I’m sure they realize it eventually. But I’m talking about when they’re in the middle of their brief window of success.
Do they generally think “This is it. This is my one moment. I need to make the most of it because I’ll never come this way again.”
Or do they think “This is the start of a long career which will be filled with other successes of equal magnitude to this one.”
I don’t think it works that way, I take a taoist bent, and imagine you have been riding one wave so long, that eventually there will be some kind of resonance or interference and you will peak, how that manifests and influences in ripple patterns is yet to be known.
I have to admit I’m not sure what your point is.
Many one hit wonders continue to produce music for a few years after their big hit. The Knack came out with “My Sharona” in 1979 and produced two more albums before breaking up in 1982. Gerardo has “Rico Suave” from 1991 and produced six more albums after that. I’m guessing most one hit wonders don’t realize they’re one hit wonders until later. I don’t think Bobby McFerrin expected a lot of mainstream success following “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.” I don’t mean to imply McFerrin isn’t successful, just that his style of music doesn’t lend itself to top 40 charts.
It’s odd that people laugh at so called one hit wonders (not that the OP is doing this). People are often dismissive of an artist for being a one hit wonder, but most artists never even have a hit. I feel sorry for bands whose only hit was a cover though. Alien Ant Farm, I’m looking at you.
My WAG is that most people who are intrepid and optimistic enough to have gone into a career in music and who have (usually) managed to produce an album worth of songs, one of which has become a big hit, are very likely to believe there will be more hits.
Also, most one-hit wonders have fans who would be happy to tell you all about their other work, which is just as good if not better than the hit. I’d bet they also believe their group will keep on hitting it big.
My guess - like InternetLegend - is that every one-hit wonder goes through a brief period of fantasy dream-come-true delirium, where they really think this is only the beginning and they’re headed for a awesome, long, career. This fever may last weeks, months, or longer.
Eventually at some point it hits home that the 15 minutes of fame was all they were going to get. But they must have a feverish period where they think it’ll be much more than that.
And some may be wracked by guilt for life afterwards if they think they were truly headed for a long career but feel they somehow committed some mistake that caused them to only amount to a one-hit wonder, if they think it’s their fault, like a pilot that could have taken an airplane off the runway but botched the handling of the throttles.
Starland Vocal Band was a one-hit wonder with “Afternoon Delight”, but got 4 Grammy nominations (won 2) and a CBS summer series out of the deal in 1977. I doubt that CBS would have made that deal if they thought that the group was going to go nowhere after that one hit.
I always thought they bring a OHW was the most cruel of fates. One day you’re thinking: sold out arenas! Groupies! $$$$!! Rock and roll Hall of Fame!!
And then you’re playing county fairs and the Ramada Inn.
This. The vast majority of musical acts never have a single hit, nothing that will be played in many places and be known by millions, decades after being made. That’s a rare home run right there.
Also, many (but not all) one hit wonders were in fact succesful, working musicians before and after their one big hit. They were not hugely succesful, but succesful they were. They lived the dream of the untold masses of the “I wanna do music for a living, but will settle for accounting” ilk.
A couple of interesting examples who were genuine OHWs were Chumbawumba and Toni Basil.
Tubthumping was a massive world wide hit unlike the band’s usual political material. When their record company wanted more of the same they refused to comply. They remained proud of their hit but had no desire to stop doing the music that they wanted to do.
Toni Basil did Mickey as a cheerleading video at a time when there was nowhere to really show it. She had made several other videos before that. She didn’t make them to promote music but as dance works.
I remember when OMC had their hit “How Bizarre” and he was swept up by Agents and taken to Hollywood, I saw a few interviews with him during this and he was buzzing, on this adrenaline high of what he thought was an assured future of riches. He did very well off the one hit (it still gets put on movie and TV soundtracks even now), tried to put out more songs, but nothing ever hit again. Later he died of an illness and it all ended really sadly.
Their expectations are fuelled by an entourage who feed them unrealistic dreams. It’s irresponsibly tragic, really.
