bands with one and only one deliriously good song [Archive]

Rae

07-20-2007, 04:57 PM

Okay, so a lot of bands get unfairly tagged with the "one hit wonder" label and actually have lots of decent material in their catalog. Others only click once or twice, but still have plenty of near misses. Then, there are bands that write one song so gloriously perfect among such mediocrity that you just have to wonder... where could it possibly have come from?

As I might've mentioned in an earlier thread, for me this band has got to be the Vogues. I could listen to "Five O'Clock World" endlessly, but literally everything else that they have done seems so schmaltzy to me that I have no idea how they penned that track.

Can you think of any other examples of this? The Rich Kids? Unit 4+2? Feel free to list yr own choices & take issue with mine...

~Rae

bobsticks

07-20-2007, 06:45 PM

Hey Rae,

This one is a bit harder than it seems. Off the top of my head I would say Peter Schilling with A Different Story (I hated his remake of "Major Tom")...maybe PWEI with...no they never had a deliriously good song...maybe Renegade Soundwave for Cocaine Sex although some might consider The Kray Twins acceptable...

This one's going to fester with me a bit.

Peace

Luvin Da Blues

07-20-2007, 06:47 PM

I can only chalk this up to being a fluke..or it's a cover tune, do the still call it a "Flash in the Pan".

FWIW, for an artist(s) to get any respect (read playing time) from moi they have to consistently put out a good product and show that they have at least a bit of talent.

PeruvianSkies

07-20-2007, 09:38 PM

The Rental's FRIEND OF P.

MindGoneHaywire

07-20-2007, 11:39 PM

Barnes & Barnes--Fish Heads

Metallica--oh, wait, that was a Misfits cover anyway.

John Travolta--It Had To Be You

Slosh

07-21-2007, 02:19 AM

I never get tired of "Away" and "Possum Kingdom" but as for the rest of the album they may as well be 3 Doors Down or some other such lowest-common-denominator dreck.

BradH

07-21-2007, 08:00 AM

I could listen to "Five O'Clock World" endlessly...

I caught that in the ealier thread and I completely agree. When Chip, DLD and I worked on that 3-disc 60's thing a few years ago we each took a disc and did our own sequencing (but not necessarily the song picks themselves). Mine was the 2nd disc but the only thing I insisted on was Disc One open w/ "Five O' Clock World" just to start things right.

I never heard the Beau Brummels do anything quite as good "Laugh, Laugh" and I've heard a lot of their stuff.

Snakefinger definitely qualifies with "The Man In The Dark Sedan". (He used to hang with The Residents.) I bought both albums and some singles w/ rare B-sides and nothing came close to that one song.

Troy

07-21-2007, 08:04 AM

Mi Sex- "Computer Games"
The Burning Sensations- "I feel like Jonah in the Belly of the Whale"
Enya- "Sail Away"

Come to mind instantly. There's tons of others.

Dave_G

07-21-2007, 08:55 AM

Mi-Sex?

One good song?

NOT

An excellent band, you gotta give 'em more credit than that, Troy.

They have many very excellent songs!

Dave

Rae

07-21-2007, 09:26 AM

I totally disagree with both the Rentals and the Toadies! Rubberneck is a solid record (guilty pleasure? nah, no such thing) front-to-back and the Rentals, while kinda samey-sounding, definitely have clicked plenty of times for me ("My Summer Girl"... now that's a deliriously good song).

~Rae

Troy

07-21-2007, 09:52 AM

Sorry Dave, that one song is a classic and the rest of the disc is totally forgettable, generic new wave for me. But like Rae's criteria says, that one song is a screamingly great genre classic.

DariusNYC

07-21-2007, 11:52 AM

Remember that band Wall of Voodoo that had that one song "Mexican Radio"? That was really good.

(jk, T)

PeruvianSkies

07-21-2007, 12:12 PM

What about...

THE VERVE PIPE, PRIMITIVE RADIO GODS, SPACEHOG, SOUL ASYLUM, GEGGY TAH, FOLK IMPLOSION, or 7 MARY THREE?

Monkey Bones

07-21-2007, 12:15 PM

One of the few times that I fell victim to the "single on the radio - sucker born every minute" quick-sell was with a little alternative modern rock station I listened to in the late 80s, and this very cool song by someone named Jon Astley came on while I was driving home from work as I recall, it was called "Jane's Getting Serious" from the CD Everyone Loves The Pilot (Except The Crew), and I had to have that CD, so I stopped by my favorite indie/alternative CD store on the way home to grab it, and despite some industry heavyweights like Eric Clapton on hand (or maybe more likely, because of), that's the only song I play. Completely disposable, except for that one song. But it is a great song :)

Rae

07-21-2007, 12:42 PM

SOUL ASYLUM

Wow. All I can say is, you're fired. Talk about one of the great American underground rock & roll bands of the 80s... these guys turned out album after album of great, hooky, rough, heartfelt, honest punk rock before finally breaking into the mainstream in the 1990s. I'm sure I have other supporters on this board... maybe a band that will go down in rock history as a "one hit wonder", but will remain in my book "criminally misunderstood, but mostly just kickass."

