Music / Germans Love David Hasselhoff

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The hard dance duo 2Girlz is fronted by two American women and produced by two German men (one of which is Axel Konrad of Groove Coverage), but their album can only be purchased in Japan or as an expensive import. Groove Coverage themselves were also fairly popular over there.
Australian pop-rock "boy band" 5 Seconds of Summer became an out-of-nowhere success in the United States after opening for One Direction on two of their tours. How rare is it for a foreign boy band to make it big in the States? Only one group has ever done it before: the same one that catapulted 5SOS to superstardom!
American doo-wop revival/a capella group 14 Karat Soul are almost completely unknown in their homeland outside of the New York City area. They are far more popular in Japan, where the group is best known through numerous Japanese TV adverts.
98 Degrees, a Boy Band made up of four white guys from Ohio, were huge in the African-American community in the late '90s. They were signed to Motown, and they were a lot more heavily influenced by R&B vocal groups like Boyz II Men than their peers were.

A Touch of Class (ATC) was an Eurodance group comprised of a New Zealander, an Australian, an Italian, and a Brit that had German producers, yet their song "Around the World (La La La La La)" (a Translated Cover Version of the Russian pop song "Pesenka" by the group Ruki Vverh!) was a Top 40 hit worldwide, even charting in the Top 40 in the United Kingdom and United States.
ABBA: Nearly universally popular, but they have always been huge in the United States (especially among the gay community), UK, and Australia. While they sold well at home in Sweden, they were criticized for being superficial and commercial.
Bryan Adams has a huge following in Nepal of all places. "Summer of '69" is a mainstay in bars, and Adams performed Nepal's first ever international concert in 2011.
Air Supply are a fond memory from The '80s in their native Australia and North America, and still perform to this day, but they've increasingly toured to a very dedicated audience in southeast Asia.
The British progressive rock band The Alan Parsons Project was a big hit in North America and in mainland Europe, but largely forgotten in the UK.
Alcatrazz never really amounted to anything in the United States and became more noteworthy for being the band that managed to somehow falter after only four years with guitar legends Yngwie Malmsteen and Steve Vai as members at different points. In Japan, they're still quite popular and their songs are a common mainstay in both covers and karaoke.
The band America, formed in the UK by American musicians,^note only charted once in the UK Top 40, with their debut single "A Horse With No Name". They are much more popular in the United States. Maybe the name had something to do with it?
Pop star Anastacia, who was born in Chicago, has sold about 20 million albums and is successful in almost every country on Earth... except her native United States, where she is only known for being a textbook example of this trope.
As chronicled in the film Anvil: The Story of Anvil, the band Anvil maintained a following in Europe and Japan long after being forgotten in the U.S. and their native Canada.
A major example of this is the German girl group Arabesque. Despite never achieving much fame at home in a market that already had Silver Connection, Boney M., and other disco titans who arrived first, they were absolute legends in Japan and the USSR throughout the late '70s and early '80s. Notably, their popularity in Japan during the '80s resulted in the birth of Eurobeat, which may be the ultimate case of this trope as far as entire genres of music are concerned (see below). Ironically, after the band split in 1984, former member Sandra Lauer embarked on a solo career that finally launched her to fame in Europe and immediately established her as the biggest pop diva from Germany, yet her debut solo single "Japan ist Weit" (a German-language version of Alphaville's "Big in Japan" that seemed to Lampshade her Japanese popularity) was an enormous flop, although her subsequent releases were successful.
Archive is an English trip hop/electronica/progressive rock band that is almost unknown in England, but rather known in continental Europe and particularly successful in France, to the point that they were scripted for the soundtrack of Michel Vaillant.
The Philippines absolutely adore David Archuleta. Given his startling similarities to several of the country's biggest pop stars, it's not surprising. He even made an album there consisting of covers of some OPM (Original Pinoy Music) songs (which later got available internationally on iTunes), and even sang the theme song to a Pinoy Soap Opera there (also an OPM song he covered).
Arctic Monkeys, though popular in the U.K. and U.S., are really popular in Mexico.
Australian singer Tina Arena, while popular in her native country and the UK, is very popular in France. It helps the fact she has recorded three albums in French as well as living in Paris for nearly two decades.
Guatemalan singer Ricardo Arjona is more popular in Mexico (and possibly anywhere in the Latin American world) than in his native country. Justified, as Mexico has a bigger musical industry than Guatemala.
Arkona, Russian pagan metal band, is more popular in other European countries and North America than in their native Russia. It may have to do with foreigners finding the Russian language interesting. In Russia proper, many tend to cringe at the fact they wear their pagan beliefs on their sleeve, and their actual lyrics are seen as weak by many native Russian speakers.
Remember the Atlanta hip-hop group Arrested Development (not to be confused with the much better known TV show of the same name)? Their most recent single in Europe was released in 2004. Their most recent American single? 1994.
Asking Alexandria is a British metalcore band that's much more popular in the United States than at home. Their albums have charted in the Top 10, but barely made a dent on the UK charts. They've had multiple rock hits in the US, but never charted on their own turf.
Atomic Kitten were popular enough in their native UK. However they also managed to achieve four number 1 singles in New Zealand where their stuff was never promoted. It was also a given that if a single they released didn't chart well in the UK, it would fare better in other countries. Their low selling final single reached number 1 in Taiwan.
Emilie Autumn did a lot of touring in Europe and is quite popular there, owing to her old record label being German. However, in America, most people know her as Courtney Love's ex-violinist, if at all, and she didn't tour the US until late 2009. She's well aware of her displaced popularity and gave a shout out to the Hoff in an interview.
Iggy Azalea is hugely successful in the United States, where "Fancy" topped the US charts for a whopping seven weeks in 2014 and became a defining song in American pop culture that year. Back in Australia? She's received terrible reception and is rather disliked for skipping her home country and its hip-hop scene, and for faking an American accent; "Fancy" only got to #5 there. In fact her (now cancelled) Great Escape Tour was only going to have her tour North America. Attitudes against Azalea only took off in early 2015 when she got into a controversy over homophobia.
In the mid-1990s, American R&B group Az Yet enjoyed some success on the Billboard Hot 100 with two top 10 hits: "Last Night" and their cover of Chicago's "Hard To Say I'm Sorry", featuring Peter Cetera himself. Outside of English-speaking countries, these songs were not hits at worst and moderate hits at best. In the Netherlands, however, they were smash hits.

Bandmaid were a flop in Japan and were about to be fired when their video "Thrill" blew up in the United States and other western markets. This would lead to successful tours in the US and being on the soundtrack of Peace Maker 2022. They and Babymetal are the most prominent bands of the 2010s female metal boom in Japan.
Despite having modest success in the US, the British adore the music of Burt Bacharach, so much so that when Burt's first album, Burt Bacharach Plays His Hits, was released in the UK, it rose to #3 on the UK album charts.
The Spanish Eurovision Song Contest parody song Baila el Chiki-chiki (created by a comedian and featuring intentionally ridiculous music, lyrics, customs, and choreography) was a legitimate music hit in the Philippines and Greece, receiving a licensed translated version in the latter (El Fiki Fiki).
Before they became one of the biggest boy bands in the world, the Backstreet Boys saw much of their earliest success in Germany and other parts of continental Europe. Lou Pearlman would repeat this by getting *NSYNC signed to a German label (BMG Ariola München) and sending them to Germany to start their career.
Bad Boys Blue - a German-based pop group consisting of an Englishman, a Jamaican, and an American - was another pop group to achieve popularity in the Glasnost-era Soviet Union not long after its founding.
Josephine Baker was an African-American entertainer who enjoyed mild success in the vaudeville circuit during the 1920s. However, in France she became a cultural icon, renowned for her banana dance and many ballades. Of course, being a part of the French Resistance and winning the Croix de Guerre helped. Even today, in the nation of her birth, she's only ever appreciated within the black community, due in most part to becoming the first international black celebrity and sex symbol.
British progressive rock band Barclay James Harvest remain popular in Germany, Switzerland and France.
The Beach Boys, while very popular in their home country of the United States, really caught the attention of the British in 1966 with the release of their single "Barbara Ann" and their album Pet Sounds. While Americans considered the album confusing and out of touch with their sound, the UK praised it as "the most progressive pop album of the year" and declared songwriter Brian Wilson a "genius".
American dance-pop singer Brandon Beal is far more successful in Denmark than he is in his native U.S., where he's virtually unheard of.
A rare subversion occurred to legendary twee pioneers Beat Happening. They attempted to become big in Japan with a tour, but the most they were considered was "avant-garde" (i.e., interesting to see, not popular). They were only slightly let down at the revelation, though.
The Beatles: Universally popular, but during the 1960s they really struck a chord in the United States. Several Americans who were young during the 1960s credit The Beatles for changing their whole way of thinking in a way unprecedented by other bands or artists of that time.
- Ringo Starr was the most popular Beatle in America, receiving the most fan mail out of all the Beatles, according to John Lennon. This is alluded to in the The Simpsons episode "Brush With Greatness", where Marge finally gets a reply to the fan latter she wrote to Ringo as a teenager - over twenty years later.
Bec Hollcraft, also known as Becca, is a pop-rock singer from Oregon. Although she's not so well-known in the States (outside of the Portland area, anyway), she was discovered by an agent for Sony Music's Japanese branch and became quite the celebrity in Japan. Most Americans who do know of her probably discovered her via Black Butler.
California-born Becky G (also known as Rebecca Gomez) is a One-Hit Wonder in her native U.S. with her 2014 hit "Shower", but has had more success in Spanish-speaking countries.
Drake Bell is a huge deal in Mexico, owing to a lasting fanbase from “Series/Drake&Josh.” He has recorded Spanish-language songs to cater to Latin American fans. His popularity in Mexico once sparked rumors he had changed his name and moved to the country.
American Country Music duo The Bellamy Brothers has been quite successful in patches of Europe for many years. Their debut single "Let Your Love Flow" was popular enough in West Germany that it was covered in German by Jürgen Drews as well, and it had a surge in popularity in the UK in 2008 when it was used in a Barclaycard advert. Their Breakthrough Hit "If I Said You Had a Beautiful Body Would You Hold It Against Me" was popular in Northern Ireland before it hit in the US, and they have had popular European albums with Swiss musician Gölä and Austrian musician DJ Ötzi long after the Bellamys' success had faded in the States.
British pop duet Benefit failed after their first album, but their single "Sex Sells" is still a popular recurrent on radio in Russia and Ukraine, where it's considered a early 2000s pop masterpiece.
Scottish pop-punk-dance trio Bis (no, not that one) is immensely popular in Japan.
Singer-songwriter Stephen Bishop was fairly popular at home in the U.S., thanks to his hits "On and On" and "It Might Be You". But in the Philippines, he's still one of the most popular foreign artists of all time, with the latter song being especially beloved by his Filipino fans, and even lending its name to a popular TV series starring John Lloyd Cruz and Bea Alonzo.
Black Kids was an American indie rock band that saw no success in the US, but were briefly popular in the UK.
Blondie were huge in the UK, where the backlash to disco was less pronounced than it was in America and new wave was more heavily established by the time of their commercial breakthrough. Even after the failure of The Hunter and the band's subsequent breakup, frontwoman Debbie Harry continued to have solid hits there through the rest of the 1980s, while their comeback single "Maria" went to #1 in 1999 (by contrast, it only reached #82 in the US).
Blue Öyster Cult has remained perennially popular in Japan largely thanks to their song about Godzilla from Spectres, whereas in the US the group is only known for "Godzilla", ''Burnin' for You" and "Don't Fear The Reaper" outside their native Long Island and has otherwise largely faded into obscurity. The divide is illustrated by their 1999 tour, wherein they sold out sports arenas and stadiums in Japan, then came back to America to play casinos and state fairs.
Bloodhound Gang were quite popular in Germany. Their album Hefty Fine was critically panned but still managed to sell well there (and in other places such as the Netherlands and Austria), and the greatest hits compilation Show Us Your Hits had one bonus track added to its German version: Disco Pogo, that featured the German duo Die Atzen. The videoclip for Altogether Ooky was also filmed in Berlin.
Korean artist BoA is hugely popular in Japan, to the point of having sung a ton of theme songs and producing numerous albums for Japan and South Korea at the same time. The Korea love hasn't stopped with her. Many native-Korean acts (especially DBSK, Girls' Generation, KARA, and TWICE) have followed to gain notoriety. Most notably, in their first-year debut in Japan (both in the same year), Girls' Generation and KARA won awards and broke records on the charts, and TWICE even broke those records.
As mentioned when she sang during the 2008 Olympic opening ceremony, Sarah Brightman, known for playing Christine in the original cast of The Phantom of the Opera, is very popular in China.
Before Bad Boys Blue was founded, another West German pop band was already a household name in the USSR: Boney M., as the reggae-disco-funk ensemble made a hugely popular and widely televised tour of the Soviet Union in 1978 (during the Brezhnev era), though notably did not play what's probably known as their biggest western hit, "Rasputin"; in Eurasia, their wider catalogue is still popular, though "Rasputin" has gained popularity in their 21st century reunions.
Graham Bonney had only one charting single in his native United Kingdom, "Sugar Girl", which in 1966, only reached #19. But in West Germany, it reached #1, paving the way for lots more success across continental Europe! He has now lived in Germany for a long time and has often recorded music in German.
Whilst popular in his native U.S., Garth Brooks is immensely popular in Ireland! It helps that Country Music has a large fandom there, especially in rural areas of the country. Notably, he is of Irish ancestry. His most recent tour (2022) saw him play Croke Park, Ireland's biggest stadium for five nights.
British grunge band Bush were more popular in the US based on album sales; their singles charted higher in their native country only due to the differing natures between the American and British singles charts at the time.

Bobby Caldwell was an American R&B musician who had a legendary 30+ year career... in Japan. His best-known song in the United States, "What You Won't Do for Love", was from his first album way back in 1978, and is probably more well-known now for having been heavily sampled by Tupac Shakur.
When supermodel Naomi Campbell was asked how her album Babywoman was doing, she said, "Well, it's very big in Japan."
Laura Cantrell is bigger in the UK than the US and tours there regularly. This no doubt has a lot to do with the endorsement of John Peel, who said of her debut "it is my favourite record of the last ten years, possibly my life".
Captain Beefheart: Though not hugely popular, the United Kingdom probably has more fans of Beefheart than any other country in the world, mostly thanks to Beefheart fan John Peel giving the records a lot of airplay on his radio show 'Top Gear'.
Alessia Cara isn't obscure in her native Canada, but right now she seems to be a bit more popular below the border. Her Breakthrough Hit and Signature Song "Here" only reached #20 in Canada, while it went Top 10 in the United States. Her debut album Know-It-All debuted at #12 in Canada, but #9 in the US. Also, when she announced her North American tour in 2015, she would be making fifteen stops in the United States, versus four in Canada. Only time will tell if this continues.
Maryland-born DJ Ian Carey is much more popular in Canada.
Zig-zagged with Belinda Carlisle. As frontwoman of The Go-Go's, she struggled to find much of an audience in the UK, despite touring with Madness and The Specials early on. Upon the release of her second solo album Heaven on Earth, however, she became quite a bit more popular in Britain than in her native US, where she scored a few top 40 hits before disappearing at the start of the 1990s. In the UK, by contrast, not only did all her albums except her 1986 debut sell better than in the US, she continued to thrive on the pop charts until the late '90s, when she rejoined The Go-Go's.
Cascada is more popular in the US, UK, and maybe Asia, than in their native Germany.
Britpop band Catch were a One-Hit Wonder in the UK with "Bingo" (which is more known there for a broadcast of it's music video being interrupted for news of the death of Diana, Princess of Wales), but were far more successful in Southeast Asia (especially Thailand and Indonesia).
C.C. Catch, a Dutch-born, German singer and one of the prominent artists of the Eurodisco scene, had achieved notable success in Germany, but her success in Spain was even greater. Many of her singles were top ten hits there, many charting higher than they did in Germany. To name a few: "I Can Lose My Heart Tonight" charted #13 in Germany, but #7 in Spain, "Heaven and Hell" charted #13 in Germany, but #4 in Spain, and most impressively, "Soul Survivor" charted #17 in Germany, but was a #1 hit in Spain.
- In addition, C.C. Catch has also gained a substantial following in Eastern Europe, similarly to other Eurodisco artists such as Modern Talking (Dieter Bohlen, one half of the duo, was also Catch's songwriter and producer).
In the 80s, Nick Cave, disgruntled with the Australian music industry (and, despite a cult following, failing to gain commercial success), ended up in Germany, and appeared on postcards for Berlin.
Celtic Woman was a record-breaking smash hit in America. In Ireland... not so much. Seriously, every city in the country has a specialist pub or ten where you'd find that stuff every second Tuesday.
UK pop duo Chad & Jeremy had just one hit in their homeland, "Yesterday's Gone", which peaked at #37. Meanwhile, they managed to latch onto The British Invasion in North America in 1964, with "A Summer Song" going Top 10 in both the US and Canada, ending up with seven Top 40 hits in the US and six (including two Top 10s) in Canada.
American singer Charlene of Never Been to Me fame is regarded as a One-Hit Wonder in America and most of the world. But in Norway she managed to become a Two-Hit Wonder with the aformentioned Never Been to Me reaching #5 and another song It Ain't Easy Comin' Down which managed to go to #8. In America, that song only reached #109 and didn't even chart anywhere else.
Cheap Trick actually managed to parlay this trope into greater success in their native country. Their first three albums all failed to reach the top 40 in the United States, but all three went gold in Japan, where they were met with a frenzy comparable to Beatlemania. This led to the release of Cheap Trick at Budokan, initially intended to be released only in Japan. Demand for the album back in the United States proved large enough that it was eventually released there, too, and the band scored their first Top 10 hit with a live version of a song that had completely failed to chart two years earlier.
The Chi-Lites were moderately popular in their native US, with two big hits in the early '70s and several songs that did well on the Hot Soul Singles chart, but like the Stylistics, they were even bigger in the UK, where several of their tracks became hugely successful in the mid-'70s.
When Natalie Maines, the frontwoman of The Chicks (then known as the Dixie Chicks), made her statement at a London concert during the runup to the Iraq War saying that she was ashamed to come from the same state as then-President George W. Bush, their popularity collapsed in the United States to a staggering degree as the American Country Music fandom, which leaned very pro-war at the time, branded them traitors. However, said statements won them a lot of new fans overseas, where public opinion was staunchly against the war. Their subsequent album Taking the Long Way topped the charts in Canada and Sweden, hit #2 in Australia, and cracked the Top 10 in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Norway, Ireland, and the UK, and their Accidents & Accusations Tour to promote the album added many Canadian shows to replace canceled American shows. Even within the US, Taking the Long Way topped the charts, went double platinum, and won five Grammys due to higher sales among liberal-leaning audiences making up for a near-total rejection by country fandom; while its singles went nowhere on the country charts, they gained more traction on adult contemporary. However, by the end of the Bush era, the Dixie Chicks quietly went back into obscurity, eventually releasing a new album, Gaslighter, after changing their name to The Chicks in 2020 (it managed to crack the top 10 in Canada, Australia, and the UK; three of the countries Taking the Long Way was successful in, but only made it at #20 in Ireland and #14 in Germany, two other countries Taking the Long Way was successful in).
In classical music, the Japanese positively adore Frédéric Chopin. The International Chopin Piano Competition in Poland, where pianists from all around the world come to play Chopin's music and are judged on their performance, always have multiple Japanese competitors. Why else do you think they made a video game about him?
CHVRCHES have achieved great success with alternative audiences in both Scotland and everywhere else in the world. However, they managed to get a mainstream Top 10 hit in, of all places, Japan with "The Mother We Share". For comparison, it only reached #38 back home and 12 on the US alternative charts.
Gabriella Cilmi is very successful and well liked in the UK compared to her lukewarm loving from her home country Australia.
They might not be as wildly popular as Fifth Harmony in their homeland, but sister group Cimorelli is largely loved outside the US, despite most of their output being occasional covers on Youtube or 4-track digital EPs of their original songs. They have already played live in select parts of Europe, select cities in South America and The Philippines, but South America, Europe and some parts of Asia in particular love these girls a lot more or equal to 5H, especially if local magazines, music video channels and radio stations are to be concerned. In America, however, they only get 1 page in any teen magazine every once in a while, and their songs "Made in America" and "That Girl Should Be Me" are their only songs to get airplay on Radio Disney. Recent things brought out by the sisters might change their US status though.
French pianist Richard Clayderman is extremely popular in China; one of his concerts in China was watched by 800 million Chinese, which is about 80% of the whole population.
American power pop band The Click Five (considered a One-Hit Wonder in the states for their 2005 song "Just the Girl") and Canadian pop-punk band Simple Plan's unlikely huge fanbases in Asia was finally sealed when they were chosen to provide the official soundtrack to Animax Asia's first original series, LaMB.
- In Asia, most of Click Five's later singles are played in high rotation on radio and TV stations, as well as topping the music charts there. In America? They haven't had a hit since "Just The Girl".
South African worldbeat musician and anti-Apartheid activist Johnny Clegg enjoyed much popularity in France, where he is nicknamed Le Zoulou Blanc (The White Zulu).
South Korean K-pop duo Clon, active from 1996 to early 2000s, enojoyed immense popularity in Taiwan to the point that Taiwanese singer Alex To sang the Mandarin and English versions of the duo's song, Bing Bing bing.
Swedish indie pop band Cloudberry Jam never hit it big at home... But enjoy much more popularity in Japan, to the point that a Guilty Gear character was named after them, Jam Kuradoberi.
CN Blue, like their older labelmate FT Island, are also more popular in Japan due to their band image being more accepted there than in Korea. It helps they made their indie debut there before making their official debut in Korea.
Collective Soul were absolutely huge in Canada throughout the 1990s. Their 1995 Self-Titled Album was certified 8x Platinum and seven of their singles reached the top 10, with many more making it into the top 40. In their native US, they were one of the more successful early Post-Grunge bands, but weren't big enough that most people still remember them for any of their songs other than "Shine" or "December" today.
Phil Collins may be internationally successful, but in several places (including his native UK), he's seen as one of the poster boys for base-breaking musicians. However, he gets a lot of love from the American hip-hop and R&B communities, and many of the genres' most famous acts consider him an icon. Notably, Ice-T defended him when a journalist made fun of the Phil Collins albums in Ice's collection, Bone Thugs-n-Harmony flew out to Switzerland to ask him to appear in their music video for "Home" (and made him an honorary member when the song, which sampled Collins' "Take Me Home", was successful), and in the early 2000s (when Collins' hatedom from other listeners was in full swing, mind you), several of the most popular hip-hop artists of the time put out a tribute album to him, Urban Renewal, which got negative reviews... for being a Phil Collins tribute album by black artists.
The popularity of The Corrs has lasted far longer in Australia than it ever did anywhere outside of Ireland and the UK.
Billy "Crash" Craddock was one of the biggest country stars in the U.S. throughout the '70s, but few people over there realize that he was briefly huge in Australia about a decade earlier.
British band Cradle of Filth maintain a cult following in their native UK, but are one of the biggest metal bands in Germany and other parts of continental Europe, and are much more popular in that region than in their native country.
The Crüxshadows are a Florida goth/darkwave band that's little known in the US but has gotten Top 40 radio airplay in Germany.
Barry Cryer is best known in Britain as a radio comedian and comedy writer. He is known only as a respected elder statesman of stand-up comedy. But in 1957, his brief foray into singing earned him a #1 hit single in Finland.
Cumbia is a music genre created in Colombia and Panama, but is also very well-loved in central Mexico, Argentina and especially in Chile, where they have even developed several cumbia styles of their own. Its popularity nowadays spans the entire American continent from north to south — including the United States, with one of the great exponents of this genre being Kumbia Kings, led by Selena's older brother A.B. Quintanilla — and has gone as far as being successful in Spain and influencing completely unrelated genres like Romania's manele and Greece's skiladiko.
Miley Cyrus' fame only slightly decreased since changing to a more "adult" image, but she still felt that foreign audiences would be more welcoming of her than in America. As a result, she performed exclusively overseas for her 2011 "Gypsy Heart Tour", earning over in countries like South and Central America, Australia, the Philippines, Mexico, Costa Rica and Panama.

