Entertainment For Lively Minds
The Things I've learned listening to the Word One-Hit Wonders Playlist
I spent yesterday afternoon listening to the Word One-Hit Wonders Playlist on Spotify. Thanks to everyone who added to it. It was, by the common consent of everybody in the office, the best Spotify Playlist there has ever been or is ever likely to be. Every time a new track came on somebody would look up, smile and go "Ah. Who's this again?" and others would mutter "Horst Jankowski" or "Barry Ryan" or "Brian Protheroe" or "Till Tuesday". Looked at the list again this morning and it's grown to 305 tracks, which would run for the next twenty hours. By the time I've finished this somebody will have added to it further. Listening to it has made me wonder whether one-hit wonders, as we disrespectfully term them, carry the true DNA of pop.
1. Unlike every other Spotify list, this has nothing boring on it. It's been compiled according to entertainment value and not reputation. This is *everybody's* music.
2. All one-hit wonders sound poignant. Even if you didn't like them at the time they take you back and everybody likes being taken back.
3. One-hit wonders float free of the heavy hand of genre. You don't have to be "into" hip hop to like Grandmaster Flash doing "White Lines".
4. Listening to them you realise that sentiment aces edginess every time.
5. There's a whole lot of huge hits that wouldn't be hits today because no radio station would play them. Who today would programme Eric Carmen's "All By Myself"?
6. "Take My Breath Away" by Berlin is a great, great record.
7. A lot of them are gauche and way less than perfect. That doesn't matter. In fact, it probably helps. I'm listening to Martha & the Muffins doing "Echo Beach" as I'm writing this.
8. What must it be like to know that you once had your name on a brilliant, brilliant, inspiring record and no matter how hard you try it's never going to happen again? I'm thinking of you, Cornershop and you, Warren G. It must be frustrating. They should take comfort from the fact that most artists don't get to figure in this list even once.
9. There should be a special sub-category for people who were a one-hit wonder more than once, if you follow me. I'm thinking here about people like Chris Montez, who had a big hit with "Let's Dance" and then, many years later, had another hit, "The More I See You", that didn't sound anything like the first hit.
10. I've just added Harry Chapin's "W*O*L*D" and I don't intend to check whether it actually was a hit or not. In my memory it was.
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The One Hit Wonder Stuff
Good thoughts. I've always appreciated the sugar-rush of pop at its most ephemeral, and there's nothing more lastingly ephemeral than a one hit wonder. Imagine a world where artists were only allowed the one hit, by law, perhaps enforced by Aztec-style ritual sacrifice to the pop god... How much would we have lost, and how much would we have gained?
11.Automagically appears
even though any user could delete the lot, add *non* hit wonders, pile in with random albums yet still the best 300 most interesting singles/tracks have emerged right up there with anything that, back in the day, might have taken days to compile. Just amazing how that just works.
Great stuff
Truly the antithesis of so-called music snobbery. Genuinely eclectic and great fun. I didn't know there was a song called 'Run Run Run' by Jo Jo Gunne, but it makes the Chuck Berry fan in me smile.
An apology: Chris Montez was my fault. I had no idea he'd had two hits!
A question: how come 'Concrete and Clay' by Unit 4 plus 2 keeps appearing and disappearing?
Can I just say that...
Midnight at the Oasis is such a fantastic record.
'Let's slip off to a sand dune... real soon' - Maria, will you marry me?
Guess The Intro
Having a lie-in testing the GLW's encyclopaedic knowledge of this kind of thing. It's frightening the crap she knows and how quickly she get's them before the vocal.
Excellent points there
The good thing about these songs is you know next to nothing about the acts, there's no baggage. Often the less background you are aware of the better. You just have a more honest response and there's more mystery somehow.
Spoiler Alert!
I know something about Owen Paul. The You're My Favourite Waste of Time Hitmaker is actually Simple Minds bassist Derek Forbes' brother.
I don't know why I know that, I just do.
OHW the DNA of Pop
Couldn't agree more
I added "Yellow River" by Christie which wormed its way into my consciousness - although I was only about 4 or 5 at the time - and stayed with me ever since. The opening chords - and I'm a small boy again.
