Kraftwerk - Autobahn (1975)
Oh sure, we could see a song like this being a Top 40 hit in Europe, but the idea that a song as experimental as Kraftwerk's "Autobahn" would ever infiltrate the radio playlists of conservative America was laughable right up until the point where we began hearing the song next to Barry Manilow, the Carpenters and Olivia Newton-John.
Much as we loved to dream about an alternate universe where Kraftwerk ruled the charts, for one brief moment in time, "America, 1975" actually got to be that weird alternate universe where such things were a reality. Of course, that wasn't the first time such a thing had happened.
Lou Reed - Walk On The Wild Side (1973)
Two years prior to the success of Kraftwerk's "Autobahn", Lou Reed spun a delightfully hedonistic tale of life on the street that, inexplicably, became a commercially-successful chart hit for a guy not exactly known for moving a lot of units.
That "Wild Side" not only made it past the censors, but went on to be a pretty seismic radio hit before vaulting into the Top 20 remains one of rock's unlikeliest success stories.
It remains Reed's only actual chart hit in the States.
Gary Numan - Cars (1979)
When you consider that most of what gets played on the radio is little more than a carbon copy of something else that got played on the radio, you come to recognize and appreciate the occasional left-field hits that sound strange at the time, but, in hindsight, signify the beginning of a "new wave".
Having just graduated from Kiss and the Beatles to Cheap Trick, Elvis Costello and Tom Petty, we recall reading about Gary Numan's "Cars" in the underground rock press one minute and stunned to hear it being played - on purpose, no less - by the local Top 40 radio station the next.
What next, Killing Joke and Gang of Four on "American Bandstand"?
The visceral thrill of watching the local good ol' boys 'n gals do a double-take anytime this "alien bullshit" came out of their radios after "Slow Ride" and "Cat Scratch Fever" never failed to amuse. Must admit, the first time we heard it next to Bonnie Tyler's "It's A Heartache" and Exile's "Kiss You All Over" we knew what it must have been like to hear Orson Welles' "The War of The Worlds" radio broadcast back in 1938.
"Holy shit, the aliens are taking over!"
Though it would not signify a string of U.S. hits for Numan, it did help open the floodgates to a host of new wave acts who, next to Numan, suddenly didn't seem so weird anymore.
The Kinks - Lola (1970)
The only way it makes sense for a song as unconventional as "Lola" - about a romantic liaison with a trans-gender individual - to become a Top 20 U.S. chart hit is that the band responsible for said hit should be the saddest lot you can imagine: The Kinks were well past their "You Really Got Me" days and going on four years without a hit before "Lola"'s unlikely success made Ray Davies look like a fookin' genius again.
Don't presume the song just coasted past otherwise stodgy Top 40 radio censors, though: upon reviewing the song's lyrics, there was one immediate request: instead of singing "Coca Cola", as on the album version, could Ray and the boys sing the more generic "cherry cola" instead?
The band obliged, rush-released the single before anybody could change their mind, and the rest is rock & roll fantasy.
Love & Rockets - So Alive (1988)
There were SO many possible radio hits from the band's '86 effort Express. Their combustive cover of "Ball Of Confusion" alone should have made them a household name, to say nothing of "Life In Laralei", "All In My Mind" or "Kundalini Express".
After the ambitiously-dumbed-down-for-the-U.S.-market Earth, Sun, Moon failed to do much of anything, sales-wise, few could we have foreseen the ghostly refrain of "I"m Alive! So alive!" set to a hypnotic drum machine loop as the vehicle Love & Rockets would take to #3 on the U.S. Singles chart, a sort of "We Will Rock You" for the goth set.
The Clash - Rock The Casbah (1982)
Anybody scanning left-of-the-dial radio stations in the late '70s was well aware of how potent a pop band the Clash had become since London Calling. What other band could follow a near-perfect double-album with a triple-album?!
By the time Combat Rock hit stores, those of us still wading through Sandinista! were relieved to see that it was only a single album.
Admittedly, we'd have put our money on "Should I Stay Or Should I Go" being the breakthrough radio and MTV hit that it sure sounded like on first listen, but nobody could have predicted that the funkier, reggae-adjacent "Casbah" would outsell it and become the band's only U.S. Top 10 hit.
By that logic, the stylistically similar "The Magnificent Seven" (from Sandinista!) should have gone Top 40, minimum. In the end, it wasn't that the Clash finally got their Top 10 hit, but that, out of all of the many willing contenders, "Casbah" was the one that ultimately did the trick.
After all, it was a song largely created by the band's drummer Topper Headon, who they'd fired just prior to releasing it as their next single.