (while on the other side of the Tasman Sea they were huge in New Zealand). In the US their only Billboard Hot 100 hit was "Zabadak!", which stalled at #52. In Canada they were a Two-Hit Wonder, with "Zabadak!" reaching #1 and "The Legend of Xanadu" (their biggest UK hit) peaking at #10, while most of their other singles flopped.
• A specific song example would be 2002's "The Ketchup Song (Asereje)" from the Spanish pop trio Las Ketchup. The song's chart performance on Wikipedia says it all, a nearly unbroken string of #1's across nearly two dozen countries (and a top 10 standing in Croatia,) until you reach Billboard's Hot 100 in the United States, where it fizzled out at #54, despite being released in the middle of a Turn of the Millennium "Latin Boom" in American culture when audiences were particularly receptive to Spanish-language music (Jennifer Lopez, Ricky Martin, and Shakira all had their big breakthroughs into the American music scene around this time.) Theories for why this happened vary, ranging from the US simply not yet letting go of the previous "song with accompanying dance routine" fad in the Macarena to (no joke) Moral Guardians trying to claim the songs lyrics encouraged blasphemy ^note Their logic being that the opening line of the chorus, "Asereje..." could be translated to "a ser hereje..." or "to be heretical." According to Las Ketchup themselves, the lyrics are a Spanglish transliteration of the opening lines of The Sugarhill Gang's "Rapper's Delight" (with "Asereje..." being the opening "I said a hip-hop...") and are effectively gibberish. However, the most likely culprit could simply be Hype Backlash. Commericals promoting the single had a scrolling list of the aforementioned previous countries where it had already reached #1, implying it was inevitable it would eventually top the US charts as well, and Americans... long known to be something of a stubborn group that don't really take to being told what to do... might have simply revolted against the song out of spite.
• Even though if you're a fan of the national anthem of Algeria, it's wise not to play it in France because of its link with the Algerian independence war and its anti-French content: the fact that one of its verses was brought back in June 2023, doesn't help at all, as this has caused an outrage in France.
• The pop band Moranbong Band is widely popular in North Korea (if not for rather nefarious reasons), while in South Korea, their music is banned, due to propaganda.

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