Whatever happened to the one-hit wonders?
This week I rediscovered Johnny Boy’s “You Are the Generation that Bought More Shoes and You Get What You Deserve.” While the song is excellent, I spent the entirety of it wondering: “What happened to these guys? This is so good!” Even after the song ended, I could not stop wondering about what happened to the band, which had this one really good song and then fell off the face of the Earth. Did they simply break up? Did they check into the Bates Motel? I didn’t know, and it got me thinking about other bands like Johnny Boy.
I started pondering such important queries as: “Do the 4 Non Blondes still know What’s Up?” “Is the weird hat guy from the New Radicals just drunk somewhere, spouting off about how he still thinks he could kick Marilyn Manson’s ass?” And of course the ever-burning question: “What the fuck is a Marcy Playground?”
The answer to all of these deep and meaningful questions—especially the last one—is “I don’t really have any idea.” And that worries me. For a short time, these bands and 1,000 others like them were more popular than you or I could ever hope to be. But now I don’t even know if any of them are still alive, much less anything about their current musical endeavors. I couldn’t even tell you the name of a single member of one of these bands.
Even though some of them have found a second life with the advent of the digital music age and the rise of decade-themed parties, nobody knows these bands or gives a solitary shit about them (cue the complaint from the world’s last true Sister Hazel fan).
This, to me, is the sad truth of the entertainment industry in general. No one cares what you did yesterday. All that matters is what you are doing now. Sure, you can coast along on the success of an album for a time, but eventually everyone expects something new.
I’m not saying this doesn’t make sense, or that artists shouldn’t be expected to release new, good material. However, these so-called one-hit wonders are often maligned as a segment of music whose bands didn’t really have what it takes, simply because they only had one song or album in the tank.
Shouldn’t we celebrate these bands? Can’t we look at them and say, without any irony, “Congratulations, you did what none of us has the talent to do?” I can’t tell you how much enjoyment I get out of songs like “Stuck In The Middle With You” or “Come On Eileen.” It shouldn’t matter that these are the only songs by those respective artists I know—I like them more than entire albums by bands I profess to like.
So there you have it. Let this stand as one avid music consumer’s testimony in the case for the one-hit wonders.
Want to tell Jake your favorite one-hit wonder? Know what the weird hat guy from the New Radicals is up to? Let him know at smasal@wisc.edu.
