Maybe the commonality of soccer is the key factor!
I suspect you were using the quote from my post as a launch vehicle, and that's fine.
Don't silo yourself into that thinking just because your earlier attempts at learning didn't work for you. You are able to learn another language just as you were able to learn English. The defect is in the system, not you.
I'm currently working on a project to build a national simulcast network with over 70 transmitters in Bolivia (it's, unfortunately, on hold due to the pandemic). I did stand-alone stations as far back as the 70's.
My classroom taught me the words and grammar stuff in Spanish claass, listening to the tropical bands made me able to hold a conversation. My classmates wouldn't have been able to find the restroom, I could rent a motel room. Now that's atrophied from lack of use but I can semi-read and identify stations.
I was not in mainland US radio when he had most of his hits, so I do not know how he was marketed in the US. And, with the closer connection between the UK and Canada, did he get more exposure via promotion and airplay there than in the US?
I learned Spanish from the radio. Every night in Cleveland, I'd tape HJED in Cali, Colombia on 820 AM and that next evening, while doing homework, would listen to the overnight show. I did not use a dictionary; I learned like a baby does by repetition and context. I guess they call that "immersion" or something like that.
I think you hit the nail on the head. Disco and rock were what was happening in the U.S. in the mid-late 70s (not appealing to the same audience of course), most pop for whatever reason was kind of uncool. Not that Abba was any less corporate-sounding than Bad Company, Journey or Kansas, but they for whatever reason were perceived that way. I see very little similarity between them and the Carpenters.
At least some of his singles were released here as far back as the late 50s, but I don't recall much of any promotional push behind them. The station I worked at in 1968 played a song of his called "Congratulations", but it was a stiff, peaking at #99 in Billboard. He did have several charters in the early-ish 60s, including a couple that made the top 40, none of which are familiar to me.
Cliff must have had some promotion in the U.S.---he actually made #30 in 1959 with "Living Doll", which I'd describe more as like half of the Everly Brothers than an Elvis clone. Here's the link:
I remember hearing "Congratulations" on the BBC World Service's "Top 20" program via shortwave. It was pure MOR, albeit uptempo. It sounded like something Andy Williams might have wanted to record.
Mitch Miller was trying to shape the career of Aretha Franklin? That's one of the scariest "what ifs" I've ever seen on these boards.
I'm a firm believer that some people have a natural gift for being able to learn and speak other languages and they catch on rather quickly, while some of us have a much more difficult time. I have a few friends who were born and raised near the Mediterranean Sea, and it's relatively common there for people to know multiple languages and be able to interchange them... Spanish, French and Italian roll off their tongues pretty readily. In Scandanavian countries, in some cases they may not be able to speak the language of a nearby country, but they can usually understand most words and gather enough of what's being said to understand what's being said to them.
I believe our choices were Spanish, German and Latin. French had been discontinued and since it was a heavily, if not predominant, German area, German was on the menu (my classmates spoke English and though some of their grandparents still spoke German at home, that wasn't passed down.). I was told by my guidance counselor that I shouldn't try Spanish but I did. I was the only one in my class who could hold conversations with actual sentences with our exchange student. Thank you Ecos del Torbes, Radio Barquisimeto and several others
I think radio helped many with languages. Every so often my mother would allow me to call XEB-1220 in Mexico City, "La B Grande de México", and request a song. The overnight announcer recognized me after the second or third call, and would put me on the air and joke about a listener who was 3,000 kilometers away. He also knew the songs I liked and would sometimes even ask which of them I wanted to hear!