French disco band Daisy Daze and the Bumble Bees is completely unknown even in its home country. In Italy, however, their song Planet O became a massive success due to it being used as Lupin III's opening. The song had nothing to do with Lupin and was about BDSM porn.
Moroccan-born French singer Daniele Vidal had a successful music career in 1970s Japan. During The New '10s, her music experienced renewed interest in Korea after her song "Pinocchio" was played in the South Korean TV Program The Return of Superman.
Afrikaans singer Kurt Darren has had a fair amount of his songs covered (translated), mainly in Belgium and the Netherlands, where those version has a similarly sized fanbase.
Norwegian electro-synth band Datarock tours so often in Australia one can only assume they're more popular there than elsewhere.
The British New Wave band Dead or Alive's fourth studio album, Nude, was their first not to so much appear on the UK Albums Chart, and peaked at 106th place on the Billboard 200. It was, however, a massive hit on the Japan charts and their next two albums, Fan the Flame (Part 1) and Nukleopatra, were only released in Japan. Nukleopatra was eventually released in America and Britain some years later, but Fan the Flame is, to this day, only available as a Japanese import.
Irish pop singer Chris de Burgh, who was actually born in Argentina, is more popular in Brazil than in Ireland and the UK. He's also more popular in Norway and Iran.
Deep Purple, during their "Mk1" era, toured primarily in North America, and had their records released there earlier than in the UK. This had the result that British audiences sometimes mistakenly thought that the group was American. They began to tour elsewhere more often after their American record company went out of business.
Although they'd enjoyed moderate successes on the album charts in their native Britain with their first two albums some UK fans were upset by the song "Hello America" calling the band sellouts(with the band even getting pelted by garbage from the audience when they performed at the 1980 Reading Festival), Def Leppard's success in America quickly overtook their popularity at home with the release of Pyromania; Phil Collen recalls the tour for that album beginning in a club in London and ending in a stadium in San Diego. The band didn't have a hit single in Britain until 1987, ten years after they formed, and even then many British listeners assumed they were Bon Jovi rip-offs (even though they predated Bon Jovi) and were surprised to learn that Def Leppard were the most popular band in America.
The Delta Rhythm Boys were an American R&B vocal group that had mainstream success in the US in the 1930s and '40s, but began to fade in the '50s as popular taste in music changed. All of a sudden, though, they became huge in Sweden and elsewhere in Europe and drew large crowds. They recorded an album in Swedish and in 1956 relocated to Europe permanently. Their rendition of the Swedish song "Flickorna i Småland" was featured in Bent Hamer's 2003 film Kitchen Stories. A more detailed account of the Rhythm Boys' European success can be found here.
Devo (of "Whip It" fame) are hugely popular in Australia and New Zealand, touring at multiple venues in those two countries in the early 1980s and performing in arenas in Australia during their Something for Everybody tour. New Traditionalists reached as high as #3 on the Australian album charts, and there's quite a few Spudboys and Beautiful Mutants hailing from the land down under.
The members of Diablo Swing Orchestra are next to completely unknown in their native Sweden. In Mexico, fans rush their plane.
Céline Dion has quite the fanbases in Iraq, China, Ghana and Jamaica.
- In Jamaica, Dion was still breaking ticket sales records as late as 2012. In general, Jamaica and other countries in the Caribbean have an unusual fondness for easy listening artists that are considered corny or dated. Additionally, songs that barely charted elsewhere often become huge hits in the Caribbean.
Dire Straits had massive success in the Netherlands before they went on to conquer the world.
- There was a time where the Netherlands were the benchmark for international success, due to their weird broadcast system (for music at least). If it succeeded there, there was a good chance the rest of Europe would follow.
While he's still moderately popular in Europe, German singer and former rock band Accept frontman Udo Dirkschneider seems to be quite a big thing in Russia. His fascination for Russian culture, that led to the polka-rock anthem Trainride in Russia and a ballad sung entirely in Russian (Platchet Soldat) might have something to do with it.
French Trap Music producer DJ Snake is hugely successful in the United States, but has only had moderate success back in France and the rest of Europe. For comparison, his signature "Turn Down for What" reached #4 in the US (though the fact that Lil' Jon was on it probably helped too), but only #19 back home, while "You Know You Like It" was a #13 hit stateside, but only #22 in France.
Before making it big Stateside with the success of "Alone Again", Dokken were fairly popular in Germany, recording their debut album in Cologne at Dieter Dierks' studio and making an appearance on Beat-Club.
Joe Dolce's Rambunctious Italian-themed novelty song "Shaddap You Face" was a massive international hit in 1981 in basically every country except his native US, where it stalled out at #53 on the Billboard Hot 100 (but at least made the Top 40 on the other two major US charts at the time, Cash Box and Record World). Elsewhere, it hit #1 in the UK, Ireland, Austria, Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, South Africa and New Zealand, plus making the Top 5 in Canada (especially popular in Quebec), Denmark, the Netherlands and Norway. But that all pales in comparison to its reception in Australia (where Dolce was based after relocating from Ohio in 1978), where it not only hit #1, but was for a long time the biggest selling single in the nation's history (and remains as one of the all-time top sellers).
Fats Domino was beloved in Jamaica, where his New Orleans rhythms were a huge influence on early Reggae.
Prior to the spring of 1992, Jason Donovan was huge in the United Kingdom. Many teenage girls went crazy for him as "Jasonmania" swept through and a decent amount of his songs went into the top ten there. The rise and popularity of Neighbours in the UK did help him.
- He had much more popularity in Ireland, as most of his songs there has went into the top ten, including the ones that didn't make it to the top ten in the UK!
- He was also huge in Japan, as bubblegum pop and Eurobeat were well-liked in the land of the rising sun.
- According to some YouTube comments, he was/is HUGE in the Philippines, Russia, Brazil, and Argentina!
Italian eurodance group Double You has a moderate following in Europe, but are quite fondly remembered by Brazilian party-goers in the 90s, during which they had a string of hits, and where they still regularly tour (their lead singer, William Naraine, has even lived in São Paulo for some time).
DragonForce are barely known outside the metal community in their native UK. They're much more popular in the United States, the Nordic countries and Japan.

Namibian Kwaito rapper EES is far more popular in South Africa and Germany than in his native country. Justified, as South Africa has a bigger musical industry than Namibia.
Alt-country musician David Eugene Edwards hails from Colorado, yet his bands—16 Horsepower and Woven Hand—are far more popular in the Netherlands. For a while, 16HP was the most popular band in the Netherlands.
Despite hailing from New Jersey, most of Todd Edwards' fans are British. This is probably due to the genre of music he makes being much more popular in the UK that in the States.
Though they've grown more popular in their home country since then (thanks to their joke song "Gay Bar"), Detroit rock band Electric Six was originally poorly-known in America but a huge hit in Britain.
While Eminem's fandom is generally associated with Flyover Country, he has an absolutely *gigantic* fandom in India, due to him hitting peak global popularity at a time when India was just beginning to dabble in importing hip-hop. Virtually all Indian hip-hop is heavily inspired by him and his face is a staple of graffiti art. His movie 8 Mile was instrumental in starting a battle rap scene in China, and he's highly revered in South Korea, with the result his rapping style and production was also a massive influence on Kpop.
For a Ukrainian band that writes songs exclusively in Ukrainian, Okean Elzy is notably popular in Russia. In fact, Russian social network VK often has Ukrainian-language rock music attributed to Okean Elzy. They continue to remain recognizable even after certain events that happened in Ukraine in 2014 and certain statements from frontman Svyatoslav Vakarchuk perceived as controversial by Russian fanbase.
The Escape Club is the only British band with a US Billboard Hot 100 #1 hit ("Wild Wild West"), but zero chart entries in their homeland.
Evanescence was massive everywhere in the early 2000s, but continues to be popular in Japan long after their peak. This is largely due to Amy Lee's use of Elegant Gothic Lolita clothing. When the band announced that their three-year-long hiatus was over, Ozzfest Japan would be their first performance since 2012.
Everclear was more popular in Australia than the US in the Sparkle and Fade and So Much for the Afterglow era. The song "Local God" was practically ignored in the US, but received a lot of airplay in Australia because it was released on the William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet soundtrack when the band's Australian fandom was at its peak. It was included as a bonus track on Australian copies of So Much for the Afterglow in 1997. The band has continued to tour Australia heavily, including in 2017 for the 20th anniversary of So Much for the Afterglow, and in early 2020 for a tour covering the entire country. However, for some reason the two Songs from an American Movie albums weren't as successful in Australia as they were in America upon release in 2000.
Brunei born-Ezah Hashim's song "Renjana Pengantin Diraja", the RTB theme for the 2023 Brunei Royal Wedding, exploded into a hit in Tiktok even far beyond her home country, as it was used in Tiktok videos in Malaysia and Indonesia after its MTV was released. There are current demands for this hit to be released officially on Spotify, as there's no doubt that said track would turn her into a regional star in the making.

In their native USA, Faith No More are regarded as a One-Hit Wonder (1990's "Epic" was a #9 hit) at worst and Cult Classic at best. However, they had much more success in Europe (particularly the UK) and Australia (where they had two #1 singles).
The California-based band Fanny only had two Top 40 hits in America, but were fairly well-known as an all-female hard rock band some five years before The Runaways emerged. The band featured Filipino-American sisters June and Jean Millington, who were born, and spent their formative years in the Philippines. On top of her status as the singer/guitarist of an early all-female hard rock band, June is also one of the first openly lesbian women in music, yet she and her sister are barely-known in their birth country, even among music fans from their generation.
After experiencing a massive Career Resurrection in 2017, Russian pop-rap/hip-house singer Feduk gained a considerable amount of popularity in Poland. Looking up his name on YouTube will lead you to a lot of Polish transcriptions and translations.
British band The Fixx were huge in the United States in the 80's, but virtually unknown in their home country.
80's hardcore punk band Flag of Democracy were one of the lesser known bands during the explosion of American hardcore during that era. However, they are very popular and influential in Japan. So much so that they even did a cover of Puffy AmiYumi's "Umi Heto" for a Japanese compilation.
Fleetwood Mac, during their Bob Welch era, were much more popular in the US than in the UK. Whilst their prior Peter Green era had been popular in the UK, they had gradually slipped from popularity. Although Welch was American, the band was UK-based until their last album with him (Heroes Are Hard to Find). The album Bare Trees and single "Hypnotized" are regarded as classics in the US, whilst almost unknown in the UK. "Hypnotized" even stayed in the band's set lists after Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham joined. Fleetwood Mac's popularity was worldwide from their 1975 self-titled album onward, and by Rumours, were one of the biggest bands in the world. To this day, however, you will hear Americans speak enthusiastically about Welch-era material to UK people who have never heard it.
It's rumoured that Flight of the Conchords failed to get their projects funded in their home country of New Zealand because their humor was deemed "too local". However, when their fictionalized lives became first a BBC radio series in UK and then an HBO TV series in the United States, they became a Cult Classic, finally earning recognition in New Zealand.
British R&B group Floetry is an example of this. They had moderate success in the U.S. (even if they were just a One-Hit Wonder over there) and even earned three Grammy nominations for their debut album, but barely scraped the bottom of the charts in their native country.
Foghat had a few hit singles in the US, but never charted in their homeland of the UK.
The Foo Fighters are popular in the US, even if Dave Grohl's former band Nirvana still puts a shadow over it. But Dave himself admits that the UK treats them like they are "the biggest band in the world", where in recent years they have sold out massive outdoor shows in minutes, months in advance. The band also had a big following in Australia during their third album (which got a special edition with a local swimmer on the cover and an extra track), and in Italy, where 1000 musicians got together to cover "Learn to Fly" in order to convince the band to perform there.
Korean rock band FT Island, while being one of the most popular bands (as opposed to a dance or vocal group) in Korea, fares a lot better in Japan as the band culture is much stronger there (while the most popular genre in Korea is ballads, such as the work of Davichi). They spend a lot more time promoting there than in Korea as a result. It helps both bands are near-fluent in Japanese and promote original songs instead of the usual cliched Translated Cover Version most Korean acts opt for when promoting in Japan.
Fun Lovin' Criminals are popular in the UK but hardly known in their native New York. The band members fell in love with the UK and relocated there. Frontman Huey is now even more famous there than during the band's 90s chart success, because he has a popular radio show on BBC Radio 6 Music. Back in the US, they're a One-Hit Wonder, with "Scooby Snacks" in 1996.

Genesis also enjoyed considerable success in continental Europe (particularly Belgium for Trespass' and Italy for Nursery Cryme) before reaching any significant success in the UK or US.
Andy Gibb, The Bee Gees' younger brother, born in the UK but raised from infancy in Australia, barely dented the charts in his birthplace, with "An Everlasting Love" being his only Top 10 there. In Australia, he did somewhat better; while his first Aussie release only made the lower reaches of that country's Top 100, his next one went to Number 1, and the two that followed were solidly Top 20. In the US, it was another story entirely. The three songs that made the Australian Top 20 all topped the chart in the US (including one that became the best-selling song of 1978), and he had another three Top 10 singles and two additional Top 20 songs in the States.
Debbie Gibson's career has been more enduring in Japan than her native US. Her third album Anything Is Possible was notorious for being too long and experimental and killed her career at home, but it was her best-charting release on the other side of the Pacific Ocean. Her following album, Body Mind Soul, had virtually no success in the US but peaked at #13 on the Oricon charts. In 2010, she released the Japan-only covers album Ms. Vocalist, a female companion piece to fellow Big In Japan act Mr. Big frontman Eric Martin's Mr. Vocalist series.
"Eat You Up" by Angie Gold managed to do this at least three times, three different ways. It started as an 80s pop song and was a modest hit in her local UK. However, it was wildly popular in Japan and not only reached number 1, but was covered in Japanese by Yoko Oginome as "Dancing Hero (Eat You Up)". That version was a huge hit in Japan, but also in China, so it was covered by Priscilla Chan as "Dancing Street". Then, in 2017, the Japanese version reached popularity thanks to a remix being used in a performance by the Tomioka High School dance club—prompting another Translated Cover Version into Korean by a group of women comedians.
Canadian pianist Glenn Gould is popular in Russia. This was reported by CBC Music during his 80th birthday celebration.
Opera composer Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714-1787) was famous enough in his native Germany, but in Paris people went nuts over him and the entire music scene there divided into two parties over his new kind of opera. It is said that when a young Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart went on tour to Paris, his lack of success was attributable to him not taking a position on Gluck, so he was largely ignored by both the Gluckites and the anti-Gluckites.
Gorillaz were fairly popular in the US and their native UK through the early to mid 2000s, with a decent number of hits, but eventually waned into a large but not entirely mainstream fandom; that is, except in Japan, where they maintain consistent popularity, to the point where new material is often released there before anywhere else.
American indie rock band Gossip are much more popular in Europe than they are in the US, especially in Germany where "Heavy Cross" was one the best selling singles of 2009.
David Gray was popular in Ireland long before he broke through at home in Britain. And by popular, we mean White Ladder is the biggest selling album of all time in Ireland! (It’s been rumored that one out of every four households in the country had a copy of the album at one point!) He's even joked that the Irish have more or less adopted him.
- White Ladder was a fairly massive success in North America as well, hitting platinum a full year before the UK, and “Babylon” remains a staple on US adult contemporary radio stations to this day. It’s telling that over half of the dates for his White Ladder 20th anniversary tour are in the States.
Canadian folk rockers Great Big Sea have a cult following in the United States, mostly due to the usage of "Ordinary Day" in video game death montage videos.
Despite being unknown in his homeland, British pop singer-songwriter Tom Gregory is popular in other European countries. He is signed to a German record label and has enjoyed lots of airplay there since he released his début single in 2017. One of his singles even reached number one in Poland!
Despite Parry Gripp being a California-based musician, he's earned a large following amongst northeastern Americans, primarily from New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware, due to him being the official composer for commercials from northeastern U.S. convenience store chain, Wawa, during their annual Hoagiefest campaigns since 2008.
Guns N' Roses are still popular in their native U.S. But their influence greatly waned in the years when there was no follow up to the Use Your Illusion albums, Slash left the group, and Axl became a recluse. Today they are seen more as a nostalgia act. But in Latin America, they are more popular than ever and fans are hungry for every bit of news about the band, particularly about a new album. While the U.S. was lukewarm to Axl and the Turn of the Millennium GNR that didn't include Slash, Duff, or Izzy, they still played to fanatical and sold out crowds in South America. The comment section on any GNR music video is usually dominated by Spanish-speaking fans from Latin America.

