What are some notable instances where a song was truly ubiquitous in its moment where you couldn’t escape from it? I’m sure this applies to a ton of songs, but are there any that you remember in particular? Are there any that you liked initially but ended up despising due to overexposure?
As a child, I remember Debby Boone’s You Light Up my Life slowly driving my mother mad (or so she claimed).
Don’t Go Breaking My Heart by Elton John & Kiki Dee. 6 weeks at #1. It was the sound of the (particularly hot) summer in the U.K. in 1976. I started out loving it, but by the time it was coming to the end of it’s time at #1, I was sick to the back teeth of it. Also, You’re The One That I Want by John Travolta & Olivia Newton-John in 1978. No one knew much about Grease when the single was released, but it shot to #1 within a handful of weeks of release and stayed there for 9 weeks. That song really was everywhere. So many people hated it, and the subsequent Grease singles too.
Staying Alive Boy did I try to avoid it Now they use the the songs beat per minute cadence for administering CPR
Def Leppard- Pour Some Sugar on Me was everywhere Summer of 88. I remember playing it on the album upon release August 87 and knowing it would eventually be a single and huge
Not a song, but in 1996 I worked at a place where they played a top 40 station all day long, every day. The station played at least one Hootie and the Blowfish song every hour (in all likelihood, more often than just one an hour). It was that way every single day, for months on end.
Afternoon Delight: summer of ‘76. My pubescent self loved it at first, but by summer’s end, after a long and unhappy road trip during which AD played constantly on the AM radio, couldn’t stand it any more.
Childhood school discos in the 90’s. This, Cotton Eye Joe and Saturday Night by Whigfield. Ahh memories. Awful, awful memories.
Queen Bohemian Rhapsody. Both song and video were everywhere - as a 15 year old kid, I was blown away. Still am…
May not apply to every country, and from different eras, of course, but some that come immediately to mind are: Herb Alpert - Rise Trio - Da Da Da Bryan Adams - Eveything I Do Celine Dion - My Heart Will Go On Shawn Mullins - Lullaby Marcy's Playground - Sex & Candy Queens of the Stone Age - No One Knows
Oh man. This just triggered some kind of PTSD flashback. Was the popularity of this song purely a UK thing, or was it a hit in the US? In the UK, it was indescribably, and somewhat inexplicably, huge.
How about albums you couldn't avoid? I can't listen to Dark Side of the Moon, and don't own a copy. And I have several other Pink Floyd albums.
