So in a typically wild Saturday night style, I'm finding myself listening to Carry On Up The Charts... by the Beautiful South and it made me recall just how unexpected the success of this album was at the time.

 

Up until that point they'd had a couple of successful singles in the shape of A Little Time and Song For Whoever but none of their albums had gone on to do particularly well, indeed by this point they were already seemingly following the laws of diminishing returns as 0898 and Miaow hadn't sold that well at all. Now I'd always been a fan, no matter how uncool they were, and was okay with the #3 debut at the time for their best of... but I remember being so shocked when they climbed the following week and then again the week after to #1 before staying there pretty much all the way through christmas and new year (if I remember correctly only The Beatles got in their way and even then they were quickly overhauled the following week) as they went on to sell 2 million plus copies.

 

And now it has got me thinking, who and what else do you remember being a completely unexpected success in either the singles or albums market?

With Every Heartbeat by Robyn getting the #1 slot, never saw that coming, even with the love it was getting at the time.

 

Also, Scooter getting a #1 album in 2008. It's probably due to them being one of the first acts to make use of the practice of appending a Greatest Hits album to a studio album, but I wouldn't have thought that many people would be interested in a Scooter Greatest Hits album in the first place.

Oh gosh, as I've probably mentioned many times before I actually shed real tears when Robyn made #1 back in 2007

Oh gosh, as I've probably mentioned many times before I actually shed real tears when Robyn made #1 back in 2007

I remember it well :lol:

 

One of the biggest surprises for me has to be the success of a song as weird as O Superman (Laurie Anderson).

 

More recently, I've been very pleasantly surprised by the growing success of Public Service Broadcasting. I really never dreamt that I'd see them at the Albert Hall.

Tony Christie's success in 2005. A 34 year old song that peaked at number 18 goes to number 1 for 7 weeks and sells over a million copies- also a highly successful Greatest Hits album that went to number 1 despite having very few hits.

 

The late success of Journey's Don't Stop Believin'. Peaked at number 62 originally. Finally enters the top 10 28 years later despite no re-release and goes on to sell over a million copies.

Edited November 18, 20186 yr by Esmerelda

Texas’ Greatest Hits in 2000 springs to mind in a similar vein. Yes they were popular and had a few quite big singles spanning a long period but at the time I thought it would be a quick success, maybe half a million sales at most, yet it hung around forever and has sold about 2 million copies!

Yes I was surprised by the Texas one too!

 

 

 

Next one for me... Even with the Calvin Harris element that obviously was the significant reason for success, I never even vaguely saw Spectrum from Florence and the Machine as being a chart topper.

One of the biggest surprises for me has to be the success of a song as weird as O Superman (Laurie Anderson).

 

I heard this for the first time very recently as part of a 'songs to hear before you die' book I'm working my way through and I was stunned to hear this was a number 2! Sounds really unique even today so lord knows how ahead of it's time it must've sounded when it was released, a wonderful song though.

 

The biggest surprise success for me at least since I started paying attention to popular music was always Welcome to the Black Parade by My Chemical Romance, I would've never expected a song like that to reach number 1, it wasn't even particularly radio friendly!

All Over The World : The Very Best Of Electric Light Orchestra getting to number 1 in 2016,eleven years after it was released,was a pleasant surprise for me.

I heard this for the first time very recently as part of a 'songs to hear before you die' book I'm working my way through and I was stunned to hear this was a number 2! Sounds really unique even today so lord knows how ahead of it's time it must've sounded when it was released, a wonderful song though.

 

The biggest surprise success for me at least since I started paying attention to popular music was always Welcome to the Black Parade by My Chemical Romance, I would've never expected a song like that to reach number 1, it wasn't even particularly radio friendly!

I first heard O Superman on John Peel's show, so I was quite used to hearing some weird stuff! Of course, I never expected it to be a hit of any kind, so seeing it climb all the way to number two was pretty extraordinary. Listeners to the chart show in its first week must have got quite a shock :lol:

Kylie Minogue's Spinning Around in 2000.

The 1975's Medicine making it to Number One on the Vinyl Singles Chart in 2017 (three years after its release).

 

Spinning Around is a good shout actually, I wasn't expecting her to return to #1 either after the way the second half of the 90s went for her.