Californian indie pop trio Haim has received much more fame and success in Britain and Australia then their native US. They topped the BBC's Sound Of 2013 poll and since the release of their debut album have reached the number 1 and number 2 spots on the album charts in the UK (beating out Justin Timberlake) and Australia respectively, compared to #6 in in the US.
Hair Metal pioneers Hanoi Rocks were naturally huge in their homeland of Finland (three #1 hits), but also had a big Japanese following, did some business throughout Europe (being the first Finnish act to make the UK charts), and most importantly, were cult favorites in the burgeoning American metal scene, with Poison, Skid Row and especially Guns N' Roses citing them as a big influence (right down to a tophat-wearing guitarist).
Speak to just about any Australian, and they'll have reactions ranging from mild surprise, to outright incredulousness, that Rolf Harris, prior to his fall from grace, was so hugely popular in the UK. (He has lived and worked in the UK for years though, so it's not like his success there was only coincidental.)
Wouldn't you know it, The Hoff himself applies here with his large following in Germany, as while his singing career comes second to his acting career, his singing talent is beloved by many, German or no.
While Helloween is certainly one of the big names in the European Power metal scene, if you look at actuall album sales they are way more popular in Japan.
Jimi Hendrix was largely unappreciated in America early in his career, and indeed didn't get his big break until, at the urging of some acquaintances, he moved to England and hit the London electric blues scene. When he finally managed to get a US tour (with two Brits as his backing band), it was as an opening act for The Monkees, whose fans didn't care for his style, and booed him off the stage on at least one occasion.
Missouri-born singer Donna Hightower eked out a career in America as a jazz singer in the mold of Ella Fitzgerald in The '50s, but found herself very well-received when she toured in Europe toward the end of the decade, which, coupled with less racial discrimination there, led her to relocate to the continent, eventually settling in Spain. Then by The '70s, Hightower, well into her 40s, took a turn toward soulful pop music, with Spanish songwriters and producers (but still with English lyrics), scoring big European hits with "This World Today Is a Mess" and "If You Hold My Hand" (songs that weren't even released in America). One curiosity was that living in Spain had given Hightower a quirky accent, with some unusual vocalizations of vowels (on "If You Hold My Hand" she pronounces "space" so that it almost sounds like "spice"). She eventually moved back to America (specifically Austin, Texas) in 1990.
Contrary to popular belief, Utada Hikaru was born in the United States to Japanese immigrant parents, and got their start in the United States recording songs in English under the stage name "Cubic U". But their early English albums met with disappointing sales, and they didn't become a successful artist until they moved to Japan and started recording music in Japanese under their real name. Case in point: in their native country, they're arguably best known for the songs that they recorded for the Kingdom Hearts games; in Japan, they're best known for First Love, which is the highest selling Japanese album in history.
Holland says he gets more attention internationally than in his native Korea.
British band The Hollies had a fair few hits at home, but went on to have a surprising number of number-one hits in utterly random countries such as Switzerland, Malaysia and Italy.
Hollywood Undead is very popular in Russia for unknown reasons.
British Italo Disco singer Eddy Huntington is fondly remembered in Italy and the former Soviet states for his 1986 hit "U.S.S.R." (about, well, Glorious Mother Russia), which also cracked the Top 10 in Switzerland and entered the Top 20 in Germany. Ask any Brit if they know who he is and expect to be met with blank stares.
While modestly successful in their homeland, British Synth-Pop duo Hurts are big in Germany, Finland, and Eastern Europe.

Janis Ian hasn't had a hit single in the U.S. since "At Seventeen" in 1975, but in Japan, she's one of the biggest-selling international artists of all time, with several major hit songs and albums there in the late '70s. Also in 1979, her collaboration with Giorgio Moroder, "Fly Too High", topped charts in Australasia but flew totally under the radar Stateside.
American synthpop trio Information Society arguably has a far more loyal fan base in Brazil than in their home country.
- The Minneapolis-based band first got attention in Florida among Cuban music listeners via their song, "Running" being a club favorite there.
Inna, while modestly popular in her homeland of Romania, has a major cult following in the rest of mainland Europe, the UK and even the US to some extent, thanks to YouTube.
While Iron Maiden is popular everywhere, Chileans absolutely adore them. This may or may not come from how they were banned from performing in Chile in the early nineties... for supposedly being "satanic". But ever since the ban was lifted, every time they dropped by they've been total hits. One of their most recent live albums, 2013's En Vivo!, was even recorded in Santiago.

Alan Jackson is hugely popular in Brazil as a result of Brazil's own brand of Country Music-Sertanejo. Seriously go to any Alan Jackson music video on Youtube and at least a third of the comments will be in Portugese.
Following accusations of child molestation in 1993, Michael Jackson's reputation took a hit in the US. In the rest of the world, however, Jackson had a much easier time finding success in spite of the controversy thanks to other countries not necessarily caring about the allegations, allowing Jackson to maintain high levels of popularity in Europe and especially in Japan. His Japanese fame is particularly noteworthy due to it mainly stemming from Values Dissonance: not only were his child molestation charges brushed off by the Japanese public thanks to their distrust of their own judicial system (which is notoriously corrupt, with wrongful imprisonments being surprisingly common), but Jackson's quirks and eccentricities are also seen as endearing in Japanese culture rather than being frowned upon. Yuri Kageyama's essay on Jackson's popularity in the land of the rising sun outright states that Japanese culture considers the King of Pop to be "kawaii".
If YouTube comments are anything to go by, the two music videos from France-based electro house group Jakarta (the ones with a dancing baby with a mohawk) are popular among Russians. That has to do with Bridge TV, a Russian music video cable/satellite network, showing them as part of their Baby Time block.
Manchester band James have enjoyed modest success in their native UK, but they are huge in Greece. They have had a large number of hit songs, so much so that they call the country their "second home" and visit almost every year for concerts.
- The same has also happened to them in Portugal. An album will be recorded there.
Japan:
- The band and frontman David Sylvian were popular in Japan right from their outset due to their name. With their fashion sense, they directly inspired Visual Kei and Japanese New Wave. Their single "The Unconventional" was particularly popular and stayed in print in Japan for years. The band had popular concerts in Japan but were reduced to support slots in the UK, where they were frequently booed. It wasn't until their 1979 single "Life In Tokyo" that they gained any kind of popularity in the UK, and they only reached serious popularity there with their late 1981 studio album Tin Drum and the single "Ghosts". David Sylvian's friendship with Ryuichi Sakamoto, a member of the hugely popular Japanese band Yellow Magic Orchestra meant that they have collaborated on projects for over 25 years. Partly due to this fact and Sylvian's continued solo work and collaboration with other Japanese musicians, Sylvian continues to be revered in Japan, despite being thought of as an '80s musician in the UK.
- While not commercially successful in the region, with Gentlemen Take Polaroids being their only album there to crack the Top 40 (and even then it only made No. 39), the band had a substantially large cult following in Canada. In fact, their following was strong enough there that the initial US release of Rain Tree Crow consisted of re-marked Canadian imports.
Jean-Michel Jarre has a lot of British fans. In fact, on his 1997 tour, England was the only place where the audience would shout along with "Revolution, Revolutions". He is also quite popular in Poland, to the point where he held a concert in Gdańsk to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Solidarity movement, generating a Concert Film and Live Album from the show.
Remember Jentina? No? Well, apparently now Italy is the only country that does, since her debut album was released only there after the success of her singles.
Carly Rae Jepsen. Born and raised in Canada, popular worldwide after the runaway success of "Call Me Maybe", but she's widely remembered as a One-Hit Wonder nowadays. But Japan adores her, to the point where she hit the top five in the Billboard Japan Hot 100 several times and had two songs in the top 3 at one point (and one of those, "Good Time" with Owl City, was only kept out of the top spot by the Girls' Generation song "Oh!"), won two Billboard Japan awards, had a very popular viral lip dub of "Maybe" with TV personality Rola, and collaborated with Rola again on a lip dub of "I Really Like You." Not to mention, her 2015 album E•MO•TION was released in Japan two full months before her home continent of North America, and hit the top ten on the Oricon albums chart before then as well.
British soul singer-songwriter Jonathan Jeremiah has never had a charting album in his home country, but he has had success in continental Europe. His début album "A Solitary Man", reached number three in the Netherlands upon release in 2011, also seeing modest sales in Belgium and Germany.
JoBoxers, a British rock band that had an American lead singer, were very popular in the Philippines, with their big hit "Just Got Lucky" having been used in Filipino TV shows including Eat Bulaga! and Goin' Bulilit.
Journey's popularity in Southeast Asia, especially the Philippines, skyrocketed after Pinoy rock singer Arnel Pineda replaced an ill Steve Perry.
Joy Division had developed a fanbase among alternative hip-hop artists like Danny Brown and Tyler the Creator in the 2010s. One of the reasons is that many of their songs (about depression and failure) resonate with these artists, which is why Vince Staples said that "B.B. King and Ian Curtis sing about the same things".

The current popularity of French singer Patricia Kaas in Russia is as high if not higher than what she enjoyed in her heyday in France in The '80s.
Power Metal band Kamelot is one of the giants of the metal scene in Europe, standing alongside such heavy hitters as Helloween and Nightwish. The band started in Florida.
Italian darkwave band Kirlian Camera never had any success in its home country, but they did various hits in Germany and Russia.
Kaoma was a worldbeat group consisting of Brazilian and Caribbean performers that had French producers, but their song "Lambada" was a international summer dance hit in 1989.
American singer Ke, aka Kevin Grivois, while his song "Strange World" was a #1 hit on the US Billboard Dance Charts, was huge in Germany and Italy. In fact, none of his music was actually released in the States.
American R&B singer Kelis, mostly known for her Signature Song "Milkshake" stateside, is huge in the UK. This is to the point where her current label, Ninja Tune, is British.
Irish-American pop and folk group The Kelly Family are huge in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, as well as being popular in the Netherlands, Belgium, Norway, Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Despite this success, the group are unknown stateside.
In the United Kingdom, Kesha was extremely popular around Wigan, and the bordering area of Salford (basically, anywhere with a Welcome - you are now in Salford, Wigan MBC or "Welcome to Bolton" sign along the road) during her peak in global popularity. In the relatively obscure town of Southport, known only for its funfair^note, her records would sell out in the local HMV.
Algerian singer Khaled managed to get big outside of Africa once the country's instability forced him to relocate to France. He also scored a big hit in Brazil (notice the description is in Portuguese).
New York Latin pop group Kid Creole and the Coconuts were an Acclaimed Flop in their own country, but far more successful in Europe. In the UK they had three top ten singles.
While The Killers are a popular act in the US, their popularity in their home country is nowhere close to how beloved the band is in the United Kingdom; "Mr Brightside" is infamous for spending 300 weeks and counting on the Official Singles Chart, missing it on just two out of eighteen years since its initial entry in 2004 (those being 2006 and 2011). This is probably thanks to their image and style of music being much closer to British acts of the day than their American counterparts. Lady Gaga actually mistook them for a British band and listed them as one of her favorite artists from across the pond.
Kings of Leon were already very popular in the UK before they got noticed in the US, scoring nine Top 40 singles and having all of their albums peak in the Top 5 of the album chart. While they've since broken out in the US as well, "Use Somebody" remains their only real pop hit there, and the only other song of theirs most Americans recognize is its direct predecessor "Sex on Fire".
KISS lost a lot of their popularity in the US in the 1980s with their change in sound and loss of original band members, but they still had absolutely massive success overseas in countries like Australia and New Zealand where "Unmasked" had several hit singles.
For reasons unknown, Russian rock group КИТАЙ (KIT-I) (Russian for China, oddly) is gaining a large Latin American fanbase, and the comments sections of their YouTube videos are chock-filled with Spanish-speaking comments.
Swedish Lena-Maria Klingvall, an armless elite athlete and a Christian singer, is far more famous in Japan than in her home country.
In their early years after the release of their first two albums, Kraftwerk only played the occasional gig in Germany, mostly in their hometown Düsseldorf. But once Autobahn was out, their first fully-electronic album, they were booked for a huge tour — through the USA.
- Also, they inspired most British synthpop from the late 70s and early 80s. Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark wouldn't even exist without them: Andy McCluskey saw them when he was 16, and he was amazed enough to decide he'd start his own electronic band.
- Kraftwerk are also quite popular in Italy. They even performed secret shows in Italy in 1990 prior to their The Mix tour.
British soul singer Kwabs has only had minor success in his native country. But he has had more success in continental Europe, where his début single "Walk" topped the chart in Germany.

Dutch singer Natalie La Rose had a major hit in the U.S. with her debut single "Somebody", which went Top 10 on the pop charts and fared even better on urban radio, where it topped the rhythmic chart. In her native Netherlands, it only barely entered the Top 40, and was mostly ignored overall. It did even worse in other European countries, either not making the charts or barely doing so. The fact that she now lives in the U.S., is signed to an American label, and her song sounds very American overall might be the cause of this, and only time will tell if this remains.
Inverted by Lady Gaga, who was significantly more popular in Canada than her native US at the start of her career. "Just Dance", despite being released in the spring of 2008, was a major summer hit in Canada and didn't catch on in the US until the fall of that year. "Poker Face" and other further singles from The Fame also hit Canadian pop radio long before they ever scraped the US charts, and "Just Dance" closed out 2008 as #6 on the Canadian year-end chart, and it didn't hit the American year-end chart until 2009, where its only rivals were The Black Eyed Peas. Her charting singles became synchronous in both countries around the time "Bad Romance" was released, and she has been equally popular on both sides of the border since.
Dennis Lambert and his music partner Brian Potter had a big string of hits from the 60s to the 80s as songwriters ("One Tin Soldier", "Don't Pull Your Love", "Ain't No Woman Like the One I Got") and producers ("Rhinestone Cowboy", "Rock and Roll Heaven"). Lambert tried to branch out into performing, but his one and only solo album, Bags and Things, flopped in the US in 1972. After business dried up for him in the music industry, Lambert moved to Florida to sell real estate, only then learning that he was huge in the Philippines, where he then went on tour. He basically took time off from his real estate career to sing in the Philippines. They even made a documentary about it!
Canadian singer-songwriter k.d. lang became even more popular in Australia than she was in North America during the 1990s, and she continues to remain well-liked by the Australian public.
While in America and Canada, the peak of her fame came in the mid-00s and went by the time the 10s came, Avril Lavigne has still maintained a large following in Asia (particularly Japan). Her video for "Hello Kitty" was specifically made for the Japanese market. It’s also telling that after her initial recording contract ended and she switched to a master license model for her new music, she stayed behind with Sony in Japan (which operates independently from the worldwide Sony Music umbrella).
Like a lot of electronic acts, LCD Soundsystem experienced more commercial success in Europe than in the US. This was actually part of the inspiration behind their song, "North American Scum," as it was to the point where some European fans thought they were from the UK.
Led Zeppelin is considered one of the biggest, most influential bands of all time in the US. Back in the UK, they're well respected, but are seen as just one of many classic rock bands. This is largely due to their presence on classic rock radio in the US, giving them heavy exposure to each new generation. In the UK, most people would name The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Who, Queen or Oasis when asked to name a British band, before even thinking of Led Zeppelin.
Lennon & Maisy, a teenage country singing duo from Canada, are more known south of the border thanks to their roles on Nashville than in their native country, especially since country music isn't so popular in Canada. They also became unexpectedly popular in Switzerland after one of their songs appeared in a commercial over there.
50's pop singer Tommy Leonetti was almost completely unknown in his native United States. However, he became very popular in Australia, to the point that he made a song called "My City of Sydney".
Les Nubians is a nu-soul duet that enjoys some fame in the US, the UK and many other English-speaking countries, despite singing often in their mother tongue. In its homeland of France, it remains an obscure, seldom ever seen music group.
Canadian musician Matthew Lien has garnered a far bigger fanbase in China and Taiwan despite being a mostly unheard of figure in his native country and elsewhere, in part due to his charity work in those countries.
British singer Limahl, and his former band Kajagoogoo to an extent, is hugely popular in central Europe, especially Germany and Austria, and Japan. His third solo album Love Is Blind was released on a German label and was only available outside of central Europe and Japan as an import, and he's a common performer on retro music showcase TV shows in central European countries. It helps that he sang the theme to one of the most famous German-produced films of all time, The Never Ending Story (the title song managed to make it to #2 in West Germany, Austria and Italy — compared to a #4 peak in the UK and a #17 peak on the Hot 100 in the US — in spite of it not being in the German-language version of the film, which traded Giorgio Moroder's synthesizer-heavy score pieces for additional pieces by Klaus Doldinger, the film's other composer). Meanwhile, Kajagoogoo continued to have decent success in Japan after Limahl left.
Limp Bizkit was once one of the biggest rock bands in the United States, but their popularity rapidly plummeted in the mid-00s due to Nu Metal falling out of style and the release of their critically panned 2003 album Results May Vary, and they've rarely played in the U.S. since. That being said, they're still fairly popular in Europe (especially Germany and Austria) and South America. In fact, since reforming in 2009, almost all touring has been done overseas. Many non-American nu metal bands proudly cite them as their influence.
Pennsylvania's Live were one of the most popular rock bands in Australia.
In 1963, 15-year old Little Peggy March recorded "I Will Follow Him", which reached #1 on the Billboard Hot 100. She never had another Top 25 hit in the US again, but in Germany she was very popular in the 1960s and 1970s.
While quite successful in their native Britain, indie pop group London Grammar are most popular in France.
Lorde is a hometown hero in her native New Zealand, but the United States is by far her biggest market (largely due to the population of the US dwarfing New Zealand's). Her debut album Pure Heroine went platinum twice over there for sales of two million units (a rarity in the post-digital age). Her Breakthrough Hit "Royals" topped the Billboard Hot 100 for a whopping nine weeks, compared to the three weeks it spent atop the RIANZ charts. In general, Lorde has focused her more recent efforts primarily on the American market as a result of the success of "Royals" there.
- On a more local level, "Royals" became quite popular with baseball fans in Kansas City in 2014, when their baseball team, the Kansas City Royals, finally went to the World Series again for the first time since 1985. It probably helps that the title of the song was inspired by a photo Lorde saw of one of their players signing baseballs. On the other hand, around that time, at least two stations in the San Francisco Bay Area temporarily boycotted the song for the exact same reason — namely, the San Francisco Giants were playing the Royals in the World Series.