~Rae

Rae

07-21-2007, 12:43 PM

Oh yeah, and I like Folk Implosion, too.

~Rae

kexodusc

07-21-2007, 01:54 PM

Enya? I don't even like her but I know she's got more than a few "hits"....Damn. I dated enough girls in different time zones to witness her popularity in all it's suckass glory.

Hmmm, too many Indy Rock groups to name.
Right Said Fred comes to mind I guess...damn tune is kinda catchy and will be played for decades.

kexodusc

07-21-2007, 01:59 PM

OH! The New Radicals! That "you only get what you give" song was killer...then they broke up after 1 song because they couldn't take the publicity, stress, etc.

BradH

07-21-2007, 03:58 PM

GEGGY TAH

I like that cd. I don't think they qualify at all.

MindGoneHaywire

07-21-2007, 04:07 PM

The New Radicals wasn't really a band, it was the one guy & they put a band together around him, but he wasn't interested in the whole rock band trip.

Soul Asylum in this thread is something I'll second as not exactly fitting in with the theme of the thread. If someone honestly believes that, fine, but I'd be surprised if anyone who actually thinks that has heard White You Were Out, The Horse They Rode In On, Time's Incinerator, or, most especially, Made To Be Broken.

Songs like Tied To The Tracks and Never Really Been were as good as anything Husker Du (Bob Mould produced them, natch) and the Replacements ever did, in my book, so I'd just weigh in & say that I'd find it difficult to imagine that someone who's heard these recs actually believes that. But if they do, they're welcome to state their case!

PeruvianSkies

07-22-2007, 12:25 AM

ForeverAutumn

07-22-2007, 07:32 AM

That this thread is rather pointless since we all have a difference of opinions when it comes to bands that we feel are great, while others feel only have ONE good song.

No, that IS the point. This is a discussion board. So...discuss! If we all agreed on everything all the time then there would be no discussion and this place would be (even more) boring. Don't be afraid to have people disagree with you or to disagree with other people. That's the beauty of music...it's subjective. Discuss, argue, debate, agree, disagree, it's all good.

I would like to nominate The Refreshments and the song Bandito. I love this song. It's funny, quirky and catchy. But nothing I heard after that appealed to me.

kexodusc

07-22-2007, 07:40 AM

The Proclaimers - that I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles) song was all the rage for a while...still hear it from time to time...whatever happened to them?

Did Gary Numan do anything besides Cars?

MindGoneHaywire

07-22-2007, 07:58 AM

That this thread is rather pointless since we all have a difference of opinions when it comes to bands that we feel are great, while others feel only have ONE good song. Is it really possible for a band to truly only have ONE good song? Most likely not, but I was trying to name bands that really only had one great song with airplay and then for lack of better terms, faded away.

Yeah, but, see, as I made clear in my post, I don't have a problem with it if you believe this; debating taste is pointless. But it wasn't lost on me that when Soul Asylum became successful, that a lot of people who bought their records didn't know anything about them or that they had been making records for more than a decade at that point.

I don't quarrel with yr nominating in this thread, because that's yr opinion, and that's fine. But I'm curious: did you ever hear their Twin/Tone output, the stuff Husker Du's Bob Mould had produced in the mid-80s? I ask mostly because I saw them live during that period, and I have read slams of their work, and I find it interesting. But I do like to get down to specifics when possible. What on those records do you think sucked?

Troy

07-22-2007, 08:57 AM

Did Gary Numan do anything besides Cars?

Yes, tons and a lot of it was very good synth-driven new wave.

This question is really impossible to answer because while I may think that every single song Enya did besides "Sail Away" was crap, there will always be other that don't.

MindGoneHaywire

07-22-2007, 09:02 AM

I always liked the Burning Sensations cover of Jonathan Richman's 'Pablo Picasso' on the Repo Man soundtrack...but I never heard of anything else they ever did & figured it wasn't a real band, just something put together for that movie. I didn't look it up, but I wonder if it's the same outfit?

kexodusc

07-22-2007, 09:14 AM

This question is really impossible to answer because while I may think that every single song Enya did besides "Sail Away" was crap, there will always be other that don't.

See that's what separates you from me...I think Sail Away is equally crappy to the rest of her fake world music stuff.

Bah, I think the question's easy enough to answer - forget subjective appeal, just look at the facts. When someone achieves success off one song/album, and fails to even approach those levels ever again, we've got it. Ie, Twisted Sister...

