There’s another song called “Float On” that reached #2 in the late 1970s and was quickly totally forgotten. It was by a band called The Floaters.
Rush could technically be considered a one-hit wonder, due to the forgettable “New World Man” making a brief foray into the Top 40. “Tom Sawyer” and “The Spirit of Radio” did make the Top 100, and a year or so before, Geddy Lee sang on the novelty tune “Take Off” by Bob & Doug McKenzie. (He had grown up with one of them.)
Lots of people had the same experience when they bought the Red Hot Chili Peppers album that contained a ballad called “Under The Bridge.”
At least KISS were well known enough by the time “Beth” came along that most people knew this wasn’t a typical song for them.
Isn’t there a Doper who knows somebody who was in REO Speedwagon for a while, and left the band even before they started recording, but co-wrote enough songs that he still enjoys a standard of living higher than what would be expected for what he has actually done for a living?
I remember seeing Vicki Lawrence on a talk show (Carson?) talking about doing a medley of her hit.
Or like me, bought the album because of that one song and found out Blood Sugar Sex Magic was amazing and it immediately went into permanent rotation.
My whole guitar style and influences, and 90 second songs repeated, came from the Ramones and AC/DC. I like a hard Barre with sp33d.
They were playing Touch for a few years before the video came out - I can recall seeing them do it and thinking it was strangely catchy and might be a “hit”
If Wikipedia is accurate, they started playing it in concerts as early as 1982, but didn’t record it on an album until 1987 (and the video appears to have come out more-or-less simultaneously with the release of the album and the single).
Lowrider by War
Bobby Russell, the songwriter of Vicki Lawrences hit “The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia” was married to Larence at the time. He wrote lots of hits in the 60s and 70s. Supposedly he originally pitched it to Sonny as a song for Cher and Sonny said something like that’s not a million seller. Russel proved him wrong by recording it with his wife, who was a popular actress on the Carol Burnett show.
I went to a couple of shows in Brazil where they did this as well. Open the show, did it twice in the middle (back to back) and closed the show with the same current hit. I was stupefied.
Anyone else getting one earworm after another, reading this thread?
War? They had five top ten singles and four gold records before they released “Low Rider.”
I believe it was Vickie Lawrence (who sang the demo) who was pitching the song. Her husband wasn’t any keener on the song than Sonny. After several rejections she just booked Snuff Garrett and the Wrecking Crew to do a polished version of her demo.
She did this on her own daytime talk show. She probably did it often, it was an easy way to fill a talk show segment, a decent pop song with wide appeal, and a performer that people liked at a personal level. She was certainly well set in her broader career and didn’t need to record any additional hits.
Not music, but movies: when I was in college, the two guys behind “The Blair Witch Project” came to campus for a talk and a Q and A. This was less than a year after the movie came out. They admitted that they would probably never come close to matching that movie.
I think it depends on how early in your career the hit happens. Some bands build up huge following’s well before their hit.
For example, Metallica’s first mainstream hit was “One” from their fourth album. (I know they’ve had many others since). But if that had ended up being their only mainstream hit, it wouldn’t have mattered because they were already playing arenas by that point with or without the song.
I think there are several kinds of ‘one hit wonders’. One kind is a person or group that are basically a gimmick, and never expected to continue a real musical career. I’m thinking about the DJ who did “Mr. Jaws”, a massive novelty hit in the 70’s.
Another kind is a group that makes wonderful material that just doesn’t fit well on radio, and they have plenty of material to fill a concert, and their fans love a lot of their stuff. They are only a ‘one-hit-wonder’ to the general public. To their fans, they are just creators of great music.
Groups and people I’d put in the latter category:
Warren Zevon - only one ‘hit’, but I doubt if his hardcore fans even cared if he played “Werewolves of London” at a concert, because they liked all his other music as much or more.
Bobby McFerrin - Already mentioned
The Grateful Dead - Already Mentioned
Fountains of Wayne - ‘Stacy’s Mom’ may be their only hit, but their fans could call out all kinds of favorite other songs, and “Welcome Interstate Managers” is a solid album from front to back.
There are a lot of great touring acts out there that have never had a ‘hit’, but still pack in large venues. Bands like The Jayhawks, Wilco, The New Pornographers, Neko Case, plenty of alt bands, etc. They might not fill stadiums, but they routinely fill 2,000-5,000 seat venues.
In terms of defining a OHW, Chris Molanphy (of Slate’s excellent Hit Parade podcast) proposes three rules:
1: A second hit that makes the Top 10 of Billboard‘s Hot 100 instantly removes an artist from one-hit wonder status.
2: An act that scores a second hit that makes the Top 40 on the Hot 100 shall not be considered a OHW, unless that second hit is scored within six months of the first hit and is never followed by another Top 40 hit.
3: Any act that scores at least three Top 10 or platinum albums is removed from OHW consideration entirely.
I think the Dead are outside of categorization. Given their massive and long-standing appeal, decades of sold out concert performances and dozens of big selling albums (not to mention hours and hours of bootlegs)…any radio airplay they got is entirely incidental and insignificant.