Following the controversy surrounding Erotica, Madonna's reputation and mainstream success took a hit in the US. In the rest of the world, however, Madonna had a much easier time finding success after the Erotica controversy, with other countries continuing to see her as a superstar, which allowed her to maintain high levels of popularity in Europe and led to her working with European producers and talents throughout the next decade. This was furthered after the critical and commercial failure of American Life in the US, which didn't really harm her success in Europe. When "Hung Up" was released in 2005 as the lead single for Confessions on a Dance Floor, it topped the charts all over Europe but only made it to #7 on the Hot 100 in the US. Her more recent albums have seen a number of songs that charted well in European countries but didn't do so well Stateside (for example - her 2019 album Madame X produced no Hot 100 entries but a number of its singles went Top 10 in several European countries).
Austin Mahone became this in Japan after a female comedian named Blouson Chiemi used his song "Dirty Work" as the BGM of her comedy routine. This resulted in said song becoming widely recognized in Japan and hitting #1 on the Billboard Japan Hot Overseas and #4 on the overall Billboard Japan charts, despite never even being a Top 100 song in his home.
British R&B singer Ella Mai fell into this when her Breakthrough Hit "Boo'd Up" managed to be one of the biggest hits of 2018 in the US, peaking at #5 there, while not reaching the top 50 at home in the UK. The follow-up "Trip" peaked at #11 in the US, but #47 in the UK.
Manowar and most American Traditional Metal and Power Metal bands tend to be significantly more popular in Europe and South America than in their own country.
- Manowar in particular is pretty close to reaching David Hasselhoff level of popularity in Germany, as their live DVD The Absolute Power can attest. The band is so popular all over Europe that they released a ballad, Father, which was dubbed in 14 different European languages, plus Japanese (all sung by Eric Adams himself, of course). The title of their third album, Hail to England, serves as an involuntary lampshade at this^note.
- This actually has started a meme on YouTube, where Manowar comments are filled up with "Hail from (location)." Europe is immensely common.
- Florida-based Iced Earth have a particularly large fanbase in Greece, so they've recorded two of their three (to date) live albums there, Alive in Athens and Live in Ancient Kourion.
- Helstar and Vicious Rumors are both quite big in Europe and serve as prolific touring acts and festival darlings. In the US, Helstar basically only plays shows in their hometown of Houston plus the occasional fest or one-off; Vicious Rumors, meanwhile, actually does tour the US on occasion, but it's relegated to once every couple of years. The difference in popularity is so major that two of the latter's current full-time members are European.
Spanish band Mägo de Oz is extremely popular in Costa Rica. During the tour for the realease of their album Gaia 2 La Voz Dormida they had to open a second concert in the country a day earlier.
- Mägo de Oz was also extremely popular in Mexico back in the early 2000s, their songs even getting plenty of airplay in mainstream radio stations. However, after a tour that was marred allegedly with nasty controversy, their popularity waned. They remain popular enough that they still tour the country at least once a year, though.
The Norwegian pop duo Marcus & Martinus are more loved in Sweden than in their native country, where they have a noticable Periphery Hatedom, to the point of even co-writing and singing a song for the Swedish queen's 90th birthday.
In the US, Marilyn Manson's mainstream success was short-circuited by the Columbine massacre in 1999, which brought the band under fire from Moral Guardians whose worst fears about their "evil" music seemed to have been violently confirmed.^{In reality...} 2000's Holy Wood (In the Shadow of the Valley of Death) debuted at #13 with only 117,000 copies sold, and while 2003's The Golden Age of Grotesque topped the charts, it won the dubious distinction of having the lowest opening week total for a number one-debuting studio album in the SoundScan era (only 118,000 copies). Said controversy didn't reach Europe, however, and there the band remained successful for several more years, with Holy Wood and The Golden Age of Grotesque becoming among their biggest hits.
The Mark & Clark Band, an American band fronted by identical twin singing pianists Mark and Clark Seymour, are unknown in their native land. However, their epic eight-minute 1977 single “Worn Down Piano” became a major hit and enduring pop classic in the Netherlands.
Norwegian acoustic pop singer Lene Marlin at the beginning of her career had notable success in France and especially Italy, the only place outside Norway where some of her singles were sold. Later on, she made a trip to China to promote the Taiwanese version of her album "Lost In A Moment" which included a cover of a song by popular Chinese singer Faye Wong. This move paid well and she enjoyed very good sales and several TV appearances there.
Keith Martin, while a comparatively obscure R&B balladeer back home in America, became HUGE in the Philippines for his hit "Because of You". He even lived in the Philippines for several years, collaborating with several local artists.
Ricky Martin has said Brazil is the only place they ask him about his ex-band Menudo, a Boy Band that was huge in the mid '80s in that country.
Israeli singer Boaz Mauda, winner of season 5 of Kokhav Nolad (כּוֹכָב נוֹלָד, lit. A Star Is Born, the Israeli version of American Idol), is very popular in Eastern Europe.
- This could at least partially be attributed to his appearance representing Israel at the 2008 Eurovision Song Contest, where he did indeed score with every country in Eastern Europe (but no top-3 scores: those surprisingly enough came from Finland, who gave Israel eight points, and San Marino, who gave them ten).
Mashmakhan was a Canadian rock band who had minimal success in their homeland and were a one-hit wonder in the U.S. with "As The Years Go By." However, they were much more successful in Japan, where their single sold more than 1 million copies, and their 1971 album "Family" was a hit there despite bombing everywhere else.
Italian band Matia Bazar is so popular in Russia that their website comes in Italian, English and Russian.
Alt-country band The Mavericks had only modest success in the US: while their albums sold well and they won a Grammy, none of their singles ever made Top 10 on the country charts or crossed over to pop. In Canada, "What a Crying Shame" and "Here Comes the Rain" both made Top 10, and a cover of the standard "Blue Moon" made #15 on the Canadian AC charts in 1995, while 1998's "Dance the Night Away" was a Top 5 hit in the UK and a minor hit in the Netherlands. Their albums also charted higher overall in the UK.
So far, Ava Max has been more successful in Europe than in her native US. "Sweet But Psycho" topped numerous singles charts abroad but only made it to #10 at home, and her only subsequent release to have even made the Billboard top 40 is "Kings & Queens".
Meat Loaf is fairly popular in the United States, but he's even bigger in Europe (a fact he joked about in his appearance on VH1: Storytellers). In the late 1980s he was working on rebuilding his popularity with low-key gigs in America, while he was playing in stadiums in Britain at the same time.
Chris Medina, a former American Idol contestant, had a minor hit in America with his audition song "What Are Words". He became much more popular in Scandanavia where the song became a runaway smash.
In Argentina, Megadeth has a strikingly huge popularity, more than they have in the rest of the world, the US included. To the point where they were the first to record a live album/DVD there: That One Night: Live In Buenos Aires. The quote here comes from this interview after the gig which ended as the source of the live album.
Swedish singer Meja had a couple of minor hits in her home country in the mid-90's, but became a big success in Japan. In the late 90's she managed to get hits in Europe and the United States as well, with It’s All About the Money and the Ricky Martin-duet Private Emotion, before more or less disappearing again. Except for Japan, where she still tours and releases exclusive albums.
While Men at Work were already hits in their native Australia, their success was legendary in the United States. Their debut album Business as Usual spawned two #1's, went 6x Platinum, and even kept Michael Jackson's Thriller off the top of the Billboard 200 for three months. Their sophomore record, Cargo, while not as gigantic, was also a huge success. In fact, Men at Work were a primary factor that sparked the country's obsession with Australia during The '80s.
As mentioned in the Ricky Martin example, the Puerto Rican boy band Menudo did quite well in Brazil. Their album Mania, with Portuguese covers of songs from their previous four albums, sold over one million records in Brazil.
Zig-zagged with George Michael. He was always huge in his homeland, but surprisingly enough, the album Faith, which sold over a million there, and topped the charts, would be eclipsed in sales by his two following albums and subsequent greatest hits album, and for the most part higher charting singles from said follow-ups. Meanwhile in the US, Faith topped the Billboard 200 for 12 weeks, very nearly spent a whole year in the top 10, would be certified Diamond for sales of over 10 million, and yielded 4 consecutive #1 hits (a feat shared with Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston in the same period). On the flip side, Older, his best-selling album in the UK (and also a major success in most other countries), only went single-platinum in America, with only its first two singles becoming hits and neither being anywhere near his most famous songs in that country. His lackluster stateside success in the '90s was due to the disastrous PR surrounding Listen Without Prejudice, Volume 1, which crippled his momentum, as well as the pop genre being extremely unpopular in America during the mid-'90s, when Older came out.
British singer Mika remains popular in France.
- He is also very popular in Italy, to the point he was a mentor on the Italian version of The X Factor, hosted his own TV variety show there, and co-hosted the Eurovision Song Contest 2022, held in Turin.
- He is also quite popular in Japan.
Nicki Minaj is to Trinidad and Tobago what Rihanna is to Barbados, although Minaj is a U.S. citizen and moved there much earlier in her life than Rihanna did.
While popular in her native Australia, Kylie Minogue is very popular in the United Kingdom, thanks to her role as Charlene in Neighbours as well as her early hits produced by Stock Aitken Waterman. In fact, she has scored 34 Top 10 hits in the UK in comparison to 23 Top 10 hits in her native country.
- In fact, Kylie was brought on for one of the many voice cameos for the British web series asdfmovie in its 8th episode, something that creator TomSka has lampshaded as being an unexpected surprise.
Pop/hip-hop duo MKTO have barely made a ripple in their native US, but in Australia and New Zealand, they're a pretty big deal. All their singles have reached the top twenty and achieved platinum certifications.
German pop duo Modern Talking was popular amongst foreign-music-deprived Iranians in the 90's, and the band is particularly very popular in mainland Europe & Russia.
Comedic punk band The Monks were a moderate success in their native England, but HUGE in Canada.
A totally unrelated American garage rock band called The Monks had their biggest following in Germany, where they formed in the 1960s as soldiers stationed in the country.
When Alanis Morissette released Jagged Little Pill in 1995, she had a tough time getting airplay in her home country of Canada, because she already had a past there as a Debbie Gibson-style teen-pop diva in the early '90s. In fact, Ottawa media outlets were flooded with complaints from disgusted citizens when she was given a key to the city. In the U.S., however, Jagged Little Pill is one of the greatest-selling albums of all time, as the grunge-friendly nation was more open to her, and Morissette dominated the airwaves in the mid-'90s. (Her more alternative persona was eventually embraced by Canadians as well; it just took a while.)
Even though The Smiths were never very popular in the United States outside of their cult following, Morrissey as a solo artist gained a large following among American Latinos in the nineties. Moz even lived in Los Angeles for a time, and stated once during a tour, "I wish I was born Mexican." His Latino popularity has been attributed to his crooning vocals and penchant for melodrama that is also found in traditional ranchera music. Other British alternative artists from that era, including Depeche Mode, New Order, and The Cure are popular among this audience as well for these reasons despite being mainly marketed to Anglo rock fans, which is likely why they've had strongholds of fandom in California, where there's a large Mexican-American population.
L.A.'s retro rockers Mother Tongue have been totally forgotten in the U.S., but have a solid and devoted fanbase in Germany. It's the only place outside L.A. where they still do shows.
Norwegian band Motorpsycho has quite of a cult following in Italy, for some reason.
Mozart's operas were appreciated and fêted much more in Prague than in Vienna (where he lived), which is why he always felt much more happy when he went to Prague.
Jason Mraz is popular in South Korea, so much that he's one of the few non-Korean artists to have been a musical guest on their version of Saturday Night Live, and has also performed on various other South Korean variety shows.
Mr. Big has always been (ahem) big in Japan, almost comically so. All but one of their eight live albums were recorded in Japan, their song "Shine" was used in the anime Hellsing, and their 2009 reunion was announced via press conference in Japan. Whereas other bands would usually play a few shows in Tokyo or Osaka, they've been known to play 20 dates across the country. They even have a song called "I Love You Japan (Song for Makita and Japanese Fans)". In the US, meanwhile, they're a Two-Hit Wonder, with their #1 hit, "To Be With You" (from all the way back in 1992), being seen as the last hurrah of Hair Metal, and are otherwise known for being the band with bass virtuoso Billy Sheehan. That being said, their guitarist, Paul Gilbert, at least is highly regarded in the guitar world for his technical skill.
- Todd in the Shadows discussed their Japanese success in this episode of One Hit Wonderland.
- Similar to the above, Hair Metal band "Cats in Boots"(whom Todd briefly mentioned in the Mr. Big episode) were pretty big successes in Japan (helped by two of their band members being Japanese), though unlike Mr. Big, they weren't even a One-Hit Wonder in the U.S. (according to vocalist Joel Ellis, their second album went gold in the U.S.) and as such quite a few fans of the genre aren't even aware of them. Their debut album "East Meets West" was a chart-topping seller (quite an accomplishment since that album was independently released) in Japan and their sophomore album "Kicked and Klawed" debuted at #3 in Japan and stayed there for quite some time, their success led to the band touring for two years straight. Also like Mr. Big, the band toured Japan when they reunited several years later in 2003.
British alternative rock band Muse were far more popular in France than in their homeland in the earlier days of their career, leading them to jokingly remark on the jarring effect of playing a Parisian arena one day and the back room of a London pub the next.
- They're also really huge in South Korea, and they are one of the most famous foreign rock bands there. Chances are six out of ten Koreans you talk to will know at least one of their songs. Here is video of Muse performing in Seoul. Just listen to the audience singing along with the chorus.
Kacey Musgraves is incredibly popular in Japan despite the lack of a niche country audience there. She spent a week there in May of 2018 to promote her album “Golden Hour”, went back and played a festival there that summer, then came back about eight months later and played a few concerts. “Golden Hour” even has its own Japanese special edition. It’s unheard of for an American country artist to go there at all on tour, let alone three times in the span of a year.
My Chemical Romance was, early on, more popular in the UK and other parts of Europe. Why? Well, the dark nature of the emo sound fit well with the British people's love of dark, and because their first album had better distribution across the Atlantic than in their own home country.
Contemporary R&B artist Mýa had a decent stint of popularity in her home country during the late '90s and early 2000s, but gained a surprise following in Japan, where she released at least two exclusive albums.

The new wave group Naked Eyes never charted any higher than #59 in the UK, but they scored a few big hits in North America and Oceania.
Justified in the case of ultra-dark Japanese idol group Necronomidol. They aren't very popular in Japan but started having a sizable fanbase in other countries, because their producer is American: he's interested in expanding the fanbase abroad, and knows how to do it, while usually idol units aren't marketed to other countries.
According to the overwhelming amount of YouTube comments in the Portuguese language (that sometimes mention the country) on the vast majority of her songs and the "About" page of her website, English Eurodance singer Nicki French is extremely popular in Brazil. The comments on her biggest hit Total Eclipse of the Heart are a mix of English, Spanish, and of course, Portuguese.

Ocean Colour Scene, while one of the lesser-known acts of Britpop back home, have quite a following in Korea. Videos of local bands covering their songs are not hard to find in YouTube.
Of Monsters and Men is an Icelandic band whose first album, already available in Europe, was not scheduled for an American release until early 2012. However, due to their single "Little Talks" being played on an alt-rock radio station in Philadelphia, their overseas interest has gotten to the point where for a while, everyone posting on their Facebook wall is either from Iceland or Philadelphia. The song eventually peaked at #1 on the Billboard Alternative Songs chart and #20 on the Hot 100. The band performed at many major American music festivals in 2012, all while having very minor popularity in their native Europe. The fact that all of their songs are exclusively in English might have something to do with it.
California-based rap label Official Bizness isn't really well known in the US, even in their hometown. However, they have a large following in Japan, and most of their mixtapes released there usually sell several thousand more copies than they do here.
The Offspring, though by no means small in their home territory of the US during their heyday, are disproportionately huge in Australia, still headlining festivals a decade and a half after their peak.
- After the crowd's positive response to "Spare Me the Details" at a Sydney show in 2013, Dexter Holland remarked "we can't play that one back home".
The American singer Oliver! was hugely successful in Spain, becoming even more popular there than some of their own native stars. He even recorded versions of his two most popular hits, "Good Morning Starshine" and "Jean", in the Spanish language. A contest was held to choose a Miss Jean, and the winner was flown from Spain to the United States to have a date with Oliver.
For a while, British and Irish boy bands have made little to no impact outside those two countries. Five, Take That, Boyzone, and Westlife did enjoy international success, but their popularity in other countries never eclipsed the success they experienced in their homelands (in fact, outside of Europe, Boyzone is solely known for two things about Stephen Gately - his influence on gay rights and his cover of "Bright Eyes" for the 1999 Watership Down animated series). Then came One Direction, who, thanks to social media, were able to catch on much farther and more rapidly than their predecessors. A social media campaign intended for continental Europe spread to Australia and New Zealand, then to Canada, and finally to the United States - a country that had never seen a British boy band go past one-hit wonder status. Not only were One Direction the first British boy band to make it big in America, but it eventually became obvious their American popularity eclipsed their native popularity. Most impressively, this all happened at the height of Bieber Fever, which was not showing any sign of decline at the time, so the British boy band swooping in and bringing Justin Bieber to his knees when most people expected him to hurl them back to Europe was a jaw-dropping feat.
San Diego-based novelty act Optiganally Yours, consisting of indie singer/songwriter Rob Crow and... um... Optigan-player Pea Hix, never broke out of obscurity Stateside (although they did manage to get tapped to do a song for the official Powerpuff Girls album), but became popular enough in Japan that they started touring there, had one of their songs remixed by Plus-Tech Squeeze Box (whose work you might remember from this thing), and included a bonus track on the Japanese release of their second album called "Song for Japan" (the US release got one called "Song for America").
Roy Orbison, while... kinda forgotten in the USA, was always recalled fondly in Australia and Britain. And adored in Bulgaria. He dropped by there in 1980 and got mobbed by Bulgarian fans like in The '60s!
American rock band Orson are virtually unknown in their home country but were very popular in the UK for a short time, until they split at the height of their success.
The Osmond family, while popular in the US in The '70s, had a brief bout of superstardom in the UK from 1972-74. The Osmond Brothers had five Top 5 hits in the UK in that period, compared to zero in America. Donny and Little Jimmy also scored #1 solo hits. They were so big in the UK that many British outlets coined the name "Osmondmania" to describe the phenomenon, much like Beatlemania the decade prior. The Osmond Brothers continue to play big sold out events in the UK, and in 2022 a theatrical musical about them toured the United Kingdom and Ireland.
The Netherlands were one of the first countries to embrace Gilbert O'Sullivan's music, and he even lived there for a short while. He topped the national charts twice in 1971, a year before he became known in the US (which is an example in itself).
The Outfield, a British band from the '80s, were steered towards the American market because of their sound, and were more successful there than back home.
US hip-hop duo The Outhere Brothers were far more successful in Europe. "Boom Boom Boom" was a top 10 hit in several countries and went to number one in the UK, Ireland and Germany. It peaked at #65 on the Billboard Hot 100 and was their only charting single in the US.

Brazilian band Os Paralamas do Sucesso were shocked to see that during the period that they were down in popularity, their songs were really huge in Argentina, resulting in an album with their songs in Spanish, many sold out concerts there, and a album that flopped in Brazil but was sold well with the hermanos (but the tour for that album, and resulting live record, lead to a resurgence in their homeland).
English singer-songwriter Passenger is huge in Australia, where he lived for a few years. Tellingly, his sole international hit "Let Her Go" was recorded at a studio in Sydney with Australian session musicians, and the song's music video was shot at the Factory Theatre in Marrickville near Sydney (said music video is also the most-viewed Australian YouTube video of all time as a result of this).
English reggae singer Pato Banton is bigger in Latin America. His Protest Song "Go Pato" was his most well known single, specially since the song has some parts in Spanish.
Patto, a Progressive Soul/Rock band was nothing more than a much loved cult in their native UK - but like the Van der Graaf Generator, they were huge in Italy.
Pendulum is an Australian act that is most popular in the UK, where their third album when #1 on the album charts and enjoyed the best sales.
While she's had substantial success in her home country America, P!nk has the distinction of having seventeen sold-out shows in Melbourne, Australia, a city of four million people. It made her the most successful concert act in Australian history. It's not for nothing that she recorded her live album in Sydney, complete with the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House on the cover. The website Things Bogans Like even considers her an honorary Aussie bogan, though that's not really a compliment.^note This escalated further in 2013, where she performed four concerts each in Perth and Adelaide, eight in Brisbane, twelve in Sydney, and eighteen in Melbourne. (For comparison, New York, a city with twenty times the population of Adelaide, got three concerts.)
Pink Floyd is massively successful internationally, but they have been particularly popular in several regions.
- Before they reached international success with The Dark Side of the Moon, Pink Floyd were fairly popular in France, and frequently appeared on French TV shows, toured and recorded in France. This was possibly helped by guitarist David Gilmour being fluent in French, which allowed him to do interviews in the country.
- The band was also successful in Germany, being a major influence on the Krautrock genre.
- The band was more successful in the U.S. than their prog rock peers because Gilmour's bluesy guitar style appealed more to American rock sensibilities than other bands that had sounds rooted in classical music.
- The band also had an underground popularity in the Soviet Union, and the tour for A Momentary Lapse of Reason included a series of shows in Moscow, the band's first, as the country liberalized under Mikhail Gorbachev. Pink Floyd became the first band to be played in space as cosmonauts took a cassette copy of The Delicate Sound of Thunder to the space station Mir in 1988. As prog rock continues to have a significant following in Russia, the band has remained popular there, with both Waters' and Gilmours' solo tours including stops in the country.
- The Gilmour-led band in Ukraine during the Russian invasion of 2022, for their humanitarian support with the single "Hey, Hey, Rise Up" using the cover of the patriotic song "Oh, the Red Viburnum in the Meadow" ("Ой у лузі червона калина") by Andriy Khlyvnyuk. It specifically concerns the post-Waters band only since Waters himself has embraced pro-Russian narratives about the war, meanwhile. It also helps that prog rock has remained popular in the country as it has in Russia.
The popularity of The Pixies in the UK, South Africa and Europe eclipsed their recognition in their native USA. Didn't hurt that they were signed to the influential UK label 4AD Records.
British alternative rock band Placebo, while fairly popular in the UK, are huge in France, in part because singer Brian Molko, who is of partial French ancestry and was brought up in Luxembourg, is a fluent Francophone who actively courted the French fan-base. They're also huge in Russia; fun because while the existential despair of their earlier albums is very relatable to an average Russian, and has been so since the late 90s.
Finnish Alternative Rock band Poets of the Fall have a very devoted following in their native Finland, but have also had surprising levels of success elsewhere. They produced a special Best Of Album in India, have toured a lot in Russia and of course have a North American and European fanbase that know of them from their work on Max Payne 2 and the Alan Wake games.
French rock/pop artist Michel Polnareff is already rather popular in his home country, but for the most part, he's not particularly well known around the world, with one exception. He's absolutely big in Japan, where his single "Tout, Tout Pour Ma Chérie" ended up being a best-seller and introduced Japan to the rest of his work. In particular, thanks to his fame and success in Japan, Hirohiko Araki of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure fame made an homage to him in Stardust Crusaders with major side character Jean-Pierre Polnareff, whereas Eiichiro Oda stated in interviews that the One Piece character Donquixote Doflamingo was directly designed after Michel Polnareff. In both instances, Michel Polnareff expressed nothing but pride on Twitter over having his likeness inspire two of the biggest manga series in the world.
Another case of an American soft rock Singer-Songwriter who enjoys a huge following in the Philippines is David Pomeranz. In his home country he's mostly known for writing "Tryin' to Get the Feeling Again" (the Barry Manilow hit) and "It's in Every One of Us", featured in several projects by The Muppets (and sung at Jim Henson's funeral). In the Philippines, he's a multi-Platinum selling singer.
Malaysian Rap Rock group Pop Shuvit is bigger in Japan than in Malaysia.
Although Porcupine Tree is well-known to prog fans and have at least a cult following, in the UK and the US, they're a massive, groundbreaking band in Mexico and Netherlands. Just for the record: their last year appearance in Mexico was supposed to be a one night stand in April; half the tickets sold out through the first 2 days and they ended opening three more dates. And Netherlands was the country where their live album Anesthetize, and also their last two dates of the "Fear of a Blank Planet" world tour (sold out in case you mind), were filmed. Go figure it out. As a matter of fact, this is the reaction to each and every Steven Wilson project in Mexico, and he is well aware of it.
- This could be considered a special case of "David Hasselhoff Loves Germany". Steven is a huge fan of Mexico, and he filmed his documentary "Insurgentes" (Spanish for "rebels", also the name of one of Mexico City's main avenues, but also a word of special meaning in Mexico, since this word carries a connotation of rebel heroism: they were the ones who fought the Independence War in 1810 and the Mexican Revolution in 1910) in that country, most specifically in the capital city. the man himself said a car trip through the streets of downtown Mexico City is what inspired him to make this documentary, and record his first solo album (also called "Insurgentes") the way it was recorded.
- They also seem to be significantly bigger in Poland than in the more traditional markets.
While Elvis Presley is hailed as the King of Rock the world over, his American popularity has been more controversial in recent years due to certain people accusing him of "cultural appropriation" (even if he did acknowledge the African-American rock 'n roll musicians he was inspired by) and making fun of his flamboyant showman behavior (not that the many legions of Elvis impersonators have helped). However, in Japan, he's still universally adored to this day, and flamboyant showmen like him tend to be quite successful in the Japanese music industry. It's really funny seeing Japanese Elvis Impersonators. Japanese Professional Wrestler Shinya Hashimoto became a huge Elvis fan while he was wrestling in Memphis, even going so far as to style his hair the same way.
- There are also a lot of middle-aged European men (especially British) who like Elvis so much that it is clear they want to be American. It's made especially odd by the way he never toured himself outside the US (with the exception of a few shows in Canada) and that most of his international exposure happened through the radio, his records, televised concerts, and Hollywood movies.
- North Korea's Kim Jong-il was a huge Elvis fan. Supposedly, his bouffant hairstyle, sunglasses, and jumpsuits were modeled on Vegas-era Elvis.
- Isao Sasaki, well-known and adored for singing many classic anime OP's/ED's from The '70s and The '80s, started his career as an Elvis impersonator. In fact, Sasaki's page on this very wiki calls him "Japan's Elvis".
- Former Japanese prime minister Junichiro Koizumi is well known for being a devoted Elvis fan. Particularly in the United States, after he made a high-profile visit to Graceland with President George W. Bush in 2006.
- The Secret World references this with the character of Ricky Pagan (real name Ryuichi Sagawa), a Japanese man who dresses like a '50s greaser, leads a motorcycle club, and counts Elvis as part of his "Holy Trinity" with Gaia and Amaterasu, believing that he helped lead Japan's youth out of the postwar darkness. The Dragon claim that his real father is none other than Elvis' thought-stillborn brother Aaron.
Peter, Paul and Mary: While popular in their native USA, they were always over shadowed by bigger names in folk. However they were much bigger in Japan, and were Japan's introduction to American Folk.
Power Metal in general is very popular in Japan, which perhaps isn't too surprising since it sounds pretty similar to a lot of the heavier end of J-Pop. Amaranthe in particular has a huge following (primary vocalist Elize Ryd sounds very similar to many J-Pop vocalists, albeit she sings in English), and Sabaton vocalist Joakim Broden did a guest appearance on a Babymetal album along with Alissa White-Gluz.
Big Texas band The Polyphonic Spree is a cult band by any stretch of the imagination - due to the somewhat radio unfriendly nature of their primary genre, they have never been popular in the US outside of alternative audiences and fans of media featuring their music. But in Europe, they played at the UK’s Meltdown festival alongside the likes of David Bowie, had several songs chart including their biggest hit “Light and Day,” and tour large arenas.

