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Post by Kensterberg on Feb 28, 2007 12:51:22 GMT -5
In the spirit of wayved's last post ... here are a few bands/albums that IMO probably deserve the "one album wonder" moniker.
Love, Forever Changes.
Big Country, The Crossing. (They had one thing to say, and said it fully across this LP. While they made a follow-up -- Steeltown -- that wasn't a bad record, it sold almost no copies stateside: and when they achieved some European sales success late in the eighties, it was with an awful faux hair-metal sound that marked their descent into crass sell-out territory. The Crossing was the only time that Big Country were both critically and commercially successful, something that could be said of none of their later work).
Hootie and the Blowfish, Cracked Rear View (At least I think that was the name of their one big hit. You remember this -- you couldn't turn around without running into one of their singles on VH1 or the radio in 1995. They were huge ... and then they were gone. Classic one-album wonders).
Alanis Morrisette, Jagged Little Pill. (Maybe even bigger than Hootie. Yeah, she's eeked out a steady stream of records over the last 12 or so years, but this was the only one that made a big impact, either critically or commercially. I doubt if most people -- not uber music geeks or Alanis fanatics -- could even name another of her albums. Despite Matheus' inevitable objections, I'd feel safe putting her in this category).
Much as I loved The Crossing, I feel like Big Country really do belong here, for better or worse. And if any band merits this label, it's got to be Hootie.
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Post by Galactus on Feb 28, 2007 12:57:33 GMT -5
Hootie and the Blowfish, Cracked Rear View (At least I think that was the name of their one big hit. You remember this -- you couldn't turn around without running into one of their singles on VH1 or the radio in 1995. They were huge ... and then they were gone. Classic one-album wonders). Oh man, I know gonna get shit for this...Musical Chairs and Fairweather Johnson are both good albums...so is that disc of covers they put actually. The hootie backlash is ridiculous, there's no chance those guys could ever do anything people would admit to liking now. So in a commercial sense, sure, they only had the one album that they had no hope of ever living up to again but on an objective level they 2 really good albums and 2 pretty good albums. |
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Post by Kensterberg on Feb 28, 2007 13:02:08 GMT -5
Hootie and the Blowfish, Cracked Rear View (At least I think that was the name of their one big hit. You remember this -- you couldn't turn around without running into one of their singles on VH1 or the radio in 1995. They were huge ... and then they were gone. Classic one-album wonders). Oh man, I know gonna get shit for this...Musical Chairs and Fairweather Johnson are both good albums...so is that disc of covers they put actually. The hootie backlash is ridiculous, there's no chance those guys could ever do anything people would admit to liking now. So in a commercial sense, sure, they only had the one album that they had no hope of ever living up to again but on an objective level they 2 really good albums and 2 pretty good albums. I believe you, DED. I really do. But the Hootie backlash was so big and happened so fast that if the "one album wonder" tag is going to mean anything, I think it has to apply to them. I guess (back to wayved's question) I think that if you're going to talk about this subject, then the commercial aspect has to have a bit more emphasis than the qualitative component. Alanis has made a couple of pretty good albums since Jagged Little Pill, and Steeltown (and the Wonderland EP) weren't bad compared to The Crossing, but it's hard to argue that commercially and in the minds of the public these people had one record and that was it. But it ultimately just goes to show just how pointless trying to assign arbitrary categories is. |
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Post by rockysigman on Feb 28, 2007 13:10:13 GMT -5
Hootie and the Blowfish, Cracked Rear View (At least I think that was the name of their one big hit. You remember this -- you couldn't turn around without running into one of their singles on VH1 or the radio in 1995. They were huge ... and then they were gone. Classic one-album wonders). Oh man, I know gonna get shit for this...Musical Chairs and Fairweather Johnson are both good albums...so is that disc of covers they put actually. The hootie backlash is ridiculous, there's no chance those guys could ever do anything people would admit to liking now. So in a commercial sense, sure, they only had the one album that they had no hope of ever living up to again but on an objective level they 2 really good albums and 2 pretty good albums. I bet you're wearing a Hootie & the Blowfish t-shirt right now. |
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Post by Galactus on Feb 28, 2007 13:35:46 GMT -5
I'm wearing a Rolling Stones shirt right now, maybe I'll put out the Hootie T tomorrow though.
