One Hit Wonders

Musicians come and musicians go. Some stay around for a long time, some shine bright for a moment and vanish into the shadows just as quickly as they appeared. This is a feature about the latter. About, as the title says, one hit wonders. There have been many of these of course, so I'm only going to look at some of the more memorable ones. And of course I'm going to rate them.

Kajagoogoo: It's pronounced kah-jaw-goo-goo, if you're wondering. And yes, that's a horrible name for a band. These Brits had an '83 top five single that you've probably heard — "Too Shy." Odds are that you haven't heard anything else by them, even though there's a 17 track Very Best of Kajagoogoo album that came out in 1996. Considering the number of studio albums they released could be counted on one hand with fingers left over, the notion of a best of album is seriously Bad.

Haddaway: You know Haddaway, or if you don't you surely know "What Is Love" from the Roxbury Boys sketch from SNL, or the movie Night at the Roxbury. That song became the Roxbury theme, and probably more people know the song from that than ever knew it as a club hit in '93. As far as overproduced early 90s technodance goes it's pretty decent, but let's face it, most early 90s technodance is rather Ugly.

Johnny Hates Jazz: Do you hate jazz? Johnny apparently does. We're not sure about his feelings on opera or bluegrass, much less reggae, southern gospel, or folk but jazz he does not like. Anyway, you've heard JHJ's solitary hit "Shattered Dreams" on entirely too many '80s compilation albums, because so far as I can tell there were only two studio albums from the band, plus an inexplicable Best of Johnny Hates Jazz. That said, it's a pretty cool song, and a Good representative of upbeat 80s pop.

Steam: Na na, na na na na, hey hey hey, good-bye. Thus go the lyrics to "Kiss Him Good-bye" which was Steam's only hit, and has been played at virtually every big league sporting event ever since. Amusingly, the song was recorded in about an hour to be a B-side, but that's not how it turned out, obviously, since I defy anyone to name what was the original A-side to "Kiss Him Good-bye." I know I can't. I do know, or rather strongly suspect that the drum beat from this song was lifted from the bridge section of Steppenwolf's "Rock Me." Listen to one after the other and focus on the drums, and you'll be able to tell. Of course, considering the band only booked an hour of studio time to record this song, lifting the drum beat only makes sense. Mind you, it's still plagiarism, and as your teachers all told you, plagiarism is Bad.