I’ll just join the chorus of those who respect the improbable success of having a single hit. On the occasions where I hear someone dismissing a band as a OHW, I invariably ask, “Oh, how many hits have you had?”
I think the answer here is “It depends.”
Some people think it’s the beginning of a lucrative career where they crank out hit after hit.
Others realize it may be a fluke, but they’ll continue to write and perform on the chance they can catch the brass ring again.
Others know it’s a fluke and aren’t affected. I don’t think the Grateful Dead changed anything after hitting #1 with “Touch of Grey.”
However, a hit can keep you working for years after you no longer get airplay or notice. You won’t get rich from it, but
Here are some videos listing one-hit wonders that are still performing:
Again, I recognize that plenty of one hit wonders are still performing.
Mike Posner is an oddity as far as one-hit wonders go. Cooler Than Me went to #6 in 2010 - then he had a second hit five years later with I Took A Pill In Ibiza, a song about being a one-hit wonder, which made it to #4 and outshined his previous hit.
To be fair, Golden Earring was a “two-hit wonder” from an American (or, at least, non-European) perspective. In their native Netherlands, they were an immensely successful band: they released 25 studio albums over the course of six decades (from 1967 to 2012), and eighteen of those were top-ten albums in that country. They had 29 singles reach the top ten in the Netherlands, as well. And, they were an active band, with largely the same lineup, for 60 years!
But, they had relatively little chart success outside of their home country, and most American music fans only know them for those two songs that broke through here.
I believe this applies to The Romantics as well: “What I Like About You” and “Talking in Your Sleep.”
Remember Friday?
Just like a-ha in Norway. They had about a million #1 albums there, even though they recorded in England.
I often wonder how artists with only one or two hits fill the time in concerts.
It has to be awkward. They are probably playing in small clubs but its still a lot of time.
I figure the people going to a concert with an entire performance by the artist are at least somewhat interested in the artist’s other work as well as their hits.
How is this a difficult concept? They play from their large selection of other songs and not always but much more often than not, the hits. Fans like the rest of their music too.
I remember the frustration of buying an album that I didn’t like. I got sucked in by their hit song.
Sugarloaf is an example. Green Eyed Lady was so good. I ended up recording it to cassette and tossing the album into a cabinet.
I think Dave Grohl would be the guy to ask, he parlayed his success with Nirvana into a whole new paradigm of that wave, that I was talking about in the OP. A whole new genre waned and died with Cobain’s death. Did “Grunge” even last as long as “Disco”? And Dave stepped up with his band (FooF), after the death of his pilot. Turned a lesser band into a bigger hitmaker than Nirvana probably ever would have aspired with Kurt. They have been one of the most relevant rockbands of the last 20 years.
a lot of tours have about 5 or 6 people on the same show and everyone gets about 30-45 minutes some of them j play a few more songs there was a pre covid tour called "80s blast back that had about 5 or 6 formerly famous stars and the headliner was b list teen queen Martika who actually 5 or 6 hit songs to sing (she actually went on tour because she wanted her kids to have the experience because they didn’t believe she was that famous )
Debby Boone’s infamous “You Light Up My Life” spent 10 weeks at #1, IIRC. The closest thing she had to a second hit was a IMHO better song called “California” that bubbled under the Top 40 but didn’t quite make it.
She has, however, charted on the gospel and country charts.
Conversely, there are not a small number of performers who hit the big time, or at least the semi-big time, and realize this is not for them and scale things back, which they CAN do because that big hit gave them the money to do so.
Same thing happened with my wife and “More Than Words” by Extreme. That song was all over the radio in 1991, and she bought the CD expecting more of the same.
Let’s just say a ballad like “More Than Words” is not exactly the typical offering from a funk metal band like Extreme.
I think I once reviewed that album. I think I gave it a 6.8. Not that bad.
Do the Ramones count?
a lot of people were fooled in the 1980s and 90s by something that the management of the talking heads came up with they’d have them do one fm radio-friendly song and that would be on the radio and a lot of people would go buy the album and end up disappointed like ace and uncle j’s wife
all of a sudden that concept became popular What the result ended up being is in the 90s a lot of alternative new wave punk groups and such ended up with hits that they hated to sing but everyone had that one “sell-out song” back then