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Post by Dr. Drum on Feb 28, 2007 14:41:45 GMT -5
Most of Alanis Morissette's records have gone at least a couple times platinum in the States, I think. But yeah, I'm sure that, in general, she would be thought of as someone who had just the one record.
I'm one of those who would argue that Steeltown was better than its more well-known predecessor. Darker and a tad less saleable than The Crossing (which actually only went gold itself) but better nonetheless.
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Post by Kensterberg on Feb 28, 2007 14:49:41 GMT -5
Most of Alanis Morissette's records have gone at least a couple times platinum in the States, I think. But yeah, I'm sure that, in general, she would be thought of as someone who had just the one record. I'm one of those who would argue that Steeltown was better than its more well-known predecessor. Darker and a tad less saleable than The Crossing (which actually only went gold itself) but better nonetheless. I think that we have yet to find a single band that we can all -- or even a strong majority -- agree qualifies as a "one-album wonder." Given that every artist who gets brought up has some sort of caveats associated with them (hell, I can't 100% defend the ones I posted today, and those were ones that I really thought had a strong claim to the title), we may have just established that there is no such meaningful category. At least not as PEW originally proposed it, which is artists who had one big album and the rest were bad/mediocre. There are those artists who only made one record -- New Radicals, Temple of the Dog, etc. -- but damn few who made numerous albums but only succeeded once. |
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Post by Galactus on Feb 28, 2007 15:13:09 GMT -5
I just think most of them are already covered as "one hit wonders", chances are you one decent album only had one or two decent singles and one really big hit. Any band that was good enough to squeeze out one entire really good album, probably has at least half a decent album left in them for the sophomore. Most bands that made one great album only made one album...or they never actually made that one great album, instead making numerous pretty good albums. If we defined the terms a little better maybe we could come up with something but the way it is it has "subjective" written all over it and as such really just has to be pew's baby. If any of us choose to read his blog, perhaps we could enjoy dissecting it though.
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Post by strat-0 on Feb 28, 2007 15:26:03 GMT -5
Much as I loved The Crossing, I feel like Big Country really do belong here, for better or worse. And if any band merits this label, it's got to be Hootie. Yeah, and the bagpipe guitar sound lasted about as long. |
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Post by tangerine on Mar 2, 2007 21:01:39 GMT -5
I just think most of them are already covered as "one hit wonders", chances are you one decent album only had one or two decent singles and one really big hit. Any band that was good enough to squeeze out one entire really good album, probably has at least half a decent album left in them for the sophomore. Most bands that made one great album only made one album...or they never actually made that one great album, instead making numerous pretty good albums. If we defined the terms a little better maybe we could come up with something but the way it is it has "subjective" written all over it and as such really just has to be pew's baby. If any of us choose to read his blog, perhaps we could enjoy dissecting it though. I haven't read this entire thread, but why can't a band that only made one album be considered a one-album wonder? |
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Post by kmc on Mar 2, 2007 21:11:16 GMT -5
Because that one album might be crap.
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Post by Galactus on Mar 2, 2007 23:08:18 GMT -5
Actually, I'd say the only real "one album wonders" are all bands that only made one album.
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Post by Kensterberg on Mar 3, 2007 0:29:07 GMT -5
Actually, I'd say the only real "one album wonders" are all bands that only made one album. I think you're probably right -- but PEW wanted bands who "had one great album .. the rest was either mediocre or crappy." So we can't talk about bands who only made one album here. |
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Post by kmc on Mar 3, 2007 0:48:18 GMT -5
So The Zombies wouldn't qualify here?
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Post by Kensterberg on Mar 3, 2007 0:54:01 GMT -5
How can you call the Zombies a one album wonder when they had all those killer singles?
I dunno ... IMHO this whole category is fucked. Maybe if you said "Bands that only made one album, or who only had one really good or really succesful album" and then were prepared to have all your picks second guessed ...
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