Preview Comments
I have chosen this title specifically to eschew the idea of one-hit wonders because that phrase is fraught with a lot of assumptions about genre, region, and awareness. Also, many of the artists I have chosen for this list had more than one hit. Several of them even had long, successful careers, but perhaps not under the same band name or in the same part of the industry.
What I want to examine are songs that, for one reason or another, had a disproportionate impact when compared to the success of the artist or group. Because of this, most people will probably recognize quite a few of the songs on the list. But I want to put the song and artist in context and talk about why both are amazing.
Organizing the songs into categories was less clear this time, as many of the songs could fit into more than one. But here’s my rough grouping:
Part 1 – Lost in the Era
This is the largest section, which covers a broad range of music that was iconic at the time of release and maybe even saw some resurgence later. But while the songs themselves were popular, the artists were often overshadowed or failed to live up to their potential.
Part 2 – Soundtracks and Special Appearances
There is plenty of music that is well-known mostly because of its presence on a soundtrack or because the band guested on a popular TV show. These songs represent important moments in media, ones which captured the imaginations of their respective generations.
Part 3 – Mainstream Visits the Club
This short section looks at dance music that broke out of the club rotation and into much broader awareness. But these particular dance hits came from artists that quickly vanished back into club obscurity.
Part 4 – Supergroups and Side Projects
The artists in this final section are ones you will certainly recognize, though not necessarily in these incarnations. These are projects by otherwise successful musicians that were short-lived for a variety of reasons.
I’m particularly proud of this list, because it is one my more diverse ones – branching out more to the 70s and even a bit earlier. (My earliest selection is from 1902, but that’s certainly an outlier.) Keep in mind that your choices and thoughts may differ from mine, and I am happy to have that conversation in the comments below each song. But this is my list to share. You can always do your own.
Part 1 – Lost in the Era
Day 1 – Jackie DeShannon, “Put a Little Love in Your Heart”
The 60s were a transitional era in popular music – shifting from a focus on songwriters towards more and more bands and performers who wrote their own songs. But songwriters were still prominent enough that they could make careers and even names for themselves well into the 70s and 80s. (Songwriters still exist, but are often hidden behind the artist these days.)
Jackie DeShannon began her musical career in her teens and oscillated between performance and writing. She was extremely prolific and dedicated, but found only moderate success at both. Later on, she moved away from performance – albeit with occasional guest appearances – and focused almost entirely on songwriting. Her one Grammy Award (for best song of the year) came in 1981 because of Kim Carnes’s success with “Bette Davis Eyes,” a song DeShannon had actually released herself seven years earlier.
In the late 60s, though, DeShannon reached a brief moment of synergy with her own performance of her own song, “Put a Little Love in Your Heart.” Its success rode somewhat on the history of her recording of “What the World Needs Now is Love” (by Hal David and Burt Bacharach), but this song cemented DeShannon as a writer as well as a singer.
While DeShannon kept recording – both her own songs and others’ – she never again reached this level of success as a singer. Even this song was covered numerous times by other artists, most notably Annie Lennox and Al Green in 1988 (for the Scrooged soundtrack).
Day 2 – LaBelle, “Lady Marmalade”
Patti LaBelle, the Godmother of Soul, began her career in a rotation of 60s girl groups doing mostly R&B covers and adaptations. The turnaround came when Patti LaBelle and the Bluebelles – an incarnation that included Nona Hendryx and Sarah Dash – were picked up by Vicki Wickham, who also managed Dusty Springfield.
Wickham helped bring about a change in the group’s look and sound, incorporating Funk and Glam Rock into an aesthetic that would become Glam Soul. The group shortened their name to LaBelle, toured with The Who, and gradually developed their sound until their massive breakthrough hit, “Lady Marmalade.” But LaBelle’s success as a trio did not last long – personal disagreements exacerbated by the pressures of fame made them decide to go their separate ways. All three departed to varied but successful solo careers, and Nona Hendryx found a lifelong romantic partner in the group’s manager, Vicki Wickham. (They are still together.)
