Let's be real: unless you're the kind of human who despises any form of attention or prefers to make money doing something evil like banking, chances are you've – even just for a single second – harboured dreams of becoming a famous musician. It is, after all, the coolest job of them all, second only to maybe professional skateboarder or Playboy bunny or whatever it is when you slyly sell shit using Instagram.
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As we know, people who harbour such dreams sometimes act on them. They cobble together all their pennies for studio time, funnel all their waking hours and energy into writing songs they think other people will like and then they try to get record deals and release those songs into the world. Very occasionally, one of those songs will be a "hit". It will start blasting out of car radios, it will come to define one sticky summer in which everyone seemed to be absentmindedly whistling it in the park over their tinnies and you will somehow know all the words despite never having played it yourself. Meanwhile, the artist or band will celebrate their success. They will cheer and pop champagne. They might buy something new with their sudden riches, like a house or a collection of chow chow puppies. "This is it!" they will think, "I have made it!"But that's not always where the story ends. One successful song does not a career make. In fact, one hit can sometimes be detrimental, depending on what is released afterwards and whether it lives up to the hype. I'm talking about "one-hit wonders"; artists or bands who make a huge hit, and then never again reach that level of commercial success in the quite same way. And most of them have made whole albums – sometimes multiple.Anyway, because we are both makers of content and serious music-orientated investigators, we thought it's about time someone listened to the entire albums of these one-hit wonders in order to discover and fully appreciate the expanse of their artistic vision. So I did that, and then I ranked 15 of them from worst to best, because on Noisey dot com, everything must be ranked.
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BABYLON ZOO – THE BOY WITH THE X RAY EYES
MEREDITH BROOKS – BLURRING THE EDGES
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CRAZY FROG – CRAZY FROG PRESENTS CRAZY HITS
THE RASMUS – DEAD LETTERS
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HOUSE OF PAIN – HOUSE OF PAIN
If any "one-hit wonder" on this list has been particularly rinsed to death it is "Jump Around" by House of fucking Pain. This song came out in 1992, which is the year I was born, and I am a grown ass woman with grown ass woman problems – why are clubs across the country still playing it? Give us a break. We've been jumping around for a quarter of a century now and our legs and spirits are frankly tired to the point of being broken. As for the rest of the album, there are some OK songs on there, like "House and the Rising Sun" (great saxophone, very nice!) or "Life Goes On" (cool, existential!), but really, if we lay them all down, they just sounds like 18 less good versions of "Jump Around", AKA three aggy white dudes rapping.
GOTYE – MAKING MIRRORS
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THE AUTOMATIC – NOT ACCEPTED ANYWHERE
DANIEL BEDINGFIELD – GOTTA GET THRU THIS
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MACY GRAY – ON HOW LIFE IS
BRAN VAN 3000 – GLEE
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LAS KETCHUP – HIJAS DEL TOMATE
EVANESCENCE – FALLEN
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