One Hit Wonders

Coach asked me to write a little esoteric post about one hit wonders and so I decided to take a brief respite from the vagaries of life to oblige.  I mentioned to Coach that I was listening to "Just A Friend" by Biz Markie on repeat.  While this may have been an outright lie, it still remains to be true that I love that song.  Perhaps the message is a tad unsettling, but it sure has a tremendous hook.  I started to think about all the other one-hit wonders that have populated the airwaves and what key components set them apart.

Now I'm not here to analyze song structure or anything like that.  Rather, I'm merely intrigued by all the wonderful songs out there that have achieved hit status but whose artists were never able to capture that lightning in a bottle again.  Some are obvious - "The Macarena" was a once in a lifetime type of song, but it was also novelty in its purest form.  Try as they might, the irreplaceable Los Del Rio were never going to be able to replicate the song/dance phenomenon that they had created.  They were the dictionary definition of one-hit wonder.  Likewise, did anybody ever think that Vanilla Ice was going to be able to make another song as popular as the egocentrically monikered "Ice Ice Baby"?  Sometimes it's painfully obvious that a particular song is going to be doomed to the one-hit wonder section of the record store.

There are other times when the overpowering success of a band's biggest single obscures the rest of their catalogue.  The best case of this is a-ha, which released the mighty popular "Take On Me" in the mid 1980's.  The epic music video helped propel the song to the top of the charts and a-ha was seemingly on its way.  Their follow-up single, "The Sun Always Shines On T.V." reached the top 20 on the charts and they even sang "The Living Daylights" for a James Bond movie.  But those and many other glories are always going to be overshadowed by the fantastic aglomeration of beauty that is "Take On Me," thereby permanently sequestering them to the one-hit wonder corner as well.

So what is it that makes a one-hit wonder?  It definitely has a bit to do with novelty.  I'm not talking overt novelty (i.e. David Bowie's "The Laughing Gnome") but songs that capitalize on a musical genre that has not been approached, usually for a good reason.  Songs like "Come On Eileen" (Irish folk-pop), "Tubthumping" (alternative proto-dance), "99 Luftballoons" (German pop), and "Don't Worry, Be Happy" (reggae dance-pop) are going to seem interesting in the moment but will quickly lose their charms.  Once Dexy's Midnight Runners released "Come On Eileen," we'd had our fill of Irish jigs masquerading as pop songs.  It's the old adage popularized by the irrepresible Greek legend Socrates - "Everything in moderation."  While there are some genres that can stand the test of time - boy band pop, for instance - there are many others that don't catch on simply because they don't have a consistent audience.  This is not the fault of the singers or songwriters, but rather the narrowly refined tastes of the purchasing public.  As always in the entertainment business, the customer is always right.

It's also important to remember that it is extremely difficult to achieve even one hit, let alone follow it up with a string of hits.  To just record one hit, as superfluous as it may be, is an incredible achievement.  We should be applauding those one-hit wonders.  They've earned our adulation and respect, not our laughter and pointed fingers.  With the proper props, perhaps we'll be rewarded with more timeless anthems like "Who Let The Dogs Out" and "Baby Got Back."  I'm beyond thrilled to see what comes next.