“Lady Marmalade” is an absolutely iconic song. It has been covered numerous times (including a high-profile spot in the Moulin Rouge soundtrack), and it has been a staple of drag and club scenes for decades. Enjoy (again)!
Day 3 – Chuck Mangione, “Feels So Good”
One of the ways a piece of music can find breakthrough success is by fusing popular sounds of its time. Unfortunately, this can cement the piece so firmly in that moment that it can become the defining core of an artist’s popular identity. This is certainly the case with Chuck Mangione.
“Feels So Good” is a brilliant fusion of combo Jazz and Disco/Funk. If you were in Jazz Band in high school, you probably performed it at least once – it’s part of the Jazz Band canon because of the way it shows off a different era from earlier big-band music. But even beyond the high school band community, this song is extremely well-known and recognized. I can say the word “flugelhorn” to non-musicians and they have no idea what I’m talking about, but if I say, “the instrument in ‘Feels So Good'” then they instantly understand. (There’s a reason Stephen Strange asks his orderly to give him something harder after being asked to identify this song.)
Mangione has had a long and full career as a performer, composer, actor, and more, but he is so well known for this song specifically that it became a running gag during his appearances on King of the Hill. He has a relaxed attitude about it, though, to the extent that he has often played it as both the opening AND closing of live performances. And certainly you’d expect the composer of this piece to have a relaxed attitude about pretty much everything.
Day 4 – Quarterflash, “Harden My Heart”
If ever there was a song that screamed “Oh by the way we’re in the 80s now,” it’s this one. This wasn’t the first 80s tune to feature a prominent sax solo, and it certainly wouldn’t be the last, but it stands out as unusual because of the fact that it’s lead singer Rindy Ross playing it. This song was played constantly on the radio in the early 80s, which is why it has been used so frequently to represent the time period in Movies, TV shows, and video games.
Quarterflash produced a couple other prominent singles, but nothing nearly as successful and iconic as “Harden My Heart.” Although they signed with Geffen in 1981, they were never quite able to escape their regional Portland sensibilities. This is partly because at the core they were a husband-and-wife team, with guitarist Marv Ross writing most of the music and lyrics. Under his direction, their sound ended up a little bit same-y. To me, it feels like Rindy was actually held back by Marv’s writing, and I wonder what she might have done if they hadn’t been married and she had gone solo.
We’ll never know, of course, but at least we have this incredibly influential piece to remember them by.
Day 5 – Scandal, “The Warrior”
As a band, Scandal was already starting to break up when they released their biggest hit, “The Warrior.” By the time they finished touring with their first full-length album, they were already done. Lead singer Patty Smyth spent some time working on an on-and-off solo career in the midst of raising children, first with punk guitarist Richard Hell and later with tennis star John McEnroe. (She and McEnroe are still married.)
If it had not been for the impending birth of her first child (Ruby), Patty Smyth might have agreed to replace David Lee Roth as the lead singer of Van Halen. Instead, the band was forced to go with their second choice, Sammy Hagar. I’ll let you take a moment and imagine what might have been.
This song and video represent a milestone for me personally – Patty Smyth was my first rock-and-roll crush (particularly the lightning makeup and flared hair look you can see in the thumbnail). I also wonder what influence this video had on my love of Cirque du Soleil, considering it’s basically the exact same aesthetic. (I can point to specific costumes here and tell you which Cirque show they resemble.) Smyth herself didn’t care for it, calling it an “off-Broadway production of Cats,” but I think it’s one of those bizarre videos that sticks out perhaps because of its strangeness.
Day 6 – World Party, “Ship of Fools”
Karl Wallinger spent a two-album stint with The Waterboys before breaking off and developing his own project. World Party was primarily Wallinger’s solo work, although for a couple years in the early 90s the band had two additional “official” members – Dave Caitlin-Burch on guitar and Chris Sharrock (from Icicle Works) on drums.
