Time differences between UK and US charts

Pawnless Endgame

Pawnless Endgame

Pawnless Endgame

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I've been looking at Wiki's one-hit wonders list of the 1990s for United States. Yes, while a few had more than 1 hit in the UK, I'm surprised to see so many songs that are outside of their own year in comparison to the UK charts. My main era was 1994/5/6, so I'm looking at:

- Ini Kamoze, Here Comes The Hotstepper.. 1994, should be 1995
- Corona, The Rhythm of the Night.. 1995, should be 1994
- 2 Unlimited, Get Ready for this.. 1995 wtf that should be 1991!
- The Luniz, I got 5 on it.. 1995, should be 1996
- Everything but the Girl, Missing.. 1996, should be 1995

...and so on.

Did this really happen?
 
Emotionally, I tend to put the songs in the years that I heard them, so I found it strange to see that the US chart was a year out on some of them. I just wondered if the US chart really was slightly out from ours, knowing that Wikipedia isn't always accurate.
 
what are you talking about?
music releases aren't like film releases, they're almost always promoted by a tour/public appearances. So a release in one country could take weeks/months.

That's completely ignoring that the US is a different music beast to the UK and Europe, most artists won't break the US at all, some won't try until they can afford to etc etc etc.

Don't understand what's surprising you really
 
For any one of those songs, they may have become popular here then broke over in the US, or vice versa. Anything could have happened. Remember that in the early 90s there was barely any electronic media so the popular charts weren't as universal as they are today. Most of Europe used to be months behind the UK in terms of chart releases. These days singles tend to become popular worldwide at around the same time thanks to electronic downloads etc.
 
Maybe the clubbing type of tracks - I definitely remember watching the European charts on MTV and it mainly being tracks that had already left the UK chart. I may be recalling mid-late 90s though. Thinking about it, I guess that could also mean the popular songs just stay in their charts longer, and that the UK are more fickle. Who knows!
 
I'd not thought about it before but I had experienced hearing songs on the continent a few months before they made it big here, not club stuff, but usually non EU stuff, in the 90's. But the overall impression I've always had when visiting the continent is that their musical taste is 5+ years behind that of the UK, same usually goes for fashion etc.
 
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