One-Hit-Wonders – those musical artists that conquered the charts with a single release and then faded back into obscurity – are the meat and potatoes of pop music nostalgists. There are entire compilation CD box sets devoted to those acts that recorded a single song that remains beloved by millions and yet couldn’t sell another record anywhere. The unfortunate bands and singers in question sit uncomfortably somewhere between novelty records (which many one-hit-wonders unquestionably are, to confuse the issue even more) and ‘proper’ music. Having had just the one hit single seems worse than having had none at all in many ways, forever dooming you to be connected to that particular song, no matter what else you may have done. Some acts can make a living off that single hit (especially if it is a Christmas hit that can be trotted out every year) and many a nostalgia-circuit act will keep going by performing shows where everyone in the audience is impatiently awaiting the one song that they all know.
The problem with one-hit-wonders is that they rarely have had just one hit. To dismiss an act as such, you must first be very geographically specific. Many of the acts labelled one-hit-wonders are European (or otherwise international) bands and singers that broke through to the British and American markets with a single song but who have had much more success in their home territory or across Europe. The same is true of British acts who had a single hit record in America – and so can and will be called one-hit-wonders in the US – but who had considerable success back home. Do we define the success of an act based on a single international territory, one that they might not have even been particularly targeting to begin with?
For acts that don’t sing in English, their chances of continuing any fluke success in the UK in particular seem unlikely because of how the system worked until very recently. Back when radio still mattered, British broadcasters like Radio 1 had the habit of effectively creating one-hit-wonders by playlisting one song by an artist but then ignoring everything else that they did. With little exposure to the single-buying public and their foreignness treated as a ‘novelty’, how could any act build enough momentum to have more than a single hit? I suspect that most British radio listeners would have no idea that acts like Nena or Alizee had even released anything beyond their fluke hits. Without airplay, a hit record for an artist without an established fan base was almost impossible.
This doesn’t just apply to European acts – many UK and US one-hit-wonders found themselves flavour of the week amongst the broadcasters with one song, only to be ignored afterwards. We can’t underestimate just how much Radio 1 controlled what was or wasn’t successful in the UK singles chart and how fickle they were with their treatment of artists who were not the media darlings. Some acts would be guaranteed playlisting; others found that the radio Gods only smiled upon them once.
Things become even more complicated when we try to define what a ‘hit’ actually is. In Britain, the Top 40 is a Sunday evening staple and so there is a solid case for arguing that any record in the Top 40 is a hit, even though something that creeps in at number 39 for one week hardly seems to qualify. On the other hand, Top of the Pops only ran down the Top 30 and the official British charts used to go to the Top 75; now, like in America, it’s the Hot 100. Where do we draw the line as to what is or isn’t a hit? When it comes to one-hit-wonders, it seems that anything outside the Top Twenty is an also-ran. To be a real one-hit-wonder, you probably need to get to Number One, so further emphasising the void that exists between this record and everything else. But if a band has a single Number One hit but several other records that hit the Top 40, can we really, honestly call them one-hit-wonders?
And then there are albums to consider. Some acts sell lots of albums consistently but only occasionally trouble the singles charts. The audiences for the two formats have historically been very different. If someone has a solitary single that gets into the Top Twenty but several albums that do likewise, can we seriously call them a one-hit-wonder? There are plenty of acts that fit this bill. Judie Tzuke had just one Top Twenty single in her career (all but three others not even breaking the Top 100) but seven Top 40 albums. Is she really a one-hit-wonder?
The problem with such a narrow definition of success is that it scoops up iconic artists and dumps them alongside The Reynolds Girls and The St Winfred’s School Choir. To class Joan Jett, Rachel Sweet, Arthur Brown, Crystal Gayle, Tom Robinson and countless others as one-hit-wonders might be technically true but is surely a slap in the face for influential, significant artists that have had long and worthy careers, but there they all are on those compilation albums. And history is forgetful. Aqua are constantly referred to as one-hit-wonders and included on those same compilation albums but they had six Top Ten hits in the UK, three of which went to Number One. They’ve actually had more British chart success than many of the bands that we’d see as big names.
The whole idea of a one-hit-wonder was always demeaning and misguided, blurring novelty acts with manufactured bubblegum acts that only ever existed for one record before being rebranded and serious, album-oriented artists that only entered the singles chart by a fluke to begin with. It’s a xenophobic and sneering attitude that we are well rid of, frankly. These days, hit singles are even more of an irrelevance than ever. Some of the biggest names in music have never troubled the singles charts – Led Zeppelin being a prime example. And the charts now are a pointless exercise, gamed by the inclusion of streaming plays that render everything meaningless. It’s like counting every time someone taped the Top 40 off the radio or every time someone plays a record, and so should we be surprised that – despite the best efforts of record labels and a radio industry desperate to maintain the myth that it matters – no one really cares who is the top of the charts any more. Music has been more democratised and internationalised, with listeners free to explore the sounds of places that would once have been inaccessible to them, and that has probably killed the whole idea of one-hit-wonders as we knew it. Anything and everything can suddenly become a hit, with a back catalogue immediately out there for exploration. Who cares how many chart hits anyone has anyway? What a stupid way of assessing the worth of anyone’s career.
DAVID FLINT
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Joe Dolce.
Shaddap You Face.