Wallinger named his band after one of the last songs he wrote for The Waterboys, but that song wouldn’t actually be released until 1988, two years after his new band’s first album. “World Party” by The Waterboys was one of the standout hits from Fisherman’s Blues, and while it’s possible that this muddied things a bit for World Party’s (the band’s) success, it’s more likely that Wallinger’s rock-folk sound didn’t quite fit in with mid-80s and early 90s tastes.
Although World Party technically lasted through several albums, their popularity had a bit of a strange arc. Private Revolution, their debut album that includes “Ship of Fools,” did well in the US largely on the strength of that single. However, none of the rest of that album was quite as marketable, so the band quickly faded from the American consciousness. Private Revolution was largely ignored in the UK, but Bang! (World Party’s third album) did very well there. In a sense, World Party was short-lived in both the US and the UK – just at different times.
Day 7 – Shinehead, “Chain Gang Rap”
I’ve talked a bit in the past how I went through a huge Reggae phase, and there was a brief surge in popularity for Reggae during the latter half of the 80s, partially due to the release of Legend, the Bob Marley compilation album. This reintroduction of Reggae for a new generation helped bring about some fusion sounds, including the Reggae-Rap that Shinehead was most known for.
Shinehead broke through with Unity, the album that included this song and the other extremely 80s single, “Gimme No Crack.” He continued making albums, but none of them had quite the same popularity. He was more interested in developing and exploring his sound than in sticking to what was successful.
One thing that sticks out about “Chain Gang Rap” is that the rapping style very closely matches that of Fresh Prince Will Smith. Unity came out the same year as He’s the DJ, I’m the Rapper, which was the first massive hit for DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince. This particular tone and flow was just one of the sounds of Hip-Hop at the time. Many of Shinehead’s other songs, though, leverage more of the Reggae sound, even taking on more of a Jamaican accent. “Chain Gang Rap” is his most accessible song for a variety of reasons.
Day 8 – When in Rome, “The Promise”
Although I’m trying to avoid the phrase “one-hit wonder,” this band is probably the closest I can get to a group I might describe that way. When in Rome had one hit single (that didn’t quite break top 10), released only one album, and broke up immediately after. Their only other single off the album (“Heaven Knows) hit #95, which is respectable but not notable.
Even worse, later tensions meant they couldn’t quite manage to capitalize on any reunion nostalgia. Following the use of “The Promise” on the Napoleon Dynamite soundtrack, keyboardist Michael Floreale tried to claim sole credit for the song and formed When in Rome II. In response, Clive Farrington (bald vocalist) and Andrew Mann (Fabio-hair vocalist) formed When in Rome UK. Both groups still exist, and a reconciliation seems unlikely at this point.
Although “The Promise” sticks out among synth-pop songs of the 80s with the contrast between Mann’s low, sultry melodies and Farrington’s higher, faster counterpoints, the band’s overall sound was perhaps TOO familiar. They were just picking up what bands like Tears for Fears, Crowded House, and Level 42 had been doing for years, and they didn’t have anything particularly new to offer. And so we remember the song, but forget the band.
Day 9 – Arrested Development, “Tennessee”
By the early 90s, popular thought tended to categorize Hip Hop into either Dance or Gangsta, and that was about it. The exceptions were rare and generally thought to be unique. (For instance – P.M. Dawn, who I’ve mentioned in the past.) Initially, Arrested Development was thought to be one of those exceptions, but they signaled a much larger shift in Hip Hop that was about to take place.
Arrested Development brought a soulful, thoughtful center to their music, with Speech eschewing the self-aggrandizement common to the genre and taking on a more storytelling/spoken word tone. As a collective, they had more of a community attitude than a lot of Hip Hop at the time. But even more important was the impact they had in helping to build up Atlanta as a new center of Hip Hop.
“Tennessee” hit it big as the Atlanta Hip Hop scene was just beginning to emerge into the mainstream. Some of the early Atlanta acts – like Kris Kross and TLC – were lumped in with the electronic Miami sound, but Arrested Development’s sound demanded its own category. They paved the way for groups like Outkast (and the Dungeon Family collective in general) to make that soulful social consciousness a common thread in the Atlanta scene. Modern politically-focused Atlanta artists like Childish Gambino and Killer Mike share their roots with Arrested Development.
