This is an example with the hopeless sloppiness of the term “one-hit wonder” and even the term “hit” itself. There are a lot of different music charts in a lot of different countries. There are a lot of numbers that you could say are the lowest point to which a song song must rise to be a hit. They are all arbitrary. I understand the incredibly vague point that someone is trying to make which they use either of the terms, but trying to make the term more defined is pointless.
I’ll offer an admittedly arbitrary standard. A hit is something that produces at least ten times the amount of income you normally receive. So if you’re a musician who has a steady career making $50,000 a year and then one of your songs becomes very successful and you make $500,000 from it, that’s your hit.
Well, “Cum on Feel the Noize” and “Metal Health” are pretty much the only two Quiet Riot songs I remember at all. And they’re still regularly played on the local rock station and oldies station here in Little Rock.
Yeah, which is why I won’t ever fight too hard against what others think of as a OHW. I was listening to a podcast the other day about Sarah Bernhardt who was an incredibly famous acress from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The host asked something like, “How is it nobody really knows who she is today?” And the truth is that that most entertainers have a limited shelf life in the public conscience once they’ve died. The fact that any of these people are getting airtime 20, 30, 40+ years after they’ve released their song is actually quite astonishing. But like Bernhardt and entertainers like Fatty Arbuckle and Josephine Baker, they’re going to pretty much fade form memory almost entirely.
One of my favorite songs, " Before the Last Teadrop Falls", as popularized by Freddie Fender- I heard, performed by the Songwriter with rights at a retirement park in Florida.
That’s too bad, his album didn’t sound like just one hit, the whole thing IMO was rather listenable.
Right Said Fred, too…The album wasn’t bad.
Having what’s essentially a novelty song as your first big hit is tough. It didn’t help that a lot of listeners didn’t realize Right Said Fred was in on the joke. RSF wasn’t singing about how awesome they were, they were making fun of those kinds of people.
And how doea that work? Freddy translated verses to Spanish as part of the song. Spanish or English, does that white guy from Bumfuck, New Jersey who wrote the song still see a piece?
My favorite example of the US-centric nature of the OHW appelation. IIRC, a-ha actually had two US top 20 singles - yes, that one, and “The Sun Always Shines on TV” in 1985.
I think this is best defined having one song that penetrates the monoculture - and never achieves that milestone again. a-ha have recorded 20 albums, or thereabouts since 1985, played to one of the largest audiences ever at the Rock in Rio festival many years after “Take On Me.” But a-ha have had commercial success around the world, particularly in Europe and South America. Their latest album came out last year.
A lot of British bands have one song that penetrates the US monoculture and have tons of UK hits. Rick Astley has been mentioned. Once he dropped the S-A-W production he released an album “Free” that was amazing.
I think for many of the bands, they were either barely making a living and the OHW was a nice surprise, and the OHW allowed them a little more leverage and ability to call the shots. Fastball has been mentioned, as has Timbuk 3, and Shawn Colvin, Austin bands/artists that still are around, and I think can make ends meet. A lot of these folks have fanatic fanbases and they’ll always be able to make a living gigging and putting out albums occasionally.
Another example is The (English) Beat, who had “Rotating Head” on the Ferris Bueller soundtrack and Save it for Later” around ‘85 - but of course, were consistent hitmakers in the UK. The band then split into two successful bands - Fine Young Cannibals and General Public (the former doing well for at least two albums, the latter for one). Dave Wakeling and Ranking Roger created two different Beats - one in the UK with a rotating cast of former members, and one in the US with Wakeling being the only original member. The Beat has a cult following and Wakeling is constantly touring, so I think he’s doing ok financially.
There’s always a level of snarkiness about OHWs and I suspect they are the envy of most musicians because they reached the highest level of commercial success.
Nashville, actually. And it was a white guy AND a white girl (Ben Peters and Vivian Keith) and yes, they got credit and royalties. Very successful songs can eventually be worth decent bank to the songwriters even if they never recorded or performed it themselves. That’s why some folks can get rich just on composing for others.
I am going to bactrack, and say that the guy I heard play “Before the next teardrop falls” in Florida was not the songwriter. His claim to fame was that they were the first band to record and release it. Do they have anything? probably not, because under the, the song hand no traction, they faded into obscurity.
Wikipedia indicates (though it may or may not be accurate) that the first performer to record the song was a country singer named Duane Dee (who might be the guy you saw; it also says that he now lives in Florida). Dee recorded the in 1968 (seven years before Fender’s recording), and had a minor hit with it (#44 on the country chart).
He had a handful of other songs that made the top 100, but yeah, he never really broke through, and it looks like several of his “hits” were songs that are better known for being done by other artists.
Yes! That is him, Duane Dee! He was running the Bluehair Gator Circuit. He was advertising this song in all his promotions. Had a nice little trailer setup. I was drooling over his classic and vintage Fender Guitar
I had to look up Metal Health because it didn’t sound familiar. Pretty sure I’ve never heard it before and I know I’ve never seen the video. And I used to watch Headbangers on MTV all the time.
We had a poster here in the early days that went by the username @aha. While he wasn’t in that band, he was in the band Five Americans. They had a No. 5 hit with Western Union. Although they had a couple of other songs in the Top 100, I’m guessing anyone that remembers them, remembers them for Western Union.
Smells Like Nirvana was also in the Top 40, as was Word Crimes, which means he did it in the 1980s and in the 1990s and in the 2000s and in the 2010s.
I’m hard pressed to think how anyone who was into metal at all in the 80s would have missed “Bang Your Head,” especially since it had mainstream success making it to #1 on the Billboard charts here in the US. But it’s been a little more than 40 years since it was originally released. While listening to satellite radio shows where they go over the top 20 songs for a given week and year, it isn’t uncommon for me to hear a song I simply don’t remember at all. Either it’s because it’s in a genre I don’t listen to regularly or it’s a song that enjoyed a brief bout of popularity and was promptly forgotten over the years.
Of course there’s another problem with billboard charts, they don’t always measure what people are actually listening to. When rap was gaining popularity, MTV didn’t want to play it because it wasn’t the popular music on the charts they were using. And then there’s the songs that radio stations continue to play for whatever reason. The first time I heard “Walk This Way” was when Run DMC released it in 1986 and that’s the one I want to hear, but the stations I listen to only play the original Aerosmith version.
Does anybody remember what his name was? I was wondering if he is still alive. Four of the five members of the band are dead:
Never heard of Quiet Riot, but in the UK the writers (Slade) were massive. They had 6 number ones, including a Christmas song which must still pay their bills.
Based on his last seen date of 2003, his posting history doesn’t rule any of the members out.
Well, I can report that he does identify himself in his AMA, although not directly by name. Sad to say that as of 2022, he’s no longer with us.