Canon-forming and pop

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

On today's poll thread Cis raises the spectre (which may be a benign spectre, and may not be spectral at all) of a 'pop canon'.

I have a couple of questions which may or may not relate to it:

Are there any very well-known (and ideally well-loved) pop songs that weren't especially popular when first released?

Are there any very well-known and well-loved pop songs that have never actually been hit singles?

Comments

[martinskidmore.livejournal.com]

There are hugely canonical and popular non-singles, but not much within pop - the biggest example would perhaps be Stairway To Heaven.

'Popular' here is slippery - do you mean that weren't hits, or that were critically reviled but admired later? An awful lot of '60s pop was treated with no critical love at the time. I always recall John Peel saying that back in the '60s he thought Tony Blackburn was an idiot for thinking that Marvin Gaye and Smokey Robinson would be admired in decades to come and Iron Butterfly or whoever wouldn't be.