“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?

My OH attended a conference in the USA was asked if he knew the Beatles!!!! The USA and obviously now Canada are clearly oblivious to the UK musical scene

A younger colleague asked if Albania was a real country.
I confirmed it indeed is.

She then asked what the people who live there are called.
I said Albanians.

She said, so they're not albinos.
No sweetie, that's a different thing.......

My daughter won a music quiz at school as she was the only one to recognise Madonna!
This was 2 years ago aged 14, I feel we have given her a good music education at least!

My colleague asked me what “a Bruce Springsteen” was after I told her what I’d been up to at the weekend!

The original and best!

I recently came across the Amy Winehouse exhibition outside King's Cross Station (north of it) and it made me really nostalgic.

I then realized that my 13 year old son, who has started putting together playlists with his friends that include quite old songs ('Hotel California'?!) probably hasn't heard of her, and if I tried to interest him that would make her uncool....

She was such a shooting star, so talented and so distinctive. I love 'back in black' and I mostly listen to ancient music (as in, 17/18th century). Good job your Canadian friends now at least know her name and voice.

I think this requires a subversive mission to expose him without him knowing it's your intention haha

I really don’t believe that.

Someone my age didn't know who Beyonce was, never heard of her and when I showed her a picture, nope, never seen her.
To be fair, I have a different friend who is into classical music, the "famous" people he mentions don't mean a thing to me.

Mine was not knowing that port the alcoholic drink was made in Portugal 🫣.

When David Bowie died it was announced on the radio at work and I told a colleague who had been out of the room.

She'd never heard of him and it blew my mind! She's late 50s 😳

Mid 40's, first time of heard of that name.

I was talking to a colleague at work the other week about concerts that we had both been to now this colleague is early 20's and I mentioned i had been to see Christina Aguilera a couple of times in concert and that she's my fave singer. He was like "who's that" i was honestly shocked as I thought everyone would know who Christina Aguilera is i mean she is a global superstar i was shocked. But I guess not everyone will know the same things as everyone else.

What i was mostly getting at is that there are people you (I) would have thought's fame/reknown transcended the grouping that they're in (like genre of music, or moreso transcended the 'music' world at all), in their infamy, and wasn't dependent on other factors like age etc.

Think like (almost) as 'famous as Jesus' to the extent that is unfathomable for someone to have NO awareness at all of who/what they are.

Tbf Amy isn't/wasn't quite on that level for me, but some of the people others have mentioned (like the Pope or the Beatles) are.

That is so hard to understand. I mean David Bowie was everywhere in the 70’s and 80’s and usually causing a stir/controversy. I just think even if you weren’t into music..you could hardly miss him!
My own kids have had a wide ranging musical education so I’m pretty sure they have heard of everyone on here and we chat a lot about events from our youth…maybe that makes a difference.

That’s incredible to me. I’m 63, and JA was all over the news for so many years!

I worked with a colleague who had never heard of the Equator…

Who?

Christ. Even 75 year old Brazilian MIL is an Amy fan 😆

My husband didn’t know who Whitney Houston was when she died. That puzzled me for ages!!

Actual wow.

He must have heard of ‘ I will always love you ‘ ! It was number one for weeks on end at one time.

Wonder if he remembers Mary Archer, the fragrant wife!

Me too. The girl playing the sax was so cool.

The misunderstanding of the world map/globe always surprises me. I've talked about this friend on another similar thread about things that people just don't realise or fail to put together (She thought bread crusts had a different nutritional profile than the crumb of the loaf) but I missed out that we shared another, male friend/co worker and the surreal conversations between the pair of them in that bar and restaurant kitchen were wonderful.

"You know Dens?"
"Yes! He's lovely!"
"He's Danish, right? But his mum comes from Greenland..."
"Aah. Why do you think he has those, those, sort of eyes?"
"Sort of Japanese?"
"Yeah!"
"It makes no sense because Japan and Asia couldn't be further away from Canada and Greenland!"
"Bizarre."

There was a similar debate about Pearl Harbor between the pair of them about how long it must have taken to fly from Japan to America. Being as they were on completely different sides of the map and the Japanese must have flown across Russia, Europe, the Atlantic Ocean....and all without being caught!

This was just after 9/11 so, "Another Pearl Harbor" was being mentioned a lot.

I kept out of it but I kept thinking, "IT JOINS UP AT THE BACK. AND ANYWAY, PEARL HARBOR WAS IN HAWAII!"

They did try to engage in thought though. The discourse could get quite deep and meaningful sometimes.

Although the Magellan Projection is so daft that it can be understandable that people get confused.

Then you run into that terrible talk that starts, "Say I've got an orange."

Which is seconds away from the Father Ted scene about, "These cows are small. Those cows are farther away."

This was quite a few years ago but some of the younger ones at work had never heard of the IRA. It blew my mind!