Detroit native Suzi Quatro was virtually unknown in America until her role in Happy Days, which landed her moderate success there during the late '70s and early '80s. In Europe, however, she was one of the biggest stars of the Glam Rock movement and one of the most successful women in rock history, with numerous top 10 singles and an enduring fanbase. In the UK in particular, she's a regular host on the BBC's Radio Two, a honor of immense prestige in that country. Most Americans are much more familiar with Joan Jett, whose work was heavily influenced by Quatro.

The Italo disco group Radiorama achieved little success in their home country of Italy, but were extremely popular in Switzerland in the mid-to-late 1980s, having scored seven top 20 singles, three of which entered the top 10.
Kansas City roots rock band The Rainmakers had one minor hit in the US, but they were (and continue to be) extremely popular in Norway.
Americans love Rammstein more than the Germans do, where they're just another metal band. Fittingly, as noted on the main page, the German version of this page is actually entitled "Americans Love Rammstein".
- Lampshaded in their song "Pussy", which contains the line "I can't get laid in Germany." The NSFW video is all about how they love sex and can basically get it anywhere in the world with beautiful women... just not in their native country.
In 1987, The Ramones decided to do their first tour around South America, with low expectations. Little they knew they would achieve such a mainstream popularity (and especially in Argentina) capable of being compared with that of The Beatles' British Invasion of the U.S. in the 1960s, further leaving a footprint in Latin America's rock music (see below) and being a unique paradox of a punk rock band with full stadiums and major companies (like Coca-Cola) sponsoring them. In 1995 in Argentina for example, they played at the Obras Sanitarias stadium... 6 NIGHTS IN A ROW. After this, they toured the country every year (starting in 1991) until the band broke up in 1996. In 1994, in the middle of a tour celebrating the band's 20th anniversary, they decided to do a gig in Argentina on May 19 (Joey Ramone's birthday). Even more, Dee Dee Ramone married an Argentine fan and lived with her in Banfield, in the southern suburbs of Buenos Aires. One of the band's final non-festival performances (before they accepted appearing in Lollapalooza) was at the River Plate football stadium, which has a capacity for 70,000... You can see in this video filmed from inside the band's car the extent of Argentina's passion for the Ramones, and here you can search how well did in sales the Ramones albums in Argentina. Also, ex-band members Marky Ramone and CJ Ramone tour Argentina (and other South American countries) every year with their current bands.
- After their show in 1987, the Ramones inadvertently gave birth to a new rise of Argentine punk rock bands like Attaque 77, Flema, 2 Minutos, El Otro Yo and Expulsados along with others, which within a few years would become mainstream in other Latin American countries (especially Mexico) and further would give birth to Latin America's punk rock scene.
There used to be a time when if you wanted to break the ice with a teenage girl from Mexico, all you had to do was talking about The Rasmus, a Finnish band. Yes, they have success in Europe, but it doesn't even compare to the number of albums and concert tickets sold in Mexico. This Finnish band was so big over there, they actually have a TV special in Mexico and consistently performed in Mexico to sold-out crowds in Mexico City, Guadalajara, Monterrey, Puebla and Tijuana during most of the 2004-2010 years.
Johnnie Ray is one of the earliest notable examples of this. In the United States, he was a teen heartthrob in the Frank Sinatra tradition who briefly dominated the pop charts in 1952, but he mostly achieved only marginal chart success after that (except for one big hit in 1956, "Walkin' in the Rain"), his legacy getting almost completely overshadowed by Elvis Presley. In Britain and Australia, by contrast, his hit-making career was more extensive; he continued to top the charts even as the rock and roll era truly kicked off. Even after his commercial relevance waned, he remained a pretty iconic figure overseas and continued to perform at major venues through the rest of his life. Today, he's much more credited in the UK and Australia than he is in America for his influence on the direction of popular music and bridging the gap between black and white audiences. His iconic status in the UK is exemplified by the use of his name in the opening lyric of Dexys Midnight Runners' "Come on Eileen" (he's also mentioned in the first verse of Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire", but that was an American-based reference).
According to the description on their YouTube channel, Japanese alternative idol girl group RAY's first album went straight to number 1 on Apple Music in Finland, Poland, the Philippines and Slovenia of all places.
Susan Raye, a protégé of Buck Owens, had some Country Music success in The '70s. While it wasn't her biggest hit on the Country chart, her 1971 single "L.A. International Airport" got enough crossover attention to reach #54 on the Billboard Hot 100. But the song was a #1 hit in New Zealand, and also huge in Australia (peaking at #2).
Emo band Red Jumpsuit Apparatus seem to have a massive following in The Philippines, often on Facebook you can see Filipino fans begging RJA to tour there again.
One of the more dramatic examples is Dean Reed. A would-be late 50s teen idol, his records bombed in the US but became hits in South America. He relocated there and got involved in socialist politics, which led him to start releasing material in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. He became massively popular in the Eastern Bloc, as a singer and movie star, leading to the nickname "The Red Elvis". His popularity eventually waned, but his mysterious 1986 death (probably suicide, but that hasn't stopped fans from speculating that he was murdered by the CIA, KGB or the East German Stasi) sealed his status as a cult figure.
During a time in which his fellow bluesmen peers — even artists such as Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters, and Little Walter — still had a predominantly black audience, Jimmy Reed has already managed to achieve a significant white audience.
Jim Reeves had some popularity in the US during the The '50s and The '60s but became extremely popular in South Africa, Britain, Ireland, Norway, India and Sri Lanka. In South Africa he was popular enough to star in a locally-made movie called Kimberly Jim and went on to record Afrikaans folk songs. Long after his death in a 1964 plane crash he's still remarkably popular in many of the aforementioned countries. In India and Sri Lanka his Christmas Carol albums are perennial favorites while a 'Best of' album reached No. 7 on the UK album charts as recently as 2009, while any modern American who doesn't happen to be a fan of classic Country Music would have no clue who you were talking about if you said "Jim Reeves".
While merely a cult classic in his hometown of Manchester, Vini Reilly of The Durutti Column is big in Portugal.
In the sixties, a rock band called The Renegades was formed in Birmingham. They remained obscure in Britain (probably because there was a million other Beatles clones around at the time), but gained notable success in Finland and later in Italy.
Kirsten Dodgen, Kyra Aoke, Bianca and Maddison Barnett from the ReQuest Dance Crew in New Zealand (better known for being in the video for Justin Bieber "Sorry", a Shallow Parody of Los Del Rio's 1995 hit "Macarena") are well-known over there, but in the United Kingdom they have a bigger following than they do in New Zealand, so much so that Kirsten Dodgen is a de facto celebrity there (especially in the Metropolitan Borough of Wigan and the towns of Ormskirk, Southport and Formby in bordering Merseyside and West Lancashire; for some reason). In fact, Kirsten's social media pages have more British followers than New Zealanders!
British rock 'n' roller Cliff Richard was a big star in his home country up until the rise of Merseybeat, but he remained popular in several Asian markets, including Japan and the Philippines, despite Beatlemania taking over the world from 1964 to 1970. And while he enjoyed a late-career comeback (and finally became a recognizable name in the U.S.) in the mid-late '70s with songs like "Devil Woman", "We Don't Talk Anymore", and (with Olivia Newton-John) "Suddenly", Filipinos remember him mainly for the melancholic, saccharine 1980s ballad "Ocean Deep".
Lionel Richie, of all people, is particularly huge in Libya, possibly because he kind of looks like Muammar Gaddafi.
- He's also big in Iraq.
Josh Ritter had a huge following in Ireland too several albums ahead of his breakthrough with "The Historical Conquest of".
American Hard Rock/Blues Rock band Rival Sons are almost completely unheard of back home (with just one top 20 Mainstream Rock hit), but have four Top 5 hits on Canada's rock charts, including two #1s. Also, their albums have charted fairly high in Europe, while barely charting on the Billboard 200.
RNG was a Euro-rap group consisting of two Dutchmen who had German producers and were most successful in Poland; their second and final album was released exclusively in that country after the Euro-rap fad had ended elsewhere. Jay Delano's solo career seems to continue the trend.
The French space rock band Rockets have been more popular in Italy and later Russia. According to Discogs, most albums after 1980 didn't get released by a French label.
American musician (Sixto Diaz) Rodriguez's story might be the strongest occurrence of this trope. He has released two unsuccessful albums in the early 70's before he quit music^note. Only in 1998, while working on a building site, he came to know that he was a big star in South Africa all along. Rodriguez's fame was amongst the older crowd who remembered him from the 70s. His popularity was revived in the late 1990s when his song "Sugar Man" was covered by a well known South African folk-rock band called Just Ginger (later changed to Just Jinger when the band moved to the USA). A documentary film was made about him, Searching for Sugar Man.
In Argentina, The Rolling Stones. Yes, they are legends of rock everywhere, but in Argentina, there is basically a subculture: "rolingas", heavily based in working and lower classes, with its own fashion and musical genre, which they themselves never wore. When they were playing a few arenas by city in the mid nineties, they'd play to about 70,000 people each night.
One of the bigger cases of this trope has to be with the French singer Gauthier Roubichou. In his home country France he is only known because he participated in (la) Star Académie (the French version of American Idol), but he failed to make any lasting impression there whatsoever. He later got airplay on Chinese radio and exported a disc in China and his song became a massive hit there. He ended up being chosen by French consultants in Shanghaï to organize all the musical programming in the French pavillion during the Universal Expo in China. An event which for the Chinese is about as important as the Olympic Games.
British pop singer-songwriter Marlon Roudette, while mostly unknown in his homeland, is very popular in Germany. His début solo single "New Age" received heavy airplay on VIVA, and topped the German charts for eight consecutive weeks!
Roxette were universally popular, but the countries that loved them the most aside from their native Sweden were the United States and Latin America. "The Look" was a surprise smash hit in the U.S. after being introduced to American radio by a Minneapolis DJ, and a live recording of "It Must Have Been Love" credits the backing vocals to "40,000 Chilean fans".
The Runaways enjoyed runaway success in Japan, to the point where they recorded their live album there. In America, they're known mainly for being Joan Jett's (or Lita Ford's) old band. Only recently has the biopic restored American pop-cultural awareness of them.
British pop singer Barry Ryan, best known for his 1968 song "Eloise", was popular in Germany and France.

SA-SL

Swedish Power Metal band Sabaton:
- The band carved a huge following in Poland due to their song "40:1", after a fan-made music video got a few gazillion hits on YouTube before being Screwed by the Lawyers. Thanks to it, they've found their way into mainstream news and done concerts in museums, even being asked to play it in the city of Gdańsk for the Polish Independence Day in 2008. It's not for nothing that they recorded their first concert DVD there.
- They tend to repeat the success of "40:1" whenever they pick relatively obscure but locally well-known war stories to base songs on: "Talvisota", "White Death", and "Soldier of 3 Armies" for Finland (all about the Winter War), "Smoking Snakes" for Brazil (Brazilian Army bands have covered it), "Last Dying Breath" in Serbia, "Shiroyama" in Japan...
- The band is also very popular in the Czech Republic ("Aces in Exile" and "Far from the Fame" both feature Czechoslovak exiles fighting in World War II). They're so popular that the national singing contest Český slavík (of similar profile in-country to the Grammys in the United States) had to do an Obvious Rule Patch to exclude foreign artists after vocalist Joakim Brodén came in fifth place in 2016 (he's half-Czech on his mother's side and has dual citizenship).
There's a Canadian Progressive Rock band named Saga, which almost nobody has heard of save the single "On the Loose" from their 1983 album Worlds Apart. This isn't the case in Puerto Rico, where the band is so popular they even were given the keys to the city by the mayor of San Juan. They're also still very big in Germany. Granted, they have also enjoyed modest success in their home country, but they were overshadowed in the local and worldwide prog rock scene by their contemporaries, a simple rock trio who were later known as Rush.
Pop rock/funk rock band Saint Motel enjoy moderate success in their native United States, but have become an overnight success in Europe, especially Italy, so much so they performed at the 2015 Sanremo Music Festival. Their Signature Song, "My Type", was even certified platinum there.
Australian punk band The Saints were practically ignored in their home country and had to go to Britain to get any recognition.
According to YouTube comments, Italian comedian Francesco Salvi's novelty songs gained huge airplay in Puerto Rico between the 80s and the 90s. Very strange since he never made any attempt to pander to audiences abroad.
Guitarist Joey Santiago of The Pixies. Born in the Philippines to Filipino parents, he moved to New York as a boy when then-president Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law. Despite that, they have yet to perform in the country, and mostly have a cult following among Filipinos.
Savage Garden were met with more success in the United States than their native Australia (take note that Savage Garden were fairly popular at home too). Their songs often charted within the top 20 or top 10 (e.g. "Truly Madly Deeply", "I Knew I Loved You" and "I Want You"), and the Affirmation World Tour included a number of dates in North America.
Savatage met with more success in Europe and Japan then in the United States. Nearly all their special release albums were released outside the US.
American musician Scatman John wasn't particularly popular in his home country (at least prior to his death), but enjoyed huge success in several European countries and especially in Japan (which was unusual for a foreign musician). Just how popular was he in Japan? Not only did they sell dolls of him and have him on phone cards, they also made a parody of him Ultraman with him wearing Scatman John's hat and mustache.
Fictional bunny character Schnuffel (Snuggle Bunny), a creation of Germany-based Jamster/Jamba, is still popular in Germany, but is also popular in the United States, Canada, Russia and France.
- His popularity extends also to Lithuania, Greece, Hungary (due to heavily Woolseyised lyrics) and Norway ("Kuschel Song" went #6 there and it's about the only country to get the English version of "Winderwunderland").
The New York-based electropop band Scissor Sisters were a cult act in the United States, but were huge stars in the UK, with several #1 albums and several hit singles, to the point that only three of their eleven singles have even been released as such stateside. Front woman Anna Matronic has since forged a second career as a BBC radio presenter on the back of the band's success.
- They even had a pair of Irish murderess sisters named after them. The women in question killed their mother's Kenyan boyfriend, sliced up his body (but not with scissors) and hid the pieces. His head was never recovered. The band were horrified by the association (which is a reference to tribadism).
While not as famous as they used to be, Scorpions still retain a huge fan base in Greece possibly greater than the one in their home country Germany. This is why they do at least one concert every year in Greece, including their MTV Unplugged album.
- They've made a name for themselves also in the United States ("Rock You Like a Hurricane" remains a staple of active rock and classic rock radio stations in the States nearly 30 years after it's release), Brazil (where their power ballads were major hits in the 80s-to-early-90s), France (where the "Still Loving You" single was popular enough to cause a rise in births), Russia (because they were one of the first bands to play there while it still was part of the USSR, thus helping in a way with their political opening - "Wind of Change" is a memoir of the experience) and Japan (because well, the Japanese love hard rock and metal - their first live recording, Tokyo Tapes, is rather self-demonstrating).
- Also quite big in the Philippines. But unlike in other parts of the world, where hard rockers like "Rock You Like a Hurricane" are among their most recognizable, it's exclusively the Scorps' power ballads Filipino fans go for — "Still Loving You," "Always Somewhere," and "Winds of Change," to name a few.
Calum Scott, an X Factor alumnus in the UK, would be a star also in the US as well with his cover of the Robyn song "Dancing on My Own", which became a sporting anthem in the 2020s. The song would be first noticed as an anthem in Boston, where the Red Sox used it in their postseason in 2021. However in 2022 it became the win song of the Philadelphia Phillies - which included Kyle Schwaber, formerly of the Red Sox when that song was first adopted, as part of their roster, and the popularity grew from there, the song being used in their recent postseason appearances and has become an anthem of sorts for the team.
Seether, while fairly popular at home in South Africa, are one of the biggest modern Hard Rock bands over in the United States where they've scored over fifteen Top 10 hits on the US rock charts.
Brazilian thrash metal band Sepultura tours ten American cities for each Brazilian one (note that Sepultura is fairly popular in its homeland and the rest of Latin America).
Iranian musician Shahram Shabpareh is famous in Italy, of all places, for his song "Pariya", which spawned an internet meme. It's popular among Italians to listen to that song on January 8th. Outside of Italy and Iran, Pariya is much more obscure, and if it's known, it mostly as The Shopkeeper's Theme.
British pop singer Ireen Sheer is unknown in her home country. But she is very popular in Germany, where she has lived since 1973.
Shiv-r have been much more successful in Europe (especially Germany)) than in their home country, Australia.
Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack are still widely popular in Japan despite their fandom in English-speaking countries fading down to people who remember them as classic. Bookstores in Japan seem to contain more Rat Pack biographies than actual Japanese books and you can't walk by a karaoke bar without hearing "My Way".
- In the Philippines, My Way has been so treasured that people have been killed for singing it incorrectly at karaoke bars. We're NOT making this up.
Nancy Sinatra was successful in Europe and Japan and not in the US initially, until her big hit "These Boots Are Made For Walking" that is.
Skrape's debut album New Killer America got lost in the American Nu Metal shuffle when it was released in 2001. Yet in Japan, it somehow managed to become the twelfth highest selling album of that year. This was perhaps due to its bizarre artwork, which simply features a close up photo of a toe, something that could have caught the attention of the notoriously eccentric Japanese.
Shania Twain is popular in Brazil, with one of her songs being used in a Brazilian TV show.
Romanian singer Alexandra Stan is basically a One-Hit Wonder worldwide with "Mr. Saxobeat". Yet some of her songs got some airplay elsewhere in Europe ("Lemonade" was certified gold in Italy), and she also saw success in Japan, helped by one song heavily inspired by J-pop.

