Which major hit songs are country specific

Which of these four was the biggest hit?

The chances are that you have heard of only one of them, which one depends on where you are from. This page lists the hits that were most closely tied to a particular country or region.

Imagine this, you're writing the screenplay for a spy thriller set in 1987 where the hero has to visit various bars scattered all over the world. Of course when you want to establish that a bar is in Brisbane (for example) you could have some of the extras wear hats with corks and speak with broad Australian accents, but you feel you can do better. Well, we can help you, if you have "Slice of Heaven" by Dave Dobbyn & Herbs playing in the background then anyone in the know will congratulate you on your authenticity. A few scenes later when you need to subtly establish that the bar is in Liverpool then you play "Under the Boardwalk" by Bruce Willis, if you don't care for subtlty then "Star Trekkin'" by The Firm should be your choice.

Those particular songs were big hits in one territory but didn't do well anywhere else. With a bit of processing we can identify the most "distinct" songs for each year. If we divide the world up into the USA, UK, Germany, France, Canada, the Antipodes (Australia and New Zealand) and Scandanavia (Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland) then we have enough data to identify the most distinctive hits from 1960 to 2004.

Here are the list of chart topping songs (of the whole year) that were not hits anywhere outside their specific regions:

The multiple entries for the UK in 2004 are an artifact of the low volumes of data we have for later years (we've removed the ones after that year).

Distinct Songs of the USA

The most distinctive songs of the USA are:

There is an additional page that gives more deatils about distinct songs of the USA.

Distinct Songs of the UK

The most distinctive songs of the UK are:

There is an additional page that gives more deatils about distinct songs of the UK.

Distinct Songs of Germany

The most distinctive songs of Germany are:

There is an additional page that gives more deatils about distinct songs of Germany.

Distinct Songs of France

The most distinctive songs of France are:

There is an additional page that gives more deatils about distinct songs of France.

Distinct Songs of the Antipodies

The most distinctive songs of the Antipodies are:

There is an additional page that gives more deatils about distinct songs of the Antipodies.

Distinct Songs of Scandanavia

The most distinctive songs of Scandanavia are:

There is an additional page that gives more deatils about distinct songs of Scandanavia.

Distinct Songs of Canada

The most distinctive songs of Canada are:

There is an additional page that gives more deatils about distinct songs of Canada.

These were calculated for data version 2.3.39

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