Later I was gittin' on mah goodfoot and motherfunkin' my baaad 11 year old self to "Movin'" by Brass Construction - downing my banana Nesquik and going round Stevie Dunn's house to play his older brother's records which we were strictly forbidden to do.
The very best of greatest hits
It is a fine list. What surprised me(but shouldn't) was the amount of songs which come from 'the greatest hits of' or 'The best of'.There are already about thirty on the list. Only a record company marketing dept could think of releasing 'The very best of Windsor Davies and Don Estelle'! I can only imagine it was a very quick release for xmas. Making an art of milking that cash cow that is the one 'hit'- superb!
Hate to get picky on an excellent thread
But by which set of criteria does 'White Lines' make Grandmaster Flash a one-hit wonder?
It's like 'The Message' and 'Wheels of Steel' never happened...
Well...
White Lines was credited to Grandmaster Flash & Melle Mel. The other two were credited to Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five. Or something like that.
Echo Beach
While rooting about emusic yesterday, I came across an entire album of remixes of said track. But didn't download anything, I was looking for something else.
It was also
the best playlist because just by its very nature you could only add one track by any artist so it wasn't ruined by the usual addition of a dozen Nick Cave tracks.
Any chance
of just
"listing the list" - for those of us that cant get spotify.
Sure
The current version is here: http://www.wordmagazine.co.uk/files/wordonehitwonders.txt
Wot, still no "It's my Party"?..
Barbara Gaskin & Dave Stewart. Also the Lesley Gore original was surely a hit.
dave stewart/barbara gaskin
not on spotify! and I love its my party but love even more lesley gore's *other* hit. You Don't Own Me.
Thanks Fraser
constantly seeing these spotify lists makes us Americans feel behind the times! I hear rumors thats its coming soon
Dave Lee Hepworth.
The Thing about W.O.L.D,David,is that you don't think it was written for/about you as a certain Radio 1 DJ did because it mentions the words 'DJ' and 'Morning'.Any excuse to have a pop at that bloke and i'm there.
How does Rod Stewart qualify?
I'm sure if asked almost every person on this blog could give you a top of the head rundown of his career.
Pyhton Lee Jackson
Aussie Band that had Rod sing a couple of their songs
In A Broken Dream was released in 72 when anything Rod sold by the bucket-load
Great List
My GLW mentioned my daughter's denim/camoflage skirt the other day and as a result I now have Stan Ridgway's "Camoflage" on permanent rotation in my head.
Fantastic Plastic and Copper-bottom classics.
As someone who occasionally DJs at 40th/50th birthday parties, weddings and so forth it is surprising how many of these we spin on a regular basis as well. There are some real floor fillers in there, indeed you could probably do the whole night from that list. I wonder what became of white rapper Snow..presumably he melted. "A licky boom-boom down" indeed!
Please also add..
(I've got no Spotify)
Mason Williams - Classical Gas
Jeannie.C.Riley - Harper Valley PTA
Brenton Wood - Gimme Litle Sign
Don Fardon - Indian Reservation
Gerry Rafferty - Baker Street
Los Bravos - Black is Black
And also..
Edwin Hawkin Singers - O Happy Day
Curved Air - Back Street Love
Black Sabbath - Paranoid
Done it, Deccers
some there already - and thought you'd appreciate "Silver Machine" too.
No Brenton Wood on Spotify. Perhaps the only soul singer to be named after a major monetary conference - or nearly.
Is Sherbert's...
"Howzat!" on the list?
Those we couldn't find
I've searched in vain for these:
Lone Ranger - Quantum Jump
You Gotta Be A Hustler If You Want To Get On - Sue Wilkinson
The Captain Of Her Heart - Double
The Promise You Made - Cock Robin
Riders On The Storm - Annabel Lamb
I Am The Beat - The Look
Oh, and I added Joy & Pain by Maze, though listening to it now it's clear that the singer is most certainly not Frankie Beverley. I assume this means it's not the original version, or am I wrong?
Sounds good to me...