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Comment by gibolt | Hacker News Reader

The opposite is also true. Many of the most popular 'classic' western songs in Asia are songs you've never heard of.

This piqued my interest - do you have any particular examples?

Do you know Beautiful Sunday by Daniel Boone or Welcome to the Edge by Billie Hughes? I certainly don't.

Most of the others are played relentlessly in corner shops, malls and radio stations. I've heard so many Carpenters songs now I may as well be trapped in the 70s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_singles_i...

Ha! I showed up in Beijing in 2001 at the age of 22 or something, and was met with frank disbelief when I not only failed to sing along with "Yesterday Once More", but failed to recognize The Carpenters at all.

Maybe not the best example, but The Carpenters may be better known in Japan at this point than in the US. I think the first song by them that I ever heard was in Japan.

> As recently as 2009, another Carpenters retro album (40/40) reached No. 3 on Japan’s overall charts [1]

http://splashingrocks.blogspot.com/2013/01/opening-splash-ea...

Now I finally understand why a Sesame Street song was in Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker

Boney M is inexplicably huge in Thailand, and at one point every rickshaw driver in India had a cassette of the Vengaboys.

There's a phrase for that - "Big in Japan"[0]. Many 80s one-hit-wonders of the west were big in Japan (or any other eastern countries).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_in_Japan_(phrase)

Michael Learns to Rock were huge pan-Asia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Learns_to_Rock

Here's one, not sure if it's popular in Western countries, but it sure is in Japan. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GL7gxqk0fkU

Polnareff was huge in native France. French artists from the 60s and 70s tended to be big all over Europe and some places in the Middle East and Asia, but completely ignored in the English-speaking world.

No wonder, he is a ladies man & has a cool stand that looks like a knight in shining armor!

Alissa Milano was big there as a singer.

Obviously we need to re-evaluate our foreign relations with them

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