All Time Worst One Hit Wonders

:eek:
Slight nitpick. a-ha is no one-hit wonder, though that’s how people like to think it went down in the States. “Take On Me” and “The Sun Always Shines On TV” were both Top 20 hits on the Billboard charts in the US, and they have sold 76 million albums worldwide. Cite. They’ve continued to have hits worldwide, pretty much everywhere but America.

Kajagoogoo charted three or four singles after “Too Shy” in the UK as well.

As for not liking those two pop gems… to each his/her own, I suppose.

Worst song, worst one-hit-wonder - just worst is, of course Never Been to Me by Charlene .

Yes, yes, I post that all the time. I may post it in Worst Buffy Episode sometime and I never watched Buffy. It’s just that bad.

Well, I can’t remember anything else by them, but that could be just a repressed memory.

I like Brandy, you’re a fine girl, what a good wife you would be, but my life, my lover, my lady is the sea… strolls off humming

This thread would be incomplete without at least an honorable mention for Playground in my Mind, credited to Clint Holmes although its most annoying moment was the cloying child singer warbling, “My name is Michael, I got a nickel, I got a nickel shiny and bright”.

And of course, any mention of Holmes reminds one of Rupert Holmes, but the execrable Pina Colada Song isn’t eligible because Rupert charted a couple of other times.

Nor were America. (So, it wasn’t even a one-hit song!)

David Geddes scored a #5 and a #18 on the top 40, with two of the ickiest songs in the world: “Run Joey Run” about a pair of star-crossed lovers - the girl is pregnant and tells her father she’s going to marry the boy, but the father tries to shoot the boy and accidentally kills the daughter instead; and “Last Game Of The Season (The Blind Man in the Beachers)” about a baseball player whose blind dad dies, and therefore finally sees his son play (apparently from a seat in heaven.)

Uber-ACK from a hack.

Absolutely. Hell, America did the whole soundtrack to The Last Unicorn with original songs. That mean that to certain of us (i.e ubergeeks under the age of 35), it was mildly surprising that America had “regular” hits. :cool:

:smack:

I meant to add, though Geddes was a two-hit wonder, I think it’s noteworthy that BOTH of them were dreadful.

HOLY FRAKKIN’ CRAP was watching the playoffs when I posted, my bad, Brandy is one of the best all-time one-hit wonders, my bad. :eek:

"Shiny and new. Get it right, dammit!

[sub]frickin’ song is stuck in my mind now[/sub]

Damn, damn, damn, I pride myself on my knowledge of crappy-song lyrics. Of course it would have to be “new”, because he’s gonna buy him all kinds of candy, that’s what he’s gonna do.

God, that song is awful.

I actually was going to post Geddes, until I looked it up and saw that he had a second hit. If there’s ever a thread about two-hit wonders, he “wins” hands down, beyond any shadow of a doubt, with the case not only open and shut but locked, bolted, and hermetically sealed.

Mac Arthur Park =Horrible terrible.

But I agree that 2525 is pretty damn bad.

I kinda like Kung Fu Fighting. A little.

I hate to admit that I like a few of the songs already mentioned but most of the choices are dead-on accurate. Starland Vocal Band ?? ARRGGHH !!! :mad:

Seems you folks think you know bad but how about these gems?

**• “You Light Up My Life” by Debbie Boone

• “Feelings” by Morris Albert

• “Ballad of the Green Berets” by Sgt Barry Sadler
**
Please refrain from throwing objects until I have left the forum. :smiley:

Nobody has said “The Vapors” Remember “Turning japanese”

Or how about: Buckner and Garcia’s, Pac Man Fever

Yeah, the 80’s were great.

Sgt “Not Martha Quinn” Schwartz

"The Night Chicago Died", Paper Lace, 1974

And yes, I know they had two hits in the U.K., but I didn’t live in the U.K. And anyway, their other U.K. hit was a hit in the U.S. for someone else, namely, my other nominee from that year:

**“Billy, Don’t Be a Hero”, Bo Donaldson and the Haywoods, 1974. **

OK, so they actually had several other Top 40 singles (including two before “Billy”), but I defy anyone to name one from memory.

Both of those songs got burned into my mental circuits at the tender age of ten (along with several others already mentioned) and nothing has managed to drive them out.

I’ll have to second the nominations of “Afternoon Delight”, “In the Year 2525”, “Seasons in the Sun”, and “Playground in My Mind”; on the other hand, I’d argue against including “Turning Japanese”, “Take on Me”, and “Harper Valley P.T.A.” (and anyway, Jeannie C. Riley had plenty of other hits on the country charts, and “P.T.A.” was written by Tom T. Hall, who knew his way around a country song).

For me, it’s all about “What’s Up?” by 4 Non Blondes. Ugh.

At the risk of tacky self-promotion, I recently started a blog on this very subject (though not necessarily limited to one-hit wonders). Many of the aforementioned are already on my list.

Already on my list of upcoming posts, I meant to say.

Los del Rio should have been shot (I know several million Spanish women who’d volunteer for the firing squad) plus the ditty mentioned in post #2 isn’t even original. It’s a marching song from the military service.

Spain used to have a handful of people, some local and some from Latin America, who tried to get “the summer’s song” every year. They’d tour in Spain, then in Mexico and Central America, then South America (by this time it was summer in the South Cone). This kind of singer has pretty much dissapeared, but La Canción Del Verano remains.

The aforementioned Macarena. Las Ketchup. Last year’s Koala “I’m going to build a pen”. A few years ago (also “farm songs” like el Koala), The Yellow Tractor (no idea who was the group). Many, many years ago, in the '70s, La Ramona…

The summer’s song has to be impossible to dislodge from your brain. Nobody said it had to be good.

Did Rick Dees ever have another hit besides Disco Duck?