SM-SZ

Smile.dk's Eurodance music already saw a modicum of success in their home country of Sweden, but it saw even greater success in Japan. They were so beloved there, that their music was frequently licensed for DanceDanceRevolution, where their song "Butterfly" ended up being seen as the franchise's Signature Song.
- This knowledge of them through DDR resulted in another surge of popularity for Smile.dk; this time in America. From the usage of their song "Mr. Wonderful", it was paired alongside a scene from the Invader Zim episode "Attack of the Saucer Morons" where GIR is seen dancing at a rave with a bunch of goth girls. This not only led to Smile.dk becoming more popular in the U.S. thanks to Memetic Mutation, but also particularly in the Goth subculture as GIR's signature song, because goths love GIR.
Before becoming a Pinoy Rock legend with the Juan Dela Cruz Band, Joey "Pepe" Smith was, for a couple years, big in Japan with two Japanese bandmates. His then-love for amphetamines gave him the nickname "Speed" as the singer/drummer of hard rock power trio Speed, Glue, and Shinki.
Sam Smith, although big in the U.K., tends to get stuck in Ed Sheeran's shadow. In the U.S. though, while Sheeran is still the bigger name, it's a much closer contest. However, Sheeran has widened the gap in recent years.
Vermont-based indie-pop band The Smittens are popular enough in Europe in general and the UK in particular that their albums are published by a London-based label and they recently (at this writing) returned from a two-month tour. Within the U.S. they're barely known outside the local Burlington scene.
British pop rock band Smokie had modest success in their home country, but are even bigger in Germany, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Russia and South Africa.
Alvaro Soler is a Spaniard musician whose genre is Latin pop. However, the vast majority of comments on his YouTube videos are in Polish and Italian (not to say that Spanish comments don't exist).
Sopor Aeternus, German gothic/darkwave band, has a huge following in Latin America, to the point where many Youtube videos of the band's songs have comments only in Spanish. They have a sizable following in Russia and Poland as well.
American composer John Philip Sousa has a following in Great Britain, unsurprisingly because of "The Liberty Bell" march being used as the theme song for Monty Python's Flying Circus. The same march is also used by the Canadian Forces Public Affairs Branch.
The French space disco group Space has massive popularity in Russia since the Soviet years. Most comments in a cat version of their hit "Magic Fly" are in Russian. Also, the original song was a huge hit in the U.K. in The '70s.
Sparklehorse wasn't big anywhere, but bigger in the UK than the US.
While having a small cult following in their native U.S., Sparks was greeted with success mirroring Beatlemania in England when their third album, Kimono My House, was released in 1974.
American acoustic/pop rock band, Stephen Speaks, is virtually unknown in their home country but their two songs, "Passenger Seat" and "Out of My League", were radio hits in the Philippines back in the early 2000's. Their debut album, "No More Doubt", became certified platinum by Warner Music Philippines in one week.
Country singer Billie Jo Spears was modestly successful on the country charts in the US, but had a bout of major pop stardom in the UK.
Split Enz are considered legends in their native New Zealand and also Australia while being nearly not as well-known anywhere else, although unlike most beloved Australasian bands unknown overseas, they weren't entirely unheard of outside of the region; their biggest market outside of Australia/NZ wound up being Canada, where their 1980 breakthrough album True Colours sold roughly 200,000 copies.
Rick Springfield was extremely popular in the US in the 80s as opposed to lower reception in his native Australia.
80s Australian ska/punk band Spy vs Spy were big in Brazil, where they were marketed as surf rock.
Frank Stallone (rock musician and brother of Sylvester Stallone) developed a sizeable following in Australia after Hamish and Andy discovered his song "Far From Over", became obsessed with his work, and talked about him for weeks on their radio show. They eventually made contat, flew him and his band out, and he performed in front of a packed crowd after tickets sold out in a matter of minutes.
The 1960s/'70s blues-rock band Steamhammer, from England, was much more popular in Germany than anywhere else, to the point that the only CD reissues of their albums were from German record companies for many years, and they got a Wikipedia article in German before one in any other language.
Steel Panther are considered a novelty act in their native US, where they usually have to tour with more known bands to fill up an arena (though they have a very strong cult following there). However overseas in Europe they can sell out five and ten-thousand seat arenas as the headliner and draw 20,000 at a festival stage. They're even bigger in Australia where All You Can Eat peaked at #2 on the charts, and would have gone to number one had native sons INXS not released a greatest hits album that week.
Lindsey Stirling's self-titled album peaked at number 79 in the US but hit the top ten in several European countries.
American R&B band The Stylistics managed to be more popular in the UK. It inspired Manchester band Simply Red to do a cover of the Stylistics' biggest hit, "You Make Me Feel Brand New".
While not unknowns in their native UK, Supertramp was much more successful in North America, particularly in Canada, to the point that many people think they were Canadian.
Alternative rock musician Matthew Sweet is not well-remembered in the United States, and most people can only name the song of his ("Girlfriend") that appeared in Guitar Hero II. He's positively huge in Japan (possibly because he licensed two anime, Urusei Yatsura and Space Adventure Cobra, to make a Fan Vid for two of his own songs^note), and has even had a couple of his own one-shot Manga.
British Sophisti-Pop outfit Swing Out Sister are much more popular in Japan. UK radio still plays their old (late 80s / early 90s) hits, but most Brits would be astonished to learn that they're still going.

Connie Talbot of Britain's Got Talent fame has a huge following in Asian countries such as Hong Kong, Taiwan, the Philippines and Indonesia. Her 2012 album Beautiful World went to #1 in Taiwan.
Billy Talent is one of the largest Punk and Rock bands in Europe, but it's not that well-known in their home-country of Canada, and even less so in the USA, much to the dismay of any USA fan.
The Russian band t.A.T.u. is very popular in South America and Japan. Heck, somebody even parodied them in a Japanese TV show!.
They Might Be Giants have a generally decent following in their homeland of America, but they were (at least early on) much more warmly received at shows in the United Kingdom and Japan during overseas tours. They also achieved a Top 10 hit in the UK ("Birdhouse in Your Soul") while never coming anywhere close to a mainstream hit single in the US.
Throwing Muses have been bigger in the UK than the US for most of their career. The band had difficulty getting popular in America - even on the college rock scene - because they came out of Rhode Island, which wasn't exactly a hot-bed of new music in the 1980s. In Britian however, they became the first American band to ever be signed to the vaunted indie label 4AD Records. All of their albums since Hunkpapa (1989) have charted in the UK, with the exception of Purgatory/Paradise (2013). While that one may have been a case of it being too long between albums and changing tastes in rock music, it may also have been disqualified because it was released as a book/CD combo.
While not as famous as they used to be, TLC still retain a huge fan base in Japan, possibly greater than the one in their native United States. 3D was a smash hit there (being certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of Japan (RIAJ) for 200,000 copies sold) and TLC's first recording as a duo (following Left Eye's death) was in a Japan-only Charity Motivation Song entitled "VOICE OF LOVE POSSE".
Canadian Hi-NRG act Trans-X were very popular in Mexico and Latin America, to the point founder Pascal Languirand relocated to Mexico and reformed the group in The New '10s with Mexican musicians. Nearly every upload of their songs on YouTube have many Spanish-language comments.
1960s teen idol Johnny Tillotson has maintained a big following in Australia despite being long-forgotten in his native U.S.
Devin Townsend isn't that well known in his native Canada outside of his time fronting Strapping Young Lad, but he's well loved in Europe, regularly performing at big name festivals. The UK in particular absolutely loves him, seeing as how all but one of his live albums have been recorded there (one of which at the world famous Royal Albert Hall). His 2016 album Transcendence even hit the Top 30 there which, for a heavy metal artist in this day and age, is pretty impressive.
Tina Turner:
- She was a legend all around the world, but she was incredibly popular in Australia. She starred as Aunty Entity in the third Mad Max film, Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, and sang its ending theme "We Don't Need Another Hero". However, it's her 1973 song "Nutbush City Limits" which holds a special place in the Australian people's hearts. In the 70's, a line dance was developed based on the song and it has become a staple of Australian culture. Kids are taught the Nutbush at school and it's regularly played at wedding receptions and other social functions across the country, not unlike the Electric Slide in the US. Many Aussies have joked that learning and demonstrating the Nutbush should be required for immigrants seeking Australian citizenship, because that's how much the song and dance have become ingrained in the culture. After her death in 2023, nearly 6 thousand Australians held a mass dance to the song in her honor at the Australian music festival, the Big Red Bash.
- Turner also had a bigger fanbase in Europe than in her home country of the U.S. and relinquished her citizenship to move to Switzerland later in her life. She herself stated in a 1997 interview that she was "as big as Madonna in Europe [...] as big as - in some places, as The Rolling Stones".

A Japanese emo-punk band, Uplift Spice, (now known as The Mus Mus) isn't too terribly popular (if Oricon charts are to go by) in their home country. In France though, they are big, really big. They had a lot of airtime on the channel Nolife, which broadcast J-music and anime. Thanks to that, they did a lot of concerts in France and nearly every video on YouTube is filled by French-language comments. One song in particular, "Kanojo", is usually ripped straight out of Nolife recordings. Another of their songs, "Omegarhythm", is particularly popular with American fans, thanks to a video by Finnish animator Benedique, involving the character Kobeni Higashiyama from Chainsaw Man.

One of the more bizarre examples is the story of the album Pawn Hearts, recorded in 1971 by the UK progressive rock group Van der Graaf Generator. While its often dark and avant-garde nature kept it obscure in the UK and US, it proved to be an unlikely hit in Italy, of all places, where it occupied the number one spot on the album charts for 12 weeks. Bandleader Peter Hammill has since remarked that its "operatic and dramatic" music "chimed with the scene in Italy at the time".
Thanks to Nirvana covering them, Scottish band The Vaselines were posthumously a cult success in the USA while being mostly forgotten in their homeland. A compilation was released on Sub Pop in the USA but for a long time none of their music was available in the UK.
The American instrumental surf-rock group The Ventures, while quite popular in the early 1960s, had their US popularity decline with the British Invasion and the rise of psychedelic rock. In Japan, however, they remained a massive success, releasing dozens of Japan-exclusive albums and becoming one of the top-selling acts of all time.
Russian singer Vitas, (in)famous for his incredibly high vocal range, has sold millions of records in China and is largely forgotten in Russia itself.
Philadelphia-born Dark Wave artist Void Vision (Shari "Vari" Wallin) is much better known in Europe, particularly Germany, where her record label is based.

Japanese Folk Rock group Wagakki Band is well-renowned and very popular in their home country already, but they are quickly gaining immense popularity worldwide too. If the comments on the Avex youtube channel are anything to go by, many of their fans are from English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese-speaking countries just to name a few. This is in no doubt due to their exotic musical style, which combines traditional Japanese instruments (specifically the Wadaiko, Shamisen, Koto, and Shakuhachi) with western-style rock elements (guitars and drums). The fusion of music styles topped with lead singer Yuuko Suzuhana's powerful vocals, and a very vibrant kabuki-inspired image makes their quick rise to success not the least bit surprising. Indeed, the band’s first release after signing to Universal, the EP React, made appearances on several different countries’ iTunes charts the week it was released, and one of the songs on the EP, “Ignite,” is their first to contain English lyrics.
Tom Waits is apparently popular in Norway, if Kaizers Orchestra is any indication.
1980s new wave group Wang Chung were only moderately successful in their native UK, and are considered a One-Hit Wonder there for the fondly remembered #21 hit "Dance Hall Days" from 1984. Their career in America was a much different story, as "Dance Hall Days" was one of their six top 40 hits there, including the massive #2 smash "Everybody Have Fun Tonight", which they are most known for in that country. At the height of their American popularity, they were personally chosen by film director William Friedkin to compose the score for his film To Live and Die in L.A.. Back in the UK, "Everybody" only made it #76, and that was their highest charting single after "Dance Hall Days" there.
Only one of the American rock band We Are Scientists' songs has ever reached chart status in the USA (and it was on the Modern Rock chart). The band do almost all their touring in the UK, and their material is released in the UK many months before the USA.
Boy Band Westlife are regarded as hometown heroes in their native Ireland, but the United Kingdom is by far their biggest market, where they are certified as having 24 million combined sales of their material alone.
- They also have large fan bases in some countries in Asia, including China, Indonesia, Philippines and Vietnam.
Wendy & Lisa, formerly of Prince and the Revolution, released three albums and a few singles from them between 1987-1990. All of them practically tanked on the US charts but got moderate success on the UK charts.
In the early '90s, grunge had ensured that nobody cared much about Hair Metal band White Lion in the U.S. But they remained relevant in the Philippines, as their third album, Mane Attraction, came with two power ballads ("You're All I Need" and "Till Death Do Us Part") that appealed to the Filipino fan's love for the sentimental. The songs continued enjoying a lot of airplay despite the fact White Lion disbanded soon after Mane Attraction's release!
Anglo-Kenyan singer-songwriter Roger Whittaker is quite popular in Germany, and remained popular there long after he was forgotten in the Anglosphere.
Children's group The Wiggles are a perennial favorite in their native Australia, but they were huge in the United States in the early-to-mid-2000s, thanks in part to their shows airing on Playhouse Disney and their direct-to-video productions being distributed in the States by Lyrick Studios of Barney & Friends fame.
While Kim Wilde is certainly not a lightweight hitmaker in her native UK, she's even huger in Germany and Switzerland, where she is arguably the most successful female pop singer of the 1980s next to Madonna. Not only have her albums regularly sold better in those countries than in the UK, but several of her singles that flopped domestically became massive hits in the German and Swiss markets. For example, "The Second Time", the leadoff single from her fourth studio LP Teases & Dares, barely scraped the top 30 of the UK Singles Chart but was a top 10 hit in Germany and Switzerland. Songs like "Cambodia", "Dancing in the Dark", "Hey Mister Heartache", and "It's Here" also did much better in those territories than at home. Even throughout the 21st century, Wilde's albums have continued to chart pretty well abroad and she even scored a couple of minor hits with "You Came 2006" and "Lights Down Low", not to mention a guest appearance on Nena's 2003 smash "Anyplace, Anywhere, Anytime".
The late Amy Winehouse became popular in both her native UK and stateside, but she also has popularity in many Latino cultures, especially in South America. This may be due to her live performances she did in the late 2000s in Brazil. She also has her signature make-up style, which was inspired by Latina culture she observed while visiting Miami to record, her signature beehive hairdo, and her spunky/soulful attitude when she sings her songs.
Charlie Winston is an indie folk singer who is virtually unknown in his native UK. But he is more well known in mainland Europe, particularly in France, where he had a number one single and album.
British singer-guitarist Steve Winwood maintained a loyal following at home from his days in Traffic and Blind Faith, but was a much bigger star in the US, where both "Higher Love" and "Roll With It" reached #1 and four other songs hit the top 10.
Worlds Apart were a five-piece pop group who struggled to be as popular as other groups such as Take That (Band) in their native United Kingdom. But in 1995, they became a trio and became massively popular in France, where they had four top ten singles and one number one album.

X-Z

YOASOBI, from Japan, is very popular in Indonesia.
Yohio, a rock star from Sweden, is very popular in Japan, largely because of his Bishōnen appearance.
The Youngblood Brass Band, which is a fusion of a brass band and Rap, is much more popular over in Europe, constantly touring there. They only return to the US every now and then to do a show in their hometown of Madison, Wisconsin.
Frank Zappa: He had some success in the United States during his lifetime, but he was a cultural icon in Europe, especially in Eastern Europe, where his music was seen as rebellious and subversive during the years of the Iron Curtain. When Zappa traveled to Czechoslovakia in 1989 at the invitation of President Václav Havel he was met with a huge welcome from the crowd, almost hailed as a hero. Zappa himself felt so perplexed that he compared it to feeling like he was in the The Twilight Zone.
German DJ Zedd's biggest following by far is in the United States, where he's one of the biggest DJs in that country. In his native Germany, he's seen as just another DJ. For comparison, his debut album Clarity made the Top 40 in the United States and the title track, his Signature Song, was a Top 10 smash. Back in Germany, neither charted. His second album True Colors went all the way to #4 stateside, but in Germany it barely made the Top 50.

