Posted on 09/25/2024 3:03:42 PM PDT by week 71
The one hit wonder i remember best is Iron Butterfly’s Inna Godda Davita on their 1968 album. Big Hit Nothing else worth.
The one hit wonder i remember best is Iron Butterfly’s Inna Godda Davita on their 1968 album. Big Hit Nothing else worth.
Blue Cheer - Summertime Blues
Also it can be a judgment call — e.g., The Easybeats hit with “Friday on My Mind”, but cowriter and band member George Young was the older brother of Malcolm and Angus of AC/DC and wound up producing a number of their albums.
Vanda and Young produced a lot of songs, like John Paul Young’s (no relation) “Love Is In The Air” (which is about as far from AC/DC as you can get).
For songs I didn’t like, probably one of the quintessential one hit wonders were The Blues Magoos — charted once, plllt.
Anybody mention You Light Up My Life by Debby Boone?
It was one of the biggest hit songs of the ‘70s.
Nick Gilder-— Hot Child In The City. 1978
“Another Brick in the Wall, pt 2” was the one hit I was referring to, going to #1, although a highly edited version of “Money” was also a minor hit (#13). In the U.K., they had a couple early significant Beatlesque hits with “Arnold Layne” (#10) and “See Emily Play,” (#6) two songs which could easily have fit in with Sargeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Neither was released in the U.S.
Of course, the whole point was to note how sometimes the notion of “hit” is absurd. Pink Floyd simply didn’t release their songs as singles, as they rarely fit the singles format (2 to 4 1/2 minutes long). Instead, they were “Album-Oriented Rock,” (AOR) meaning that they were marketed in ways that fans were expected to buy the album, not just a single.
With the advent of CD singles, record companies began specific marketing album tracks to radio stations, and Pink Floyd had several radio-play hits on stations that had been considered AOR, including Learning to Fly, On the Turning Away, Take it Back, One Slip, Keep Talking and High Hopes. None of these were major hits on pop-music stations. They were not, however, marketed as singles to the public, instead to build interest in the albums, A Momentary Lapse of Reason and The Division Bell.
Related note: I've always considered a "One-Hit Wonder" band to have two characteristics:
Pink Floyd is my favorite band, too. Piper at the Gates of Dawn was long before my time. Back when I first got into them in the 1980s, I was warded off from their pre-Dark Side stuff by being seriously underwhelmed by Masters of Rock: Pink Floyd’s Greatest Hits and Ummagumma, plus even the band’s own dismissiveness towards their early work. Just a few years ago, now that streaming means you can hear an album without deciding to buy, I’ve rediscovered their early stuff and become like a teenager about them.
For the Beatles, that was Abbey Road. For the Beach Boys, Pet Sounds. And for Pink Floyd, it was Dark Side of the Moon. Nothing can compare. The 1995 tour that produced the "Pulse" DVD/CD demonstrated that they could play that incredible stuff live, too, quite an achievement.
I only saw them live once (that I recall, anyway), at the Spectrum in Philly in the early 70's, and frankly don't remember a lot of details due to my state at the time, but I do recall the scream in "Careful With That Axe, Eugene" being accompanied by a huge explosion of fire in the center of the stadium ceiling where the huge scoreboard was suspended. Might have just been some really bright lights now that I think about it..... I and half the audience lost our collective minds. Ah, the good old days....
Sorry if I missed it, but I’d go with “Black Is Black” by Los Bravos as a good one.
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