One Hit Wonders

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This discussion about a certain persona non grata makes me think about a song by a certain band, which happens to have one and only one hit.


This song is appropriate enough for that particular person, but this is not the song I have in mind though. Their single Lies did not become a hit because Yoko Ono put a kibosh on it, the song containing a sample of the guy who murdered Lennon.

 

The last one in particular's interesting. The actual song itself is a mess, but people bought it because the sped-up parts featured in an advert for Levi's jeans. In fact, quite a few one hit wonders of the UK charts largely owed their success to Levi's.

 
New Radicals- "You only get what you give" It's corny white people music but it is relaxing and has a good vibe to it.
Chamillionaire- "Ridin Dirty" Really good beat and nice lyrical flow.
Vapors- "Turning Japanese" Catchy and energetic.
Alien Antfarm's "Smooth Criminal" Great cover, I like the MJ version too.
 
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The music, is of course, Women of Ireland by Sean O'Riada.
 
AnOminous said:
Because the people who watched Donnie Darko had never heard the original (well the young ones anyway).
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The Gary Jules cover did get a lot of airplay when Donnie Darko came out to be fair. However considering Google is more widely used than it was back then surely the people who were kids at the time that was released would bother to research it now?
 
LagoonaBlue said:
The Gary Jules cover did get a lot of airplay when Donnie Darko came out to be fair. However considering Google is more widely used than it was back then surely the people who were kids at the time that was released would bother to research it now?
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You would think. Sometimes things just slip through the cracks and what's old is new again and all that, even if the original gets ingnored.
 
This gem.


The Wikipedia article on 3 of a Kind states that they performed this song on the day they met.
 
The best indicator that a song will be a one hit wonder is if it has some kind of novelty or gimmick like Gangnam Style, or Who Let the Dogs Out. Especially if it has a dance associated with it like Soulja Boy Crank dat, or the Macarena. Another indicator if your in America, is if the song is a really popular song from a foreign artist, who may be famous overseas.

I feel like Japanese pop is qausi one hit wonder in America because the most mainstream way someone here would hear them is through anime opening and closings. Especially if the show was on Adult Swim or Toonami when more people watched regular tv Pre-Hulu.
 
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Picklepower said:
The best indicator that a song will be a one hit wonder is if it has some kind of novelty or gimmick like Gangnam Style, or Who Let the Dogs Out.
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PSY could be considered a two hit wonder. Both Gangnam Style and Gentleman both charted worldwide and overshadowed PSY's earlier and subsequent works.

Here's some more I forgot about.

 


I think there were a LOT of 1970s disco songs that fall into this thread's theme, but this one springs to mind...

According to Wikipedia, this one was #1 for six weeks, back when such a ranking actually meant something.

This guy actually started calling himself the "Duke of Earl."

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IIRC this was written as a protest song about the evils of slam dancing.
 
LagoonaBlue said:
Men Without Hats were two hit wonders, says Wikipedia. They had another song that reached #20 in 1987.
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News to me, though with The Knack (two top 20 songs) and Sweet (three or four, I think, possibly more) in this thread as well can't see how that would be an issue.

And somebody like Joan Osborne or Gary Numan being in this thread? Yeah, both only had one "hit," but both have actually had a long career in music, dunno that I'd include them, in the "here today, gone tomorrow" sense I personally think of when I think of one hit wonders.
 
Elwood P. Dowd said:
And somebody like Joan Osborne or Gary Numan being in this thread? Yeah, both only had one "hit," but both have actually had a long career in music, dunno that I'd include them, in the "here today, gone tomorrow" sense I personally think of when I think of one hit wonders.
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IIRC Gary Numan still does tours.

Here's another one hit wonder.

 
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