Genres

Believe it or not, a lot of people from Caribbean countries like old '50s American pop songs that are mostly popular among old baby boomers in the U.S., mainly because of the popularity of waltz dancing. Also popular there is country music from the '60s and '70s, which often shocks people since most Caribbean countries are majority black. This is explained as being because the only American music imported into those countries during that time period was country music, and West Indians were unaware of the cultural associations that country music has in the States. This NPR article discusses how, at a reggae/dancehall event in Jamaica, a Kenny Rogers song starts playing and everyone goes crazy.
- Curtis Mayfield's old band The Impressions were hugely popular and influential in Jamaica from the get-go, whilst it took until Mayfield's solo career for him to receive the same amount of popularity elsewhere. Part of the reason is that they continued a tradition of harmony groups that Jamaicans had loved since the doo-wop era of the late 50s, and they had religious influences, appealing to the strongly Christian country. The popularity of The Impressions there is most obviously shown by Bob Marley's "One Love (People Get Ready)", a song so widely associated with him and Jamaica generally that most outside the country don't realise it's an Impressions cover.
- Ska developed out of Jamaicans imitating a very specific type of American Rhythm And Blues that was popular after Rock & Roll but faded from popularity with beat groups, characterised by an insistent rhythm. The aforementioned Fats Domino's 1959 hit "Be My Guest" basically has all the ingredients of ska in place, but is also unquestionably a New Orleans shuffle.
This trope applies for many American indie rock bands, since most European singles charts are much more tolerant of the genre than the US' Billboard Hot 100. Gossip and Orson are virtually unknown in their home country outside of fans of the alternative rock genre, but they're both famous throughout Europe.
Southeast Asian countries (more specifically, the Philippines and Indonesia) are a hotbed for balladeers (and sometimes dance/R&B singers) experiencing massive success away from home.
- The countries have become notorious for becoming the final refuge of many otherwise-forgotten international English-language pop stars whose heyday was in the '70s to '90s, specifically those whose forte are really sappy love songs, or what Filipinos (a majority of whom are diehard romantics) call Senti (as in, "Sentimental" music); most notably Danish band Michael Learns to Rock, Aussie-Brit duo Air Supply, American singers David Pomeranz and Boyz II Men, and many others...
By the 1960s, blues music had faded almost into obscurity in the USA. In the UK and parts of continental Europe, however, it began to gain a cult following. Old American blues musicians actually started to tour overseas.
The British Invasion as a whole is an example of this trope going full-circle. It started with British fans of Rock & Roll, blues, and R&B — at the time, all seen as fundamentally American music genres with deep roots in the South — who decided to start their own bands playing in that style... and went on to enjoy a level of transatlantic success that profoundly altered rock music's relationship with American culture, transforming it into a truly global genre of music as opposed to a specifically American one while bringing their own innovations that would inspire their American compatriots. Today, every corner of the world has its own rock scenes, all playing a form of music that originated in the late 1940s as dance music for working-class Southerners.
Britpop bands such as Oasis, Blur and Pulp are very popular in Chile, songs from these bands are commonly featured in rock and adult contemporary radios. The same happens with 80s British bands such as The Smiths, The Cure and The Stone Roses. (Justified Trope: Chile is considered as one of the strongest, if not THE strongest "ally" of the United Kingdom in Latin America, which include quite strong cultural ties.)
This is very common in the Death Metal genre (Melodic Death Metal to be specific). Bands like Arch Enemy, while somewhat popular in their native Europe, are just plain massive in Japan.
- Japan seems equally fascinated with Power Metal, to the point where some bands' releases and touring are heavily concentrated there despite being European (Heavenly being one of the most striking examples — their music is released first there, has in some cases been translated into Japanese to suit their fanbase, and are on an East Asian record label despite being from France).
The now infamous Korean Pop Music scene never really took off until about the 90s or so. Before that, the biggest influence on South Korean pop culture was Cantopop, from Hong Kong. In particular, Leslie Cheung, popular enough to this day to get a tribute to him at the start of the second MNet Asia Music Awards.
Deathcore has found a home in Japan, China, and Indonesia with young metal fans. Bands such as Signs of the Swarm, Emmure, Slaughter to Prevail, and After the Burial (among others) pull very large numbers and tour there just about every album cycle. Slaughter to Prevail noted they were getting 500 people every night in China when they toured there.
Deep house was invented in the United States as a combination of Chicago house along with jazz-funk and soul. It's not without a following in the US, but it is much more popular in Europe, with the vast majority of deep house artists being European.
During the late 70s and early 80s, disco music in the United States started to suffer cultural attacks, mostly from white rock fans who viewed it as pretentious, too black, gay and European, and taking away Top 10 space from their beloved hard rock groups. Increasing amounts of musicians began mocking it, and in just a few years disco music became a musical pariah in the USA... for about a decade. However, disco never died in Europe, and the genre stayed popular across the Atlantic, inspiring people like Giorgio Moroder to make their pioneering works in Electronic Music and some of the region's most prominent countries created Italo disco, which soon partly inspired musicians in the US to create what'd become House Music (which itself later got its own European sub-genres, such as Italo house). Germany and other European countries also enjoyed Italo disco, in that the leading label releasing compilations happens to be German.
- Italo disco and Euro disco are popular in Russia and other former Eastern Bloc countries, and they still have many fans from some Spanish-speaking countries. The latter group sometimes call this kind of music "Hi-NRG".
- In the Philippines, some of the popular Italo disco acts are Mike Francis, Colors, Magic Fire, Europe (not that Europe), and Lou Sern. The late Francis is the most admired one and he had concerts in that country.
The Eurobeat genre is much more popular in Japan than in its native country of Italy, where its audience is close to nonexistent, to the point that even the most prominent musicians of the genre tend to omit any reference to it on their "main" music accounts on social media. In fact, the "Super Eurobeat" series is only sold in Japan, or via importation.
- There's a Spanish-speaking (probably Mexican) following for early Eurobeat music from the late 80s/early 90s, overlapping from their interest of the preceding Italo-disco and Hi-NRG genres, sometimes calling such music "Hi-NRG". This could also be attributed to DJ Patrick Miller.
- The genre itself is now trickling into the Anglosphere, albeit only by Memetic Mutation via being the BGM for InitialD.
There's a lot of the mid/late 90s Eurodance bands, specially from Denmark and Sweden, which had massive markets in Asia and more or less moved there for their major income after the hype died in Europe.
- The genre's popularity extends to Russia, Canada (Canada produced a few Eurodance artists of its own, such as Love Inc. and Emjay, who's style of Eurodance gained the nickname "Candance"), Brazil (although Italo disco is usually bigger there, being regularly played in flashback parties) and Australia in the early-to-mid 90's.
In the United States, free jazz was viewed as a musical, political, and social backlash to the structure of jazz and of American society at the time, with many Americans see it structure-less, provocative, and ridiculous. However, many Europeans (musicians, critics and young people alike) identified with this style of music. As American free jazz musicians continued to play throughout Europe, the free jazz genre and the cultural movements in the continent associated with it began to spread as well, influencing many European jazz musicians to imitate the avant-garde style of playing as well as adopting its techniques to create their own individual sound. Thus, Europe adopted the free jazz genre as their own, despite its American origins.
Hard Rock and Heavy Metal originated in the US and UK, but today's heavy metal scene has an extreme concentration to the Nordic countries.
- Although "D-Beat" style of Hardcore Punk was pioneered by the UK band Discharge, many prominent D-Beat bands hail from Sweden.
Hi-NRG music, including those by the American artists Patrick Cowley and Paul Parker, is popular in Mexico.
The same thing as the British Invasion happened with Hip-Hop in The '80s. New York rap music caught fire in the black neighborhoods of London, eventually evolving into its own regional style distinct from anything coming out of the US, and from there, it conquered Europe and the world just as rock did before it. Unlike rock music, the cross-pollination went mostly one way; while American hip-hop is popular worldwide, non-American scenes usually only get national or regional recognition, with the US still seen more or less as the global leader of the genre and only a small handful of international rappers having managed to break through stateside.
Hip-Hop is very popular in The Netherlands, all credited to a 1986 TV documentary called Big Fun in the Big Town about The Golden Age of Hip Hop. Many viewers reacted enthusiastically to it and several Dutch hiphop artists have claimed that this documentary inspired them to start rapping themselves.
Industrial music, started in Britain but is much larger in Germany, to the point that it's believed Germany is the birthplace of the genre.
- Perhaps even funnier, because of bands like Hocico, there was a movement of Latin American Industrial bands. This leads to some confusing mixture of cultures - a band from Chile is called "Die Braut" while singing in English. Because of the strange psuedo-nationalistic themes of Industrial, you get videos like this. Germany needs movement - in Mexico City!
Japanese alternative rock bands like Boris, Boredoms and Shonen Knife are far more popular in the United States and Europe than they are in Japan. This most likely has to do with the fact that the Japanese music scene is ruled largely by theatrical Visual Kei metal bands, pop idol singers and lightweight pop-rock artists and bands like GACKT and Glay, whose music is much more easily palatable for the Oricon charts. In fact, the only Japanese alternative rock bands to do good business in their home country are The Pillows (because they play "American style" alt rock), Radwimps (because of their hugely successful collaborations with anime director Makoto Shinkai), [Alexandros], Fujifabric, Fishmans, and the Mad Capsule Markets, nearly all of which are still far more popular overseas than they are in Japan (save for Radwimps, although the runaway success of those two Shinkai films worldwide might make them join this trope soon).
Belgians love jazz. Not only did the country spawn a lot of jazz musicians (such as Thoots Thielemans) but it was able to remain popular there even as people in other countries moved on. It is taught alongside classical music in high school music academies and even today the country has an active community of jazz musicians (such as Fred van den Hove), jazz music magazines (such as Jazz'halo) and yearly awards for performances (the Golden Django). Possibly the most notable case of this was when the Nazis occupied Belgium and forbade jazz music. In theory, jazz would stop being popular. In practice, the amount of jazz orchestras increased during this era. It definitely helps that the inventor of the saxophone (Adolphe Sax) was Belgian.
Metal in general is huge in Japan. It seems that while it's somewhat marginalized in North America and Europe (with some exceptions, like Finland, who had a metal singer win their national Idol contest), it's regarded as no more dangerous than any other style of music in Japan. It's no surprise that before they got even remotely popular in the west, In Flames and Children of Bodom had recorded live concerts in Tokyo with wildly enthusiastic crowds.
- It's worth noting that this really only seems to be the case with more melodic styles of metal. While Melodic Death Metal and Power Metal are huge there, Black Metal and the more brutal non-melodic styles of Death Metal remain even more underground in Japan than they are in the West aside from a select few bands, namely Aborted, who have a sizable Japanese following and tour there on a frequent basis.
Nightcore music originated from two boys in Norway as part of a school project, but is very popular in Southeast Asia. It's especially popular in Vietnam, where the country's Google search interest overwhelmingly surpasses that of other countries.
Northern Soul was built on this trope. Unsold records in American warehouses made their way to the U.K. and were bought by proto-DJs to play at shows. In this way completely forgotten tracks became huge hits.
The Post-Punk/Garage Rock revival scene of the 2000s started with American bands like The Strokes, The White Stripes, and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, but while many of these bands won critical acclaim, sold records, and got radio airplay in their home country, they were never able to break the stranglehold that Post-Grunge, Pop Punk and Emo Music had on mainstream rock music. As such, their popularity was often at the level of "those bands your hipster friend won't shut up about", and by the late '00s their place in rock would be quietly displaced by Indie Pop bands. In the UK, on the other hand, they were huge. The post-punk revival became the sound of British rock in the 2000s, inspiring a wave of local bands like the Arctic Monkeys, Franz Ferdinand, and Kaiser Chiefs. It helped that the original Post-Punk movement was led mostly by British bands.
Power Metal and Progressive Metal (especially Progressive Power Metal) is practically mainstream in Brazil. Bands from Europe and Japan fly all the way to South America to give concerts in sold out theatre venues. This is why when bonus tracks aren't meant for Japan, they're almost always meant for the Brazilian or at least South American market. Angra is one of the most striking examples: absolutely massive in Japan and South America (to the point where they are the second-highest-selling rock act of all time in their homeland Brazil) and a frequent high-billing act on the European festival circuit, but a niche act in the US that plays there once in a blue moon and only in areas with a high concentration of South American nationals; the status of guitarist Kiko Loureiro (who was recently drafted to replace Chris Broderick in the new formation of Megadeth) and ex-drummer Aquiles Priester (who recently played with German power metal band Primal Fear, toured with WASP, had filled in for an injured Scott Travis in a series of Judas Priest concerts in Brazil and auditioned for Dream Theater after Mike Portnoy left the band before they settled with Mike Mangini) are the only things keeping them from being even more obscure there.
Rural Scandinavia is dominated by a subculture known as raggare, embracing the greaser culture, with Rockabilly music and American memorabilia from The '50s. In fact, in spite of Sweden's draconic automobile safety laws there are more roadworthy American cars from the The '50s in Sweden than in any other country in the world. Including the U.S.
Reggae in general and Bob Marley in particular is spectacularly popular in the Pacific island of New Caledonia. How popular? When one walks the streets of Nouméa, about one in four people is usually wearing Rastafarian colours and/or a Bob Marley T-shirt, and young people carry around transistor radios playing Bob Marley all the time. One person is reported to have caught a bus from one end of the island to the other and most of the way there were three separate radios playing different reggae tracks at all times! This appears to be identification with a fellow island culture, helped along by the fact that, as Melanesians, the native Kanaks are darker in skin tone than most other peoples of the Pacific.
- Bob Marley in particular is huge in many Third World countries. It has been said that when you travel to Latin America, Africa, Asia, The Pacific Ocean you're bound to hear his music and see his image more than any other internationally famous pop star, even overshadowing stars like Elvis Presley. For a while, only in the USA was he still considered nothing but a cult star. This only changed around the late 1990s.
Several Swedish Eurodance artists were also big in Japan, eg Solid Base, Basic Element, and of course, Smile.dk. Also, the German group E-Rotic and its short-lived successor, Missing Heart (whose sole album was a Japan exclusive).
- Eurodance artists in Japan also include one from Romania, Alexandra Stan (who was a One-Hit Wonder in the U.S. with "Mr. Saxobeat". Just look at how many albums and songs of her only charted there.
Developed in Argentina, Tango is the social dance in Finland. Note that while Tango music is fairly known worldwide thanks to its rise in the '20s, and that in its homeland is also culturally important, in Finland it has its own local subgenre. Seinäjoki is even referred as "the second world capital of tango". Colombia also is very kind towards tango, one of the reasons being the place where Carlos Gardel died in a plane accident. And also, tango is very popular in... Japan. For the record, in the 2009 Tango World Championship held in its homeland Argentina, the winner was a Japanese couple (no kidding).
Trance music originated in Germany and does have a strong fandom there, but the genre is especially hugely popular in the Netherlands (which houses the biggest trance acts on the planet, including Armin Van Buuren, Tiësto, and Ferry Corsten), the UK, Japan, Egypt, Australia, and Argentina. Meanwhile, the Darker and Edgier psychedelic and full-on varieties are very popular in Israel with many big name acts like Astral Projection, Astrix and Infected Mushroom coming from there, and psytrance scenes have also popped up in South Africa, northern Europe and India (thanks to its history with the Goa rave scene). It's a mixed bag in the USA - trance is arguably one of the most well-loved genres of electronic dance music and has experienced a steady growth in new fans through The New '10s, but it falls behind harder sounding genres in terms of commercial success and still perceived by non-electronic listeners as being cheesy and overtly sentimental.
Because of the Japanese fondness for cuteness, pop music, and teenage girls, several British girl bands such as Shampoo managed to have success there while being regarded as a total joke by their less tolerant UK compatriots. Daphne and Celeste tried this, recording a song called "I Love Your Sushi", but it didn't seem to work.
After its demise with the arrival of Grunge in the 90s, Hair Metal managed to hang on for a little while longer in the Nordic countries (mainly Sweden; which was already home to hair metal legends Europe of "The Final Countdown" fame), where it somehow managed to co-exist with local metal scenes including Norway's infamous Black Metal scene and Sweden's melodic death metal scene. In fact, many modern hair metal bands (such as Crazy Lixx, H.E.A.T., and Crashdïet) hail from the region. Notably, Swedish super-producer Max Martin got his start in a hair band named It's Alive, where he was the lead singer (under the stage name "Martin White").
Believe it or not, Country Music does have a international following. Australasia has its fair share of homegrown country talent, most famously Slim Dusty, Keith Urban, Kasey Chambers, Lee Kernaghan and Morgan Evans. A New Zealand TV show dedicated to the genre, That's Country!, was even aired in the United States by TNN in the 80s. Ireland spawned a subgenre, Country and Irish, which fuses North American country style music with Irish influences, notably spawning artists such as Nathan Carter and T.R. Dallas. The UK even has a few country radio stations such as Chris Country, and has its own massive country festival, C2C: Country to Country.
City Pop, a Japanese pop music genre from the late 70s and 80s: it completely fell out of popularity in Japan in the 90s, becoming a Dead Horse Genre, but saw a revival on the internet in The New '10s, largely because original 80s city pop was a common source of samples for Vaporwave and Future Funk (whose creators liked the retro-futuristic vibes you could get by using this obscure Japanese music). While some of the new fans are Japanese, the genre is mostly popular with western audiences.
The British metal scene of the 2000s was flourishing with bands like DragonForce, Evile, The Darkness, Bring Me the Horizon and Bullet for My Valentine, but while many of these bands sold records and were popular with British metalheads (with the Darkness having a #1 best-selling album and a string of Top 10 singles), they were never able to break the stranglehold that Indie Rock and the Post-Punk revival had on 2000s British rock music. As such, their popularity was often at the level of "those bands your immature edgy cousin keeps listening to", and the British general public generally didn't care for them. In the US, on the other hand, they were just as popular as the "homegrown" metal acts of the time.
South Korea loves breakdance and hip-hop. Brought over by American Soldiers in The '80s, they became very popular in The '90s.
German progressive bands of the 60s and 70s, known abroad as "Krautrock", didn't find much success in their homeland, but groups like Kraftwerk, Can, Faust, and Neu! have had a profound influence on alternative music in the Anglo-American sphere, as musician Julian Cope, author of Krautrocksmapler, put it "Krautrock is a subjective British phenomenon". It was British music journalists who coined the term. Most famously, the German music scene had a major influence on David Bowie, Iggy Pop, and Brian Eno, as they recorded together in West Berlin in the late 70s, a period that produced Bowie's Berlin Trilogy and Iggy Pop's The Idiot and Lust for Life, while Brian Eno frequently collaborated with German duo Cluster. Kratwerk's music has found major success in the UK and US, topping the UK charts with "The Model" and basically being singlehandedly responsible for UK synthpop, while in the US they've had influence on early hip-hop, as "Trans-Europe Express" was sampled in Afrika Bambaataa's classic single "Planet Rock", while also influencing American electronic genres like techno and house. However, the average German is largely unaware of the genre, despite its overseas influence. American and British avant garde and psychedelic music, particularly The Velvet Underground, Frank Zappa, and Pink Floyd, exerted heavy influence on krautrock in turn.

