Agree as well.
If we’re counting the U K. top 40, both Lowe and Edmunds had multiple hits including “Queen of Hearts” for Edmunds, which deserved hit status in the U.S. ( it reached #11 in the U.K.).
He’s still at it. And great. That’s his daughter singing backup.
Nick Lowe in top form:
I recently discovered this version of Lowe singing Elvis Costello’s “(What’s So Funny About) Peace, Love, and Understanding”.
I think it’s gorgeous.
It’s actually Lowe’s song. Elvis’s (more famous) version is a cover.
Nitpick: It’s the other way around: Nick Lowe wrote the song and recorded it with Brinsley Schwarz in 1974 I think. Elvis Costello and the Attractions covered it in 1978, with Nick Lowe producing.
ETA: ninja’d!
I didn’t hear Edmunds’ version of the song until years after Juice Newton had a #2 hit with it in the U.S., and it was even more years later when I learned that Edmunds was the first to record it.
Glenn Yarbrough basically had one hit, which was Baby, The Rain Must Fall. But I love most everything that he’s done and used to have all of his albums. He put a lot of Rod McKuen’s schlocky poems to music and made them great.
In the US here–this first I have heard of Faith No More recording a song called “Easy”. I mostly remember them for “Epic” and "
Falling to Pieces". Most Americans probably think they are one hit wonder for “Epic” because it was their highest charting single in the US.
The band Madness have been mentioned upthread but further to that I would add this topic illustrates the difference between the US and the UK.
Three bands took turns ruling the UK singles charts from the early 70s to the late 80s and all are basically little known if not unknown in the US.
From the early 70s were Slade with 17 consecutive top 20 hits including Merry Xmas Everybody which has been a hit multiple times to this day. In the US, if they are known, it’s because Quiet Riot successfully covered a couple of their songs.
From the late 70s to the early 80s there was The Jam with 18 consecutive top 40 singles including a few that entered the chart at Number 1 in an era when that was rare. When they split 15 reissued singles were all in the top 100 in the same week. In the US the nearest to a hit was A Town Called Malice.
The main man from The Jam, Paul Weller, then had further success with the Style Council (7 top ten hits) and to this day charts as a Solo Artist. Together with Lennon and McCartney he’s had a Number 1 Album in each of five decades.
Madness took over from The Jam and ruled the 80s with 15 top 10 hits. In the US usually only Our House is known about.
TCMF-2L
I’d note that, in the U.S., they were probably best known for “Run Runaway,” their 1983 song which hit #20 on the Billboard chart here. While I agree that they probably got a little exposure here from the Quiet Riot covers, I’d wager that most Americans had no idea that Quiet Riot’s versions were covers.
Run Runaway is from the second burst of success for Slade when they had repositioned themselves as something of a Heavy Rock band.
I seem to recall a thread a few years ago about Run Runaway. A poster couldn’t recall the band or the song but was haunted by memories of a weird video with bagpipes and gurning (is that term understood in the US?) faces.
TCMF-2L
Second. He released So-Lo back in 1984, the single was the minor hit Gratitude. Given that the backing musicians were some Oingo Boingo members + Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers, this sometimes gets retroactively credited as a Boingo album. But at the time it was definitely released and promoted as an Elfman solo project.
Thanks for the correction. I was going from a review I’ve read that stated it was his first solo album.
I love all of side one of the Georgia Satellites first album. Keep Your Hands To Yourself hit #2 in the US, and was their only Top 40 hit. They got a little more airplay on Album-Oriented Rock stations about a year or two before that radio format was wiped off the face of the earth by Classic Rock aka Boomers Are In Their 40s Now And Refuse To Listen To Any New Shit.
You just reminded me of an NPR series I heard on Morning Edition briefly in the pre-pandemic era when I was driving my son to school every morning.
They gave their Georgia Satellites shout-out to “Battleship Chains”.
Yep.
Of course I knew that. My brain let me down,
Again.
mmm
And I would have thought It Must Be Love is their actual biggest hit.
Venturing back to the singer-songwriter era of the early 1970s, Danny O’Keefe had a Top 10 million-seller with the single Good Time Charlie’s Got the Blues, a wistful country-ish folk-ish ballad. It should’ve been good enough to jump-start his career, but for some reason, he never could follow it up with another hit single. Not because he had only one good song in him. Quite the contrary, he was a damn good singer-songwriter whose songs have been covered by dozens of people. His follow-up album, Breezy Stories, was IMHO one of the best albums of the 1970s, and was a mixture of folk and rock but leaning more heavily to rock, and featured some of the best side men of the era. (The progression of songs on Side One, and how they fit together, is awesome.) I have several of his LPs and he was a great performer. He was on Atlantic and later Warner Bros., both good labels, but never developed beyond a cult following. He deserved a lot better.