“Amy Winehouse? Who?” - What’s your “surely everyone knows who/what” moment?

[hotpotina]

I was with some fairly new Canadian friends recently and "Valarie" by Amy Winehouse came on. I immediately started humming/singing along and one of them asked “what's this song?” I said (probably with a confused expression) “ It's... Valerie... by Amy Winehouse...” and they both said they'd never heard of her.

Now, I KNOW. I KNOW there are massive cultural, generational and geographical differences in what people know. Obviously I do. But for some reason Amy Winehouse is just so completely embedded in my personal schema that for a second I genuinely couldn't compute someone not knowing who she was. She feels (to me) like one of those people who are simply there in people's consciousness; whether you actually like them or they were ever particularly relevant to your life seems almost beside the point.

It made me realise how funny these little cultural blind spots are. There must be many things that are ubiquitous to one person, that another person has somehow just never encountered.

Have you ever had this happen, where someone didn't know something/person that you genuinely presumed consciously or subconsciously was universal known? And do you have a “surely EVERYONE knows who/what they are” person (or thing etc) that you'd be surprised if someone had no knowledge of that thing?

I think I can trump all these

Nelson Mandela

There are.

Me too. I wonder how many people think it’s her song, when one of their band wrote it! They must make a tonne in royalties.

I once met a man who had had an English upbringing who had never heard of Winnie the Pooh!

My In laws are buried at Highgate cemetery. I was joking with DH when in the taxi to the burial that his dad would be thrilled to be near Karl Marx and would enjoy a good post-death barney or two with him. The taxi driver asked ‘who’s Karl Marx?’ What was even more odd about it was that the taxi driver was originally from a former communist country that I used to live and work in and we had talked about his homeland as part of small talk so I knew where we had been brought up.

I was told by a Gen Z that I was “badly educated” because I didn’t know that Hailey Bieber is the daughter of one of the Baldwin brothers. 🙄

Your DP can’t have watched the first Bridget Jones movie in that case!

No real excuses for ignorance when people can look up everything on the internet and not have to go to the library to find out information in books! I think that if a modern day person was in the news and I hadn’t heard of them I’d just look it up, but some people just don’t or simply no interest there.

I went to see Nigel Harman in The Da Vinci Code. Later, I was telling a much younger colleague about going to see Dennis from EE on the stage.

THEM: Who's Dennis?
ME: You know, Sharon's brother/boyfriend.
THEM: Who's Sharon?

😐😐😐

Loads of people don’t watch the soaps anymore ! I sometimes mention Eastenders to people and they look blank , but I am a super fan tbf.

He was the answer to a crossword clue I'd ask my 85 Yr old mum in her hospital bed. I was somewhat surprised she got it instantly. She only ever listened to classical.

Age is a massive factor possibly the biggest, how any people listen to music far outside what they musically came of age to?

Certainly not 25 plus years either way imo

Me neither (late 50s)

No I bet he hasn’t seen it - and he’d probably say “who’s Bridget Jones?” if I ask him.

I was doorstepped by two Mormon missionaries who had never heard of the Pope. Like, ANY Pope.

Salman Rushdie also features briefly in the first Bridget Jones film ! May have heard of him ?

As they are literally hundreds of thousands of TV programmes it would be impossible to have heard of every character in every one, surely that's not unusual at all.

Futurama isn't a mainstream programme is it?

Well, yeah I find it surprising but I’d have said ‘it’s Amy Whitehouse doing her lesser version of the Zutons song Valerie’ because I’m pedantic about things like that and The Zutons are one of my favourite bands! 😉

A month or so ago a second year university student at Nottingham revealed he did not know who Andy Burnham was. 'Is he left wing?' he asked. When informed that AB was the PM, he thought I was pulling his leg. 'But I'd know - and there hasn't been an election.' Didn't know who was leader of the opposition, either. Had heard of Nigel Farage.

Few weeks ago I was at hairdressers and was talking about concert i went- Oasis and Richard Ashcroft.
She said doesn't know who is Richard Ashcroft and Oasis said only heard ever one song Wonderwall. She is in early 30s.
My colleague is the same- never heard any Britpop bands, early 30s, very meekly heard of Oasis but not their songs.

Okay, so, confession: I didn't know 'who' the Zutons were! (Although I had heard their version of the song and knew it was the original)

I think it's mostly not knowing Amy because she's such an icon, aside from Valarie (while the popularity of that song has played a big part in that), which got me, not necessarily the song (like, I would have done the same thing if it was 'Rehab' playing)

My 16 year old did a history quiz today and knew Bob Dylan, the quiz was run by upper sixth, she is in lower so that's promising. Also got Ronald Reagan and Maggie.

Lot's of teenagers, Oasis, Pulp etc. I know lots that weren't of my era as well, granted some of that is through parents or what was on the radio.

Aberfan ( the coal tip disaster) Mr neighbour in his 70 s had never heard of it ( UK born and bred )

Only just a few hours ago, there was an new episode of Bridge of Lies on BBC1, with a round looking for songs paired with their original artists (the truths), and the lies were artists who had later covered the songs.

One of the early choices was 'Valerie & The Zutons" and the contestant instantly swerved it and said "Well, obviously not that one as that was an Amy Winehouse song!"