Specific Songs

The original 1982 single "Pale Shelter (You Don't Give Me Love)" by Tears for Fears ^note was a commercial failure everywhere (including the band's native UK) except in Canada, where it peaked at #12 on the Canadian music chart, which makes it a Top 20 hit (and invokedBreakthrough Hit) in that country. ^note
The instrumental track "1980-F" by British prog rock band After The Fire is obscure pretty much everywhere in the world... except for Germany, where it is remembered as the theme music for the early 1980s TV show Na sowas!
The video for the OK Go song "A Million Ways" has gained a certain measure of popularity on Nico Nico Douga as material for dancing fanvids. Here's an example.
"Legal Tender" by The B-52s, despite being the lead single of their third album Whammy!, only got as far as #81 on the Billboard Hot 100. But it was huge in Brazil, played extensively in nightclubs during the 80s. During their 2009 concerts in the country, the crowd chanted for the song, which wasn't originally included on the setlist. To top it off, the Brazilian version of their 1998 compilation Time Capsule: Songs for a Future Generation has "Legal Tender" in place of "52 Girls".
The Bee Gees' 1968 ballad "The Singer Sang His Song" went largely unnoticed due to being released as the B-side to a single that was relatively unsuccessful (its A-side is "Jumbo", and neither song was re-released until 1990). In Switzerland, "The Singer Sang His Song" had become a #8 hit by the end of the year.
German singer Lou Bega, known for the dance hit "Mambo No. 5", is considered a One-Hit Wonder after his second album, Ladies and Gentleman, flopped. But one of the songs from that album, "Angelina", became a very popular dance craze in the Philippines back in 2002. Many 90's kids would talked about how this song was commonly used in school programs and dance demonstrations.
The English version of the Pinkfong cover of "Baby Shark" is so big outside of South Korea that it is currently the most-watched YouTube video of all time. The song also spawned an entire Cash-Cow Franchise overseas, mainly in the United States, where the characters from the song can be found on items from beach towels to cereal. There was also a live tour spin-off for the song.
"Better Days Are Coming" by Neil Sedaka is better known in Japan as "Toki wo Koete", one of the opening songs of Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam. In fact, a number of the songs in that anime came from him, which is in part why due to copyright reasons those tracks were replaced in overseas versions of Zeta.
"Bizarre Love Triangle" by New Order was so popular within the Asian-American community that it became the unofficial anthem for the community. This article explains that it was one part Narm Charm, and another part sounding like freestyle, a popular dance genre at the time.
Radiohead's first five single releases were all relative flops in the band's native UK and their debut album Pablo Honey was very poorly received by the British press, failing to sell particularly well. Then their song "Creep" became a massive radio hit in Israel, because (according to The Other Wiki) local influential radio host Yoav Kutner liked it a lot and played it repeatedly. It soon became a massive hit in America, while the band were still virtually unheard of in their own country.
Another young American R&B o, Dawin, has experienced similar fame in the Philippines for his song "Dessert", which only peaked at #68 on the Billboard Hot 100, but is one of late-2015 to 2016's most-played songs in the Philippines. Like the aforementioned "God Gave Me You" and "Twerk it Like Miley", a lot has to do with its use on Eat Bulaga's Kalye-Serye.
Timmy Thomas ("Why Can't We Live Together") and Hot Chocolate ("You Sexy Thing") were huge worldwide in the '70s, but Thomas and Hot Chocolate singer Errol Brown only became real household names in the Philippines in the early 1990s when both men were close to their 50s and well beyond their main period of fame, the former for his song "Dying Inside (To Hold You)," the latter for "This Time I Know It's Forever."
To a milder extent, the song Everyday I'm Drinking by the Russian band LITTLE BIG gained a large exposition in France thanks to French YouTuber Antoine Daniel who reviewed it in his special What the Cut episode covering Russian videos.
"Fascination Street" by The Cure is merely an album cut from their 1988 album Disintergration to the entire world... except in the United States. The Cure's US record label Elektra rejected lead single "Lullaby" and sent "Fascination Street" to radio instead, believing the extended bass introduction was a better hook for Americans. The gamble paid off, to where "Street" became a #1 Alternative hit and stayed there for seven weeks, in addition to a #46 peak on the Hot 100. It remains better known than "Lullaby" and even some of their worldwide hits in the United States.
"Feel Like Dance" by Glob became wildly popular in the Philippines.
In 1993, Aussie band Indecent Obsession and American duo the Williams Brothers strummed their way into Filipinos' hearts with acoustic ballads "Fixing a Broken Heart" and "Can't Cry Hard Enough" respectively. "Fixing a Broken Heart" was not a hit in the former band's native Australia, and their only U.S. Top 40 hit was the dance-pop "Tell Me Something". As for the Williams Brothers, they scraped the bottom of the Billboard Hot 100 in 1974 as 15-year-old teen idol-wannabes, with their cover of Don and Juan's "What's Your Name", and were a few rungs short of the Top 40 almost two decades later with "Can't Cry Hard Enough".
North Carolina alt-rockers Athenaeum are mostly obscure back home in America, but their song "Flat Tire" stayed on Philippine rock station NU 107's Midnight Countdown for about ONE YEAR. (Most chart-toppers on that countdown usually stayed in the charts for about 3-4 months tops.)
Thanks to the viral YouTube video, the K-pop song "Gangnam Style" by PSY hit it big in the US and Western Europe. Eastern Europe and South America had already succumbed to cultural technology and already had K-pop airplay. Before "Gangnam Style", playing a song on a Top 40 station in America that wasn't in English or Spanish was unheard of. Back in South Korea, "Gangnam Style" is just another K-pop hit that doesn't really stand out other than being "the one that got really popular worldwide".
Most fans of Jethro Tull probably have never heard of the song Get a Life, which was made by the band leader Ian Anderson. It is popular in fan communities of Dutch/Belgian home video as a shorter version of the song was used by the anti-piracy communities there (Baf in Belgium, BREIN in the Netherlands) used for their piracy warnings from 1995-2006. The song itself has also been used for remixes there on more than one occasion.
The song "God Gave Me You" by American country singer Bryan White is very popular in the Philippines and is the unofficial theme song to Eat Bulaga's "kalye-serye", AlDub, which shows TV heartthrob Alden Richards' courtship to Yaya Dub (Maine Mendoza in Real Life) which is done by lipsynching various songs as a way of conversing each other and it is in split screen. In fact, Bryan White himself was thrilled with how his song was used. It also bears mentioning that "God Gave Me You" became a huge hit in the Philippines sixteen years after it was a rather low-ranking hit in the Billboard country charts — and White's LAST stateside hit as well.
The Kenny G song "Going Home" has become extremely popular in China, due to many businesses playing it at closing time.
The Breakfast Club had only one U.S. top 10 hit with 1987's "Right on Track" and are arguably best remembered as Madonna's former band before she became famous. In the Philippines, they're almost exclusively remembered for their 1984 single "Rico Mambo".
"HandClap" by Fitz and The Tantrums is famous enough in its home country to be featured in video games, but it apparently enjoyed its greatest popularity in South Korea, and a lot of commenters in the official YT Music Video mentions how they were introduced to the song via covers by Korean artists.
Late 1980s teen idol Tiffany was well-known stateside for her ballads, but they are especially popular in the Philippines (as opposed to upbeat hit songs like "I Think We're Alone Now"), with the song "Hearts Never Lie," a duet with obscure country singer Chris Farren, becoming a huge hit on Philippine radio, despite not being released as a single in the U.S.
For years, KISS wouldn't play "I Was Made for Loving You" at home in America where the song became loathed in the years following its release (although since the mid-2000s, it's become a regular part of the group's touring setlist). In Germany, on the other hand, it was their biggest hit.
- Similarly, the group's 1980 single "Shandi" was pretty much ignored in the USA but became a Top Five hit in Australia. To this day, KISS always makes a point to play it when touring Australia or New Zealand. If you see a KISS live album or video with "Shandi" listed, you can be assured it was recorded someplace Down Under.
Diana Ross's "If We Hold on Together" — yes, the Award-Bait Song from The Land Before Time — was so popular in Japan that it remained #1 on Oricon International charts for 12 weeks and was even used as a theme song for a Japanese drama.
"Johnny Johnny Yes Papa" was an Indian nursery rhyme that gained popularity overseas after several YouTube channels for children picked up the song and used it in their videos. One version, by LooLoo Kids, is currently the 13th most-watched YouTube video of all time.
Jozin s bazin, a Czech novelty song, has achieved memetic status in Poland and Russia.
- It's even been translated into Polish, but the Czech version is still more popular.
In the Philippines, it's mostly the kids and teens of the early-mid '80s who remember American singer Rockwell's biggest U.S. hit, the upbeat AND off-beat "Somebody's Watching Me", which notably included his old friends (and his father Berry Gordy's onetime proteges) Michael and Jermaine Jackson on backing vocals. But his best-known song in the country is the serious, depressing ballad "Knife", which is especially popular to this day in karaoke bars.
Indonesians still love the Japanese song "Kokoro No Tomo" despite it never being a hit in Japan and almost forgotten there.
"Last Christmas" by Wham! is very popular in Japan, which is not surprising given that Christmas in Japan is a romantic holiday on par with Valentine's Day. Several Japanese artists like EXILE have even covered the song!
Ellie Goulding's "Lights" was huge everywhere in the world except in the UK itself, despite her fame at home.
A song named Loli Mou (Red Wine) by Polish Gypsy artist Tobi King is a subject to Memetic Mutation in Russia, and most comments on the linked YouTube vid are in Russian.
In most countries, Adele's cover of "Make You Feel My Love" by Bob Dylan was initially not a hit upon release. In the Netherlands, it was one of the best-performing singles of 2009.
Charlie Puth's "Marvin Gaye" topped the charts in five different countries, and went Top 10 in many others. In his native United States? It barely limped to a #21 position, largely fueled by his appearance on Wiz Khalifa's "See You Again" and its Meghan Trainor guest verse, before quickly falling off the charts and out of American public consciousness, with very little recurrent airplay on the radio. However, Puth then recovered with the #12 "One Call Away" and the Top-10 hits "Attention" and "We Don't Talk Anymore".
Before becoming the comedy force that he is today, Ricky Gervais fronted the electropop band Seona Dancing in the early '80s. After they had supposedly dwindled into obscurity, one of their singles "More to Lose" took on a life of its own as a supposed teen anthem in the Philippines.
"On ne s'aimera plus jamais" by French disco singer Larusso received a lot airplay in the Philippines during the late 90's. A Website/YouTube video featuring this song is filled to the brim with Filipino comments.
Michael Jackson had a little ballad back in 1981 called "One Day in Your Life". It was a modest hit in the US. In the Philippines, however, you can still hear it on the radio every Retro Sunday broadcast in every station all over the country. It's still sung by kids for singing contests.
- It was also a #1 hit in the UK and South Africa.
Polish disco track "Papaya" (by Ursula Dudziak) was mildly popular among Filipino Gay Bars in the 70's, but it rose to mainstream prominence in the mid 2000's when Pinoy gameshow host Edu Manzano danced to it and started a trendy dance craze.
While Laura Branigan was fairly popular in the Philippines throughout the 1980s for her ballads and dance hits alike, her biggest hit in the country, by far, is the over-the-top ballad "Power of Love", which only peaked at No. 26 on the Billboard charts. Her 1987 cover of Shirley Ellis' 1965 hit "The Name Game" was also especially popular with Filipinos, especially younger listeners, but is largely forgotten today, as opposed to "Power of Love".
Brazilian song "Rap das Armas" earned some popularity in its own country, specially after usage in local blockbuster The Elite Squad. But somehow after being played in Portugal as well, some European DJs picked up the song, and remixes became hits in Scandinavia and the Netherlands. Supporters of Swedish soccer team Djurgårdens IF even sing it during games.
1960s pop group The Cascades are a one-hit wonder stateside, with "Rhythm of the Rain" being their biggest and most recognizable hit worldwide. But they were HUGE in the Philippines, so huge that their eventual fadeout into obscurity resulted in an Urban Legend that the band had died in a plane crash. But guess who came to play in the Philippines in 2004, alive and well, if 40-plus years older than they were in their heyday.
Engelbert Humperdinck's single "Release Me" featured the B-side "Ten Guitars". The B-side went largely un-noticed in the U.S. and Britain, but in New Zealand it became a big pop anthem, to the point where "Ten Guitars" was more popular than the A-side.
Elton John usually only plays "Skyline Pigeon" in Brazil, where the piano version (an outtake first available as a B-Side to "Daniel") got quite a lot of airplay.
- Also one of Elton's most recognizable songs in the Philippines, despite not making a dent in the US and his native UK.
Tom Dissevelt & Kid Baltan's "Song of the Second Moon" from 1957 was surprisingly influential in Hungary, where it served as the theme-tune of an educational program called Delta that ran from 1964 to 1996. The eerie music engraved itself deeply into public consciousness and frightened generations, though for decades no one actually knew its origin or title. Nowadays, YouTube comments about the song are dominated by people from that country reminiscing about their past love-hate relationship with the music.
ItaloBrothers' song "Stamp on the Ground" had quite some Scandinavian success, especially in Norway where it turned into the "russ" song of 2010.
- "Summer Air" also went high on the Norwegian charts, at #3.
Similarly, American new wave band Industry was a minor success in their home country, with their biggest hit, "State of the Nation" peaking at a modest No. 81 in 1982. That song, however, was HUGE in the Philippines, and still fondly remembered by those who grew up in the 1980s.
"Sweet Soul Revue" by Japanese Shibuya-Kei band Pizzicato Five became popular in the Philippines due to its use in a 90's era cosmetics commercial. Additionally, it was used as the theme song of Ranma 1/2's Filipino Dub.
Most of the world knows Rupert Holmes as the man behind "Escape (The Piña Colada Song)"; he also has lesser but still significant notability as the creator of the smash musical Drood. The Philippines knows him mainly for his 1974 ballad "Terminal", which remains a staple of Philippine FM radio programming a good 40+ years later.
Super-simple, upbeat songs and their performers also tend to become big in the Philippines while flopping most anywhere else. For example, the song "Twerk It Like Miley" by Brandon Beal and Danish singer Christopher was a hit in the latter's home country but never made it to the US Billboard charts. Instead, it became the most played song in the Philippines due to being frequently used in DubSmash, and on local variety show Eat Bulaga.
This rather obscure song by Italian singers Edoardo Benato and Gianna Nannini is still huge in Germany. Why? Two reasons mostly - first, Germany has had a weird obsession/love affair with all things Italian since the first VW Käfer in the 1950s made it possible to go to the beaches of bella Italia for some pasta and gelato. Second, this song happened to be the "anthem" of the FIFA World Cup of 1990, which took place in Italy... and Germany won it. Naturally this song is played every time highlights from the 1990 FIFA World Cup are shown and for some reason they are often shown in Germany.
"When You Are a King" was a #13 hit in the United Kingdom in 1971 for the group White Plains. Like many other "faceless" hit songs by studio-only groups at the time, it was forgotten very quickly... but it remains an iconic anthem in Israel where it was Covered Up by Shlomo Artzi (essentially, the Israeli equivalent to Bruce Springsteen).
How about this one-hit wonder in the Philippines who had zero hits in America? Jason Everly, son of Phil of the Everly Brothers, dueted with Filipino singer Donna Cruz on the ballad "Wish", which was one of the biggest local hits of 1995.
UK New Wave band China Crisis was moderately successful at home, with their 1983 song "Wishful Thinking" becoming their only British Top 10 hit. But in the Philippines, "Wishful Thinking" is a bona fide classic of the genre, popular enough with new wave fans to bring the band back to the country four times in the 21st century.
1963 had two big cases, the second and third non-English songs to top the Billboard Hot 100:^notethe Japanese pop song "Ue o Muite Arukō" (known in English-speaking countries as "Sukiyaki") by Kyu Sakamoto, one of the best-selling singles of all time, with 13 million copies; and Belgian Christian Folk song "Dominique", by The Singing Nun, which was outselling Elvis Presley and probably would reach "Sukiyaki"-like numbers if not for the The British Invasion right around the corner. Both never had another hit.
Due to its use in an episode of Arthur the Finnish Folk song "Matalii ja mustii" performed by Värttinä has gained a small cult following In North America.
Pennsylvania band The Buoys hit the Billboard top 20 with "Timothy"—a song written for them by the aforementioned Rupert Holmes—but had no further success in their home country. (Perhaps unsurprising, considering that "Timothy" was a controversial novelty song about cannibalism.) But the follow-up single, "Give Up Your Guns", was a smash hit in The Netherlands.
Frank Zappa's 1979 song "Bobby Brown" (which is not about the R&B singer) had lyrics so vulgar that it never could get any mainstream attention in the US when it was released. But in Europe the song became massively popular, charting #1 in Sweden and Norway and #4 in Germany, and it became Zappa's best known song there. Its huge success was probably made possible because the sexual and cultural references in the lyrics weren't so clear to European listeners and they could appreciate the song's catchy melody without being overwhelmed by its pervasive imagery.
Bachman-Turner Overdrive's "Hold Back the Water" was never a single, yet became very popular in South America. Any Youtube release will have comments only in Spanish and Portuguese, and City of God even features it in a party reflecting how it was a DJ staple in 70s\80s Brazil.
Terry Knight, a one-time Detroit radio DJ who switched to performing and is now best-known for having managed Grand Funk Railroad, was briefly recruited by The Beatles to sign with Apple Records, and visited them in England in 1969. Observing firsthand the major strain in group relations and fearing that they were going to break up, Knight wrote and recorded a song called "Saint Paul", with symbolism-laden lyrics about the band and their situation ("Sir Isaac Newton told you it would fall"), and an arrangement filled with Beatle flourishes, including a long fade-out section based on "Hey Jude" (done with their permission). "Saint Paul" briefly made Billboard's Bubbling Under the Hot 100 chart but was never any sort of hit in America. However, across the Pacific in New Zealand, a singer named Shane recorded a note-for-note Cover Version and it spent six weeks at #1, becoming one of the biggest hits of the entire decade of The '60s in that country; it even managed a longer #1 run there than The Beatles themselves had ever accomplished.
Another New Zealand oddity was J.J. Cale's original version of "Cocaine" hitting #1 in early 1977, almost a year before Eric Clapton released his cover.
"Green Green", a 1963 American hit by the Folk Music group The New Christy Minstrels, is largely forgotten in its home country, but it's a cultural touchstone in Japan, where it was rearranged and translated into a children's song by Hikaru Kataoka. This may have inspired Koji Kondo to compose the overworld theme in Super Mario World.
Singer-Songwriter Andrew Gold's 1978 Soft Rock song "Never Let Her Slip Away" only managed to climb to #67 in his native US, but was a huge hit in Europe, peaking at #5 in the UK and #2 in Ireland.
"I'm In the Mood for Dancing" by the Irish disco group The Nolan Sisters (later The Nolans) became a #1 hit in Japan, being one of the first English-language songs to do so, and the group subsequently recorded a Japanese Translated Cover Version. Two decades later, a Eurobeat version under the artist name Sharon was produced by Ventura(of "Lupin III '78" and "Cat's Eye" remix fame) for the Dancemania Happy Paradise series, and in turn licensed in the DanceDanceRevolution series.
One major beneficiary of the aforementioned fondness of the UK Northern Soul scene to revive forgotten American songs was "The Night" by Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. It was released in the US in 1972, when their career was in the doldrums, and the bass-heavy proto-Disco sound left American ears cold. But by 1975 it had become a Northern Soul favorite and got reissued in the UK, where it reached #7 on the chart and is still one of their most beloved songs there, even though most Americans have never even heard of it.
Philadelphia-born comedian/actor/impressionist Guy Marks had a minor hit (#51 in Billboard) in 1968 with "Loving You Has Made Me Bananas", a comedic musical piece mixing Word Salad Lyrics with a parody of big band radio broadcasts from The '30s. In 1978, a decade and a jump across the Atlantic later, the record was re-released in the UK and surprisingly made the Top 30, even earning Marks an appearance on Top of the Pops.
Ultravox's "Hymn", from Quartet, only reached #11 in their native UK and didn't chart at all in the States, but was a top 10 hit in Germany and Switzerland.
Daniela Romo's "Todo Todo Todo" is HUGELY popular among Filipinos that whenever this song is played, expect Filipinos to dance to the tune of the song, especially at parties. So much that it has become famous in the Philippines for being the "Filipino Dance Anthem" despite the artist originally being from Mexico.

Miscellaneous

Generally, a good number of European pop performers otherwise rather obscure anywhere outside their home country have curiously devoted followings in the former USSR. The Iron Curtain obstructed many highly popular artists from abroad, but tolerated others much better. This is how you get things like British band Smokie being very popular among Russians, or very obscure British duo Lips having a Wikipedia article only in Russian.
Orchestral instrumental arrangements of pop hits from the likes of Paul Mariat, James Last and others were apparently adored by Soviet record firm Melodiya (probably because of their instrumental nature), and are very well-known in the former Soviet Union (at least Paul Mariat, since a lot of arrangements he didn't work on get popularly assigned to him anyway). They were also used as soundtracks on television: Franck Pourcel's arrangement of the song «Manchester et Liverpool» sung originally by Marie Laforêt was famously used as the soundtrack to weather forecasts on Soviet television (in fact, Public Television of Russia still uses it for the same purpose), and singer-songwriter Yuri Vizbor even wrote his own lyrics to the melody unrelated to the original song.
The success of any Mandarin pop singer born in Malaysia or Singapore in Taiwan is justified due to the huge demand of Mandarin music there.
Related to songs popular in Brazil, there are some that weren't even singles in other countries but got huge due to being included in local telenovelas. Examples include Oingo Boingo's "Stay" (Wikipedia even has an article for a Brazilian compilation named after the song), Lara Fabian's "Love By Grace" (which also eclipsed the original recording by Wynonna Judd and reached #3 in Portugal), Hanson's "Save Me", Bon Jovi's "Misunderstood" and Bruno Mars' "Talking to the Moon". Also, Whitesnake's "Love Ain't No Stranger", while a mainstay of their concerts, probably only got big in Brazil due to commercials that even led to a special single and a follow-up ad featuring David Coverdale himself.
Wigan in Greater Manchester, United Kingdom is certainly one place that this trope goes up to eleven, for the following acts:
- Taylor Swift
- Selena Gomez
- Karlie Kloss (of Victoria's Secret fame)
- Elisabeth Harnois
- Their look and style tends to be emulated, especially given that Wigan has garnered a reputation for unusual fashions amongst women and following fashionable female celebs.
- Anjulie can be added to the list.
- The trope has evolved to expand to a wider area now; these celebs later grew to be popular in Bolton, Sefton, Liverpool, Greater Manchester, Watford and Hillingdon as well, but elsewhere in the UK retain a lower profile.
Between the time Billboard established the Modern Rock chart in 1988 and Nirvana's release of Nevermind in 1991, British artists like New Order, Depeche Mode, The Cure, XTC and Morrissey dominated Alternative Rock radio in America, with many of these acts remaining popular well into the Grunge era. There was also a sizable Australian presence during that period, with INXS, Midnight Oil, The Church and Hoodoo Gurus all scoring #1 Modern Rock hits.
One of the few markets where the CD isn't dead is Japan. Japanese customers prefer physical copies of music over downloads. Record companies can also get otaku to buy multiple copies of the Limited Special Collector's Ultimate Edition of some Idol Singer's latest album. It's also the reason Tower Records still operates brick-and-mortar stores there, as mentioned bellow. As interest in vinyl records has been rekindled in the West, the country is also having its own vinyl revival because the culture values physical media.
Due to the mutual intelligibility between the Spanish and Italian languages (making for very easy translations) and the catchy melodies, ever since The '60s, many Italian pop singers have been very popular in Spain and Latin America, such as Laura Pausini, Gianluca Grignani and Tiziano Ferro.
Doing injustice to everyone, one can state the following trope zig-zag of German pop:
1945-1976: No one cares about German pop outside Germany
1976-1985: Neue Deutsche Welle! Kraftwerk! Songs get covered even in Spain! Nena is #1 in multiple countries!
1985-now: see 1945-1976.
The Eurovision Song Contest began in 1956, with some West European countries participating. Today, these countries still participate, but regard the contest as a joke ^*and an expensive one for the winning country's state broadcaster, which then has to host the contest the following year — Ireland's RTÉ was nearly bankrupted after they won three contests in a row during the 1990s, largely because Eurovision's then-current "must be in the country's native language" rule meant only the UK and Ireland could use English., and send largely unknown artists (most of the West European countries) or grizzled music veterans of varying current popularity (mostly the UK, which has sent Engelbert Humperdinck, Bonnie Tyler, and a reunion of 90s boy band Blue in the past). The Nordic and East European countries, all of whom joined the contest later, take it seriously, and send their top artists. (See: ABBA, who had their big break at Eurovision) In Sweden, a country where the contest is Serious Business, with the six-week qualifying contest Melodifestivalen dominating entertainment news during the season.) The Nordic countries' attention given to the contest led to a major upset victory in 2006, when the contest was won by the Finnish heavy metal band Lordi (a decision that pleased metal fans as well).^noteBy that time, the "native language" rule had been eliminated for good. Lordi's winning entry "Hard Rock Hallelujah" is in English.
- Interestingly, a handful of Eurovision songs have actually done quite well in the U.S., and only one of those songs ("Waterloo", of course) actually won the contest. Other successful songs include "Volare" (which was a #1 hit in the U.S.^note right as the Hot 100 was being established, despite placing third in the contest), "L'amour est bleu" (which also went to #1 under the title "Love Is Blue"), "Eres tu" (which went to #9), and "Ooh Aah...Just a Little Bit" (#12, despite only finishing eighth).
- With the rise of TikTok in the late '10s, Pop-Cultural Osmosis has helped spread the popularity of Eurovision songs and artists to the US. 2019 winner "Arcade" became the first winner since "Waterloo" to chart in the U.S., peaking at #30, and 2021 winners Måneskin gained an American fanbase thanks to their winner "Zitti e Buoni", as well as "I Wanna Be Your Slave" and their cover of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons's "Beggin'", with the latter peaking at #13.
- A Eurovision winner that proved to be popular in the UK was Vicky Leandros's "Come What May", an English-language cover of the Luxembourgian 1972 winner "Après toi", which hit #2 on the UK singles chart.
Vinyl records hung on as a mainstream format for longer in the UK, Europe, and South America than in the US, so much so that many modern vinyl pressings sold in the US are actually pressed in the EU. In the '90s, vinyl releases remained common there while in the US, vinyl albums would be issued as limited editions if they were issued at all. This was mainly because LPs were cheaper than CDs at the time, and these were price-sensitive markets where fewer people could afford to upgrade to CD. It probably helps that the genres that have made the most use of vinyl, Electronic Dance Music and indie, have significant fandoms over there.
Tower Records was a cultural force during the rock era, but due to the decline of physical music, it shut down the last of its American stores in 2006. However, it has always been incredibly popular in Japan and continues to thrive there to this day. Physical media and collectors items as a whole have more business in that country; visit the Tower Records in Shibuya, and you'll see new music enshrined with custom decorations, bonus DVDs, multiple versions, and even autographs by the band members. Tower would only reopen in the U.S. as a mail-order business in 2020.
Cassettes remained popular in the developing world (as well as in certain prisons that prohibit CDs because inmates can make weapons out of them) as the West abandoned the format in favor of CDs and digital music due to the cassette's low cost and high durability. As with vinyl, cassette culture would have a revival in the West starting in the 2010s out of '80s nostalgia, but it's nowhere near as big as the "vinyl revival". The format also had more acceptance early on in Europe and Latin America as a music medium because the 8-track tape had less of a foothold in these regions.
It's not uncommon for Western artists to remain popular in East Asia years or even decades after fading into obscurity at home due to their songs becoming karaoke staples. One such example is 80s hair metal band Steelheart - long forgotten in their native United States outside of hair metal circles, but a household name in South Korea, where their power ballad "She's Gone" is considered a noraebang classic.
Nu Metal is often derided in its home country, America. However, in Japan and Europe, it was able to gain a decent amount of following, but it's South America that the genre found its new home.

In-Universe

Tom Waits has a song titled "Big in Japan" reflecting this trope.
Alphaville has one too, but it's not about that kind of "big", but instead a highly coded piece about the Berlin drug scene of the 1980s.
In addition to being a pastiche of Frank Zappa, "Weird Al" Yankovic's "Genius in France" is likely a poke at this along with Jerry Lewis. The whole song is about how the protagonist is by his own estimate just some random idiot but is a huge celebrity in France for, as far as he can tell, no reason whatsoever.
From the bridge of Steve Taylor's song "On The Fritz": "So they love Jerry Lewis in France; does that make him funny?"

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