Consider the two following groups of musical artists:
Group 1: James Brown, Credence Clearwater Revival, Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, Bruce Springsteen
Group 2: Pat Boone, The Captain & Tennille, Bobby Goldsboro, Donny Osmond, David Soul
Assuming they are all in their prime, which slate of performers are you choosing? I’m going to venture way out on a limb and say most of you are picking Group 1. If you are, you are choosing a group of artists who never had a Number 1 hit on Billboard’s main pop chart. In Group 2, each artist had at least one chart topper.
By one metric, Bruce Springsteen has had more success abroad than at home
Pop music, and the charts that reflect them, are mere snapshots of a time and a place and a cultural zeitgeist. They rarely say much about artistic quality or long-term influence. But that doesn’t mean they have nothing to teach us about our culture
Consider Springsteen, perhaps the most surprising member of the “never had a number 1” club. He did place 16 singles in the Top 20, and made it all the way to Number 2 with “Dancing in the Dark.” Nine of his albums hit the top spot, and another seven of them finished second or third. Clearly, the man has been a very popular recording artist.
But he never reached Number 1. Or did he?
Even though the Boss never had a single reach Number 1 on the mainstream Billboard chart, he has had six Number 1 songs. They just didn’t reach the top in his home country.
That’s right – the man who was famously “born in the U.S.A.” has had songs conquer an entire country. Just not the country of his birth.
Springsteen’s most successful song outside the USA is “Streets of Philadelphia,” his Oscar-winning tune from the movie Philadelphia in 1994. That song made it to Number 9 in the USA, but was a Number 1 hit in eight other countries – Austria, Canada, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, and Norway.
His iconic “Born in the USA” also topped out at Number 9 on Billboard, but hit Number 1 in both Ireland and New Zealand. “I’m on Fire,” from the same album, also climbed to the top in Ireland, as well as in Belgium and the Netherlands despite stalling out at 6 in the USA.
The aforementioned “Dancing in the Dark” was Number 1 in the Netherlands, Belgium, and Canada. And in addition to lifting “Streets of Philadelphia to the top, Norway also pushed “Brilliant Disguise” all the way to Number 1.
Finally, “Human Touch,” which only made it Number 16 in the States, was Number 1 in Norway, Denmark, Spain, and Italy.
Is there some lesson to take away from this? Some deeper meaning? We could offer some theories, but that’s all they would be. Like maybe other countries were more willing to accept a downbeat song about an AIDS victim. We in the States do have a tendency to pretend certain ugly pieces of our history simply don’t exist.
Or maybe the national criticism implicit in “Born in the USA” turned off enough listeners in the USA (listeners who bothered to hear all the lyrics and interpret them correctly, that is) to put the brakes on the song’s climb. In other countries, pointing a finger at the USA might not be so off-putting.
Maybe the Norwegians appreciate a good cheating song like “Brilliant Disguise” more than we do in the USA, and maybe the Spaniards and Italians can fall into the one-night stand ethos of “Human Touch” more easily.
I really don’t know if those things are true. But I do know that the rest of the world has pushed the Boss all the way up the charts while we at home have not.
By the way, CCR has had plenty of chart toppers all across the globe too. And in the interest of balance, Donny Osmond actually had more Number 1 hits in the UK (3) than in the USA (1). You can do with that information whatever you choose.