Again, this - my spouse made a living as a musician for a couple decades. Never became famous (outside a very small niche) but I’d rate him as successful what with, you know, making a living at it.
I’ve known a couple other people who were also full-time musicians making a middle-class income from it. Never famous, but absolutely professionals and successful.
Too many people have the standard of “Either big star or nothing”. That doesn’t reflect reality.
You know who else was on the corn dog circuit? The B-52s. A few years back they were playing here in Little Rock at Riverfest and I almost went just to see them. Styx is another band you could find on the circuit. Even a lot of successful bands end up on the circuit as they and their audience lose popularity and get older. A lot of them are still making a decent living.
I was going to say the same thing. Except, well, I don’t have any friends who are musicians by trade. If you make enough money as a musician to provide you and your family with a decent living then you’re successful.
Yeah, I can actually think of a couple of examples. One of my best friends from middle school form a ska band like 30 years ago with a few other guys (it’s a ska band, so by “few” I mean like 20). As far as I can tell, they are still going at it in one form or another. They made a few music videos that got some play and one of their members ended up with The Mighty Mighty Boss Tones, but I couldn’t name a single song they made.
Similarly I know this other indie rock band through some college friends who that’s been their full time gig for almost 20 years. I would describe them as a more upbeat than The National, less whispy than Bon Iver, and less frat-rocky than O.A.R. I would legitimately consider them as a “no hit wonder”. And yet they have a strong following, enough to make it their full time job.
And there’s always the chance that they’ll become one of those (even rarer) TWO-hit wonders. If Golden Earring had packed it in after “Radar Love”, we’d never have had “Twilight Zone” NINE YEARS later.
I’d say @velocity nailed it.
FYI there’s a series on Amazon called Daisy Jones and the Six which chronicles a fictional 1970s band as they transition from garage band to local band to national stars. And presumably in the later episodes will chronicle their fall. It’s framed as the now 40-50 yo stars giving a retrospective narrative to documentary interviewers, but the majority of the action is showing them as teens to 30yos living through the story arc as it happened.
Anyhow, a few episodes detail that rocky zone where they’ve had that first big break and the protagonists and their hangers-on are struggling with sudden stardom, swell heads, internal factions, how to make success keep happening vs what if it doesn’t vs enjoy it to the max while it lasts, with all the substance abuse & emotional flareup problems that involves.
My wife likes watching this sort of stuff & I pay half-attention. For those of us who lived through the 1970s it’s a pretty cool nostalgia experience even if you weren’t that heavily into the music scene then. The characters are plenty flawed, but not wacko.
Can recommend.
Quite a few one-hit wonders have gone on to lengthy careers on the club circuit, which apparently allowed them to make a decent living. Bob Kuban of Bob Kuban and the In-Men (who recorded “The Cheater”, a #12 hit in 1966) is described as having long been “a fixture on the St. Louis music scene”. The band’s charismatic lead singer, Walter Scott, also had a successful club career, at least until he wound up decomposing at the bottom of a cistern in the '80s.
*The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, incidentally, has a tribute to one-hit wonders, which includes “The Cheater”.
Quick related question: are one-hit wonders a thing of the past now? If modern pop music is more product than art, then an act can easily punch out a few more clones of their first hit and maintain mainstream viability. There doesn’t seem to be any “novelty” hits like The Streak or Disco Duck anymore.
John Lennon, circa mid-1963, said to a reporter that he assumed the Beatles would be a one-hit wonder (more or less — they had two or three hits in England at that point, none in the US), and they they were just making hay while the sun shines, but their smallish circle of fans would soon tire of them (or words to that effect).
I’ll see if I can find the exact quote.
It was February 1964, in New York:
Reporter: “The whole reaction has been fantastic. Do you feel that it’s a fad? Would you call it a fad?”
Lennon: “Oh, obviously. Anything in this business is a fad.” He then went on to add that he didn’t think the band was “going to last forever”.
He noted: “We’re just gonna have a good time while we last, you know?”