One Hits

It's 'One Hit Wonders' Bank Holiday Monday on Absolute 90s Radio.  I've just been listening to it in my kitchen while I make a chicken curry.  It is still playing in there as I now type next door.

It's got me thinking: a lot of my favourite songs are by classic one-hit wonders.  My record collection is interspersed with  odd singles, by someone I've never heard of before or since but that I have played into the ground.

From 4 Non-Blondes and Spin Doctors to Babylon Zoo and Lisa Loeb & Nine Stories; Bran Van 3000, Soul Asylum, Eagle Eye Cherry, Crash Test Dummies, Deep Blue Something, OMC, Skeelo, The New Radicals, Marcy Playground, Semisonic,  Shanice, um, Chesney Hawkes, Divinyls, Shawn Mullins, Sophie B. Hawkins, Joan Osborne...

Now, there are loads of bands I love who are considered one-hit wonders, but who actually have gone on to have (or already had) successful but more lo-fi careers - so apologies if your long-term favourite band is included in there.  I was once horrified to see the Breeders listed on a list of one-hit wonders, as 'Cannonball' was kind of a radio hit.  Ridiculous.

Anyway, you know what I mean by one-hit wonder - and there is something so perfect about them.  Something magnificent.  Surely it's what pop music, in its purest essence, is all about - encapsulating a moment, blowing everyone away and then disappearing.

I think the same theory can apply to life in general.  I don't love these songs any less, just because they were by one-hit wonders.  In fact, I kind of love them all the more.  Obviously it's not the same kind of love I have for an enduring, perennial favourite band - but it's no less valid for that.

Sometimes I think I feel the same about fleeting friendships and past boyfriends.  In the best possible way.

In the same way, I spend a lot of time wondering which of them actually have day jobs these days...