A Nostalgic Look At Those One-Hit Musical Wonders

Music soothes the savage beast and so forth and such like. Where would we be without music eh? Well, we’d not be singing along or tapping our feet that’s for one thing. From Beethoven to Mozart, from Elvis to Fats Domino, from David Bowie to Louis Armstrong, from Frank Sinatra to The Four Tops, from The Sex Pistols to Glenn Miller, from Alice Cooper to Bryan Adams, from Madness to Bob Marley – oh all right, I’ll stop now before this entire article becomes a list of musicians and singers and bands that I enjoy.

Eclectic tastes, that’s what I’ve got. I love music – well, not garage and house and techno and most rap and pleeeeease don’t get me started about ‘disco’ –  but that’s only because even my eclectic tastes have a limit. I’m sure there’s many out there who love Bob Marley and garage music for some strange reason. What ever they’re on perhaps they could let me have some?

There’s always been music hasn’t there? There was music in B.C. times – the Romans and so forth had music. There’s music everywhere – well, possibly not in Iran or places of that ilk as they don’t generally seem to like it but it’s their loss. Of course there are musical compositions that stand the test of time whether classical or otherwise. The Rolling Stones ‘Paint It Black’ I can listen to at least twice a day. The Four Seasons by Vivaldi is to die for when your chilling at home, beer in hand, nothing on the telly so play it again Vivaldi!

There are, however, in my view, a number of somewhat ‘unsung’ musical heroes. They all reside firmly in the world of rock and pop if only because I’m not aware that many, if any, classical composers of the past only had ‘one hit’. I’m sure that there were ‘one hit wonders’ before rock and pop but, frankly, as the term was virtually unknown then I’m going to ignore them. Sorry. You’re ignored. Besides, if it happened before rock and pop you’re probably dead anyway.

‘One Hit Wonders’ is a phrase that entered the psyche many moons ago but, at the same time, only entered the psyche somewhere around the 60’s or, more likely, the 70’s.

The term refers, of course, to singers and / or bands who had a success with a song and never repeated the success. It may have been their debut song or even their third or fourth offering. It may be that they’d been around for ages but never had a hit. What ever the circumstances they had their hit and  then, generally, went back to gigging in pubs and / or sleeping on park benches hoping for another hit one day.

It’s very easy to dismiss ‘one hit wonders’ as, well, ‘one hit wonders’ but, almost without exception (and I’m not including stupid songs like ‘Mr Blobby’ or ‘The Birdie Song’ in this) for a brief moment in time they captured ‘something’. It was, in their case, something impermanent and almost ‘effervescent’ in a way. Something they could never ‘catch’ again. Did they look on enviously at Elvis or The Beatles or Green day or Diana Ross? Possibly but their ‘moment of glory’ can never die because somehow, they touched something with just one tune, just one song. Somehow they found their musical nirvana just the once because they touched us too.

Deep Blue Something ‘Breakfast At Tiffany’s’ – Awesome

Chumbawumba ‘Tubthumping’ – Magnificent! Pissing the night away!

Baha Men ‘Who Let The Dogs Out’ (dedicated to Mike) – Mucho awesomeness!!

Of course some ‘one hit wonders’ did have other ‘hits’ but their other hits weren’t nearly as successful as their ‘one hit’ tunes so they have become ever more known as ‘one hit wonders’.

So you see, dear readers,  you can waffle on about the greats like Madonna or Whitney or The Doors or Bon Jovi or Aerosmith or pretty much any singer / band who has enjoyed longevity and, let’s face it, even if they weren’t playing music we liked ourselves we can at least acknowledge they had talent and survived and enjoyed long careers doing what they loved and good luck to them.

Spare a thought though for ‘the one hit wonders’. They tried to ‘join the club’ and, after briefly thinking they’d joined it suddenly and, perhaps, inexplicably found they hadn’t.

But for one brief moment in time they touched us, the music listening public. For one brief moment in time they mattered just as much as The Rolling Stones and Elvis.

Never forget the ‘one hit wonders’ because they gave us something marvellous and, as they only did it once, it is all the more precious.

Can you dig it?

Happy

0 0 %

Sad

0 0 %

Excited

0 0 %

Sleepy

0 0 %

Angry

0 0 %

Surprise

0 0 %