I tried to record on apes. They had good bandwidth but low fidelity.
I’m not even tempted to listen to 99% of these records on this thread. I’m fairly sure that for me theres 0 songs on them.
But you got to keep an open mind about some things, or else you’ll lose the voice of the artist trying to censor out everything but the hit.
My comment wasn’t directed at the artists who make the albums, but at the millennials who have grown up not really knowing anything except buying only the digital tracks that they like. And consequently, the music marketing teams who pander to them.
I fell in love with Peter Salett’s “Heart of Mine” when I first heard it as part of the Keeping The Faith soundtrack, enough that I disregarded my personal “never buy an album based on one song” rule of thumb. I found the rest of Salett’s album to be nearly unlistenable/at the very least unremarkable, but I still listen to “Heart of Mine” every now and then.
Lots of artists have had one-hit wonders, but I guess the particular variety of “one-hit-wonder” where the hit is stylistically completely different from the rest of the artist’s work is what would qualify it for this thread.
A few I can think of (from long ago, because I’m old):
C’mon Eileen by Dexy’s Midnight Runners. A massive hit, but the rest of the album sounded like it was performed by a completely different band. I think I tried listening to the album a couple of times, but … meh.
What’s Up? by Four Non-Blondes was polarizing. Some people hated it – I liked it. Bought the album. Which was rubbish. Actively unpleasant to listen to. Apparently other people thought so too, because the band didn’t even make it to the second album.
And yet another album from that period, KD Lang came out with Constant Cravings which was an evocative torch song, albeit with somewhat repetitive lyrics. Bought the album, Ingénue and found it to be insipid – more torch songs with even less interesting lyrics. It became one of the few CDs I actually disliked so much I sold it.