BradH

07-22-2007, 04:20 PM

Bah, I think the question's easy enough to answer - forget subjective appeal, just look at the facts. When someone achieves success off one song/album, and fails to even approach those levels ever again, we've got it.

That wasn't the original question. It was about quality, not sales. So yeah, it is subjective. There's probably somebody somewhere who things the entire Vogues catalogue is the best thing since sliced bread.

kexodusc

07-22-2007, 04:26 PM

That wasn't the original question. It was about quality, not sales. So yeah, it is subjective. There's probably somebody somewhere who things the entire Vogues catalogue is the best thing since sliced bread.
Who said anything about sales?
And either way, I would argue success quite often is a measure of quality when it comes to music.

bobsticks

07-22-2007, 05:14 PM

Hear "N' Aid ~ "Stars"

BradH

07-22-2007, 06:54 PM

Who said anything about sales?
And either way, I would argue success quite often is a measure of quality when it comes to music.

It sounded like that was exactly what you were saying with "forget subjective appeal, just look at the facts". What facts? The only facts are sales and critical reaction. That can be used in a debate about how much influence an artist has (even one-hit wonders) but not about quality, that's subjective and leads to debates instead of easy answers. I think Billy Joel sucks so bad he could reverse explode Petra Haden Sings The Who Sell Out into a good album if you put him near it. But that's a subjective opinion and can't be measured or proven.

kexodusc

07-23-2007, 04:22 AM

It sounded like that was exactly what you were saying with "forget subjective appeal, just look at the facts". What facts? The only facts are sales and critical reaction.
I was thinking more along the lines of break through, notoriety, ie, if we asked the artist what one song they got known for what would they most likely respond with. I suppose indirectly sales contributes to that. I don't care much about sales because they're a poor indicator unless you compare to artists in the same genre with the same target audience in the same time period. That's reducing this discussion to a statistical analysis. No thanks. Success is a bit more vague and if we use it in the relative sense it's much more useful than "sales" for this discussion.

I take exception with those who would presume to tell me I can't have this discussion because they take exception to choices made. BS. If you don't want to participate, fine, but don't tell me what I can and can't do just because people are likely to disagree with my selections.

That can be used in a debate about how much influence an artist has (even one-hit wonders) but not about quality, that's subjective and leads to debates instead of easy answers. I think Billy Joel sucks so bad he could reverse explode Petra Haden Sings The Who Sell Out into a good album if you put him near it. But that's a subjective opinion and can't be measured or proven.

The original post didn't say your choices had to withstand the scrutiny of the audioreview.com community and that you had to prove them quantitatively or qualitatively. It's quite obvious a difference of opinion was expected.
I'm not buying the argument that each person's arbitrary recognition of song quality prevents us from having this discussion. The original poster was very clear what they wanted this discussion to be, made it excplicit that we could provide our own lists, and take exception to his/hers.

So people take exception to a few choices - whoop dee doo. I've got thick enough skin if someone wants to disagree with me that The Proclaimers wrote 1 great song and no others. A little discussion doesn't hurt, and I would sooner participate in a web forum that looked for reasons to have audio discussions instead of one that finds reasons to not have them.

Mr MidFi

07-23-2007, 05:52 AM

That album from Wolf Parade was a big "meh" to me when it came out...but that one song, "Shine a Light", was one of my favorites of the past few years.

Does anyone here remember "Driver's Seat" by Sniff & the Tears?

(Side note: the Enya song commonly known as "Sail Away" is actually titled "Orinoco Flow." Not that anyone could possibly care less.)

Troy

07-23-2007, 06:23 AM

I take exception with those who would presume to tell me I can't have this discussion because they take exception to choices made. BS. If you don't want to participate, fine, but don't tell me what I can and can't do just because people are likely to disagree with my selections.

Take a pill, woodja?

It's not about me being offended by your selections as much as it is that I just think a question like this is simply untenable because it is 100% subjective in the way the original question was worded. It had nothing to do with sales, charting or airplay. It is pure opinion. There are no right and wrong answers.

Threads like this are simply an excuse to have an argument . . . is this the 5 minute argument or the full half-hour?

I have too many other things to do in life than argue with you about your crappy taste in music.

kexodusc

07-23-2007, 06:33 AM

Take a pill, woodja?

It's not about me being offended by your selections as much as it is that I just think a question like this is simply untenable because it is 100% subjective in the way the original question was worded. It had nothing to do with sales, charting or airplay. It is pure opinion. There are no right and wrong answers.

Threads like this are simply an excuse to have an argument . . . is this the 5 minute argument or the full half-hour?

I have too many other things to do in life than argue with you about your crappy taste in music.
Okay, then why post in the thread in the first place? Why not leave the rest of us with our crappy music taste and poorly conceived threads to have at it?

