Half me, half the cultural milieu maybe? It’s really hard for me to tell. Like maybe that song is a mainstream radio staple in the US, I have no idea. It definitely isn’t here. “R&B” is not even a term used for that here by the way, that strictly means later urban styles like Destiny’s Child, Usher etc. The representation of black music here has been quite different because we had no local black population. There are a handful of soul songs with mainstream popularity but much of it never really penetrated mainstream consciousness. Likewise, there’s a classic hip hop track submitted for category 8 (hi Johnny!) but it’ll be WesleyC’s first time hearing it, because he doesn’t listen to the genre and you didn’t pick that stuff up by osmosis in the 90’s the way I assume you did in the US.
Part of my struggles with obviousness relate to this cultural gap, this was brought home to me the other day in the Let’s fight about artists with one clear best song thread, when suzzer suggested that the “iconic” Elton John song was Bennie and the Jets. That song never charted in Australia and gets zero radio rotation, I would assume that most people under 40 here don’t even know it, whereas I could rattle off like 10 Elton John songs that everyone would reliably know.
So like with O-o-h Child, I put the song on, am like “oh yeah this sounds familiar, I’ve heard this before I think” then I google and find out it’s some sort of classic. I saw before doing the placings that it was in the top 500, etc. So then I just don’t know if it’s me or the culture, because I don’t know why I don’t know things, if you follow. It’s also hard to even tell if (in the US) it’s something like Jackson 5’s “I Want You Back”, which is still thrashed here on radio and in clubs on a daily basis, or more has the status of a forgotten classic.
In before WesleyC rolls into the thread and is like “you moron, everyone knows that song”.