ForeverAutumn

07-23-2007, 07:16 AM

I've got thick enough skin if someone wants to disagree with me that The Proclaimers wrote 1 great song and no others. A little discussion doesn't hurt, and I would sooner participate in a web forum that looked for reasons to have audio discussions instead of one that finds reasons to not have them.

Pick me! Pick me! The whole album (Sunshine on Leith) that I'm Gonna Be (500 miles) is on is great IMO. I love that disk and it used to get frequent play in my house.

But I know a lot of other people who think that The Proclaimers only had one good song. Most of them have never heard the full album however (I'm not suggesting you haven't heard it).

ForeverAutumn

07-23-2007, 07:25 AM

So I'm rereading Rae's original post and realizing that he's not referring to one-hit wonder's and is asking about subjective opinions on songs that you think are outstanding in an otherwise mediocre catalogue.

I have to add Queens of the Stoneage and their song No-One Knows.

No-one Knows is a freakin' outstanding tune IMO. My toes tap, my head bangs, I bob back and forth like one of those glass ducks at a cup of water whenever that songs plays. It used to be my ringtone for pete's sake! I LOVE THAT SONG!

The rest of the QOTSA catalogue is total mediocrity IMO. Yeah, they've got some good songs. They're okay. But No-One Knows makes my blood rush.

kexodusc

07-23-2007, 08:06 AM

Pick me! Pick me! The whole album (Sunshine on Leith) that I'm Gonna Be (500 miles) is on is great IMO. I love that disk and it used to get frequent play in my house.

But I know a lot of other people who think that The Proclaimers only had one good song. Most of them have never heard the full album however (I'm not suggesting you haven't heard it).
Actually I had the tape - and I liked a few tunes on it, I believe the album title is also a good song - correct me if I'm wrong, been years since I heard it. I no longer own a casette player after my last Technics unit died. :(
Still think I'm Gonna Be is just in a whole other league compared to the rest of the album. I confess to having not heard any other albums they may or may not have.

I'd agree with you on the QOTSA though - I dont' mind them, but mediocre is exactly how I'd describe them, not bad, just never great. Except No-One Knows just stands out. Awesome tune. When I think QOTSA that song is exactly what comes to mind, no others. Usually with bands I like I don't really have only 1 favorite song. Haven't heard their latest yet though.

BradH

07-23-2007, 10:59 AM

kexodusc

07-23-2007, 11:38 AM

No, I'm saying people will make their own subjective choices and won't necessarily use your definition of success.
Okay. I don't have a problem with their subjective criteria - my arbitrary definition of success is obviously subjective.
When I suggested ignoring the "subjective appeal" (ie magnitude of appeal a song has to you being subjective) it was to suggest that people not avoid offering their selections because other people's subjective views lead them to disagree. I think you got hung up on my using "facts", which I admit probably wasn't the best use of the queen's english on my part, but it wasnt' my intention to reduce this to a statistical analysis based on record sales or chart lists. I just disagreed that the topic of this thread was pointless (or any more pointless than any other thread), or that everyone's selections have to withstand the RR regular's scrutiny.

All I'm trying to say is the original poster had an idea for a topic that more than a few people felt was worthwhile when they posted their responses - including a few people who later changed their minds and decided the thread was poorly conceived after offering their lists.

I can respect a desire to avoid turning the thread into series of rebuttals and counter-arguments to everyone selections, but to dismiss the viability of the thread and discourage posting at all isn't necessary. If someone doesn't like it, nobody's forcing anyone to post.

SlumpBuster

07-23-2007, 12:05 PM

Someone said the magic phrase that invokes the appearance of Slumpy in thread like this: "Crappy taste in music." :D I have always loved Mr. Mister's "Kyrie." Sure it's goofy, but its deliciously goofy. But they are probably one or two hit wonders anyway.

As for a huge band with only one good song IMHO: Doobie Brothers "China Grove"

Finally, not to Beat the Dead Horse They Came in On, but another band that, like Soul Asylum, is generally, but wrongfully, cast to the scrap heap of one hit wonders is Better Than Ezra. They are one of my favorite bands that have become a real staple of my listening patterns. They just make great records of fine straight ahead rock music with plenty of hooks and no fluff. But, they are of course most remembered for there mid 1990s hit "Good" even though they have hours upon hours of good songs.

JAMOOL

08-09-2007, 02:51 PM

The Proclaimers - that I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles) song was all the rage for a while...still hear it from time to time...whatever happened to them?

Did Gary Numan do anything besides Cars?

He's done quite a bit. In Europe he had another #1 hit before Cars called "Are Friends Electric?" which gets sampled a lot. After that his career went into a downswing of progressively lower-charting singles and image changes until finally in 1992 he took a cue from Trent Reznor and started making gothic industrial music. So far he's done four albums in the style, and a really great remix album that picks up a bunch of newer tracks and old classics. He's just a cult hero now, but his career is still doing fairly well.