Arrested Development has never stopped making and performing music, but most people really only know 3 Years, 5 Months, and 2 Days In the Life Of… and not any of their subsequent albums. That’s partially because their second major-label album, Zingalamaduni, was considered a commercial disappointment, so all of their albums since 2000 have been released on Vagabond Records, Speech’s personal label. Essentially, they went from popular to indie rather than the other way around.
Day 10 – Ned’s Atomic Dustbin, “Grey Cell Green”
Let’s talk about Grebo! Before the Industrial and Grunge explosions of the 90s, there was a brief period of psychedelic skate-punk music in both the US and UK. In the US, it was characterized by the early works of bands like Faith No More (in the Chuck Mosley era) and Red Hot Chili Peppers (up through Mother’s Milk). In the UK, it centered around the Midlands and bands like The Wonder Stuff and Pop Will Eat Itself. The UK movement was known as Grebo after a slang term for long-haired music fans that Pop Will Eat Itself had reappropriated.
Unfortunately for this subgenre, it existed very much at the intersection of a number of other sounds whose fans did not necessarily mix. The harder sounds were soon absorbed into Grunge, and the psychedelia got picked up by late Madchester bands like Stone Roses and Inspiral Carpets. It’s a shame because Ned’s Atomic Dustbin did have something unique to offer, with its two-bass lineup, richly full drumming, and energetic vocals.
“Grey Cell Green” saw a hefty amount of play on 120 Minutes for a brief period following its release, so the song is a bit of a time capsule for those of us who watched that show faithfully. After their debut God Fodder, Ned’s only did a couple more albums that failed to break through the Nirvana/Nine Inch Nails domination of the mid-90s, and then they were done.
Day 11 – OMC, “How Bizarre”
This list began with a desire to show that cheesy pop hits can have greater importance than we think, and few songs demonstrate that better than OMC’s “How Bizarre.” On the surface, it’s a pleasant summer riff with an odd story that doesn’t even have an ending (“Wanna know the rest? Hey, buy the rights.”), but its lineage and legacy go much deeper.
The Otara Millionaires Club (an ironic name for the extremely poor Otara neighborhood) emerged from the family group Fuemana, which had been started by Phil Fuemana, one of the founders of the Urban Pasifika sound. Urban Pasifika was originally Phil’s label and is now a South Auckland-centered Hip Hop movement that heavily incorporates Maori, Samoan, Nieuan, Tongan, and other Polynesian languages and instrumentation. Phil’s brother Pauly teamed up with Alan Jansson to start making music as OMC.
The song itself was an instant hit in New Zealand, then Australia, then went on to massive radio success in the US, UK, and Europe. This success caused a fight over royalties between singer Pauly Fuemana and instrumentalist Alan Jansson, so OMC never made more than one album. However, the song’s reach helped provide interest and legitimacy for Urban Pasifika, a movement that continues to have influence on Polynesian Hip Hop. (Check out Nesian Mystik for a great example of the sound.)
Day 12 – Cake, “The Distance”
Cake lasted a lot longer than my last couple of selections (although there is no sign yet of their next album), but they have had just a couple of brief peaks in popularity where they broke through to the mainstream. Most casual listeners are probably aware of this song and “Short Skirt/Long Jacket,” and not much more. More dedicated fans know they’ve had at least one or two solid singles from each of their six studio albums, but those singles aren’t nearly as broadly recognizable.
Lineup changes early in their career (during and after their first two albums) led to shifts in sound and writing that made them harder to pin down for fans and reviewers. Cake’s sound is unique anyway, so the inconsistency made it harder for any given song to represent the band. The two defining aspects of their sound that DID remain consistent – John McCrea’s drawling vocals and Vince DiFiore’s airy trumpet noodling – make Cake a kind of love-them-or-hate-them band. If you dig it, you dig it, but if you don’t care for it then it’s going to get on your nerves.
As a first breakthrough hit, “The Distance” fit neatly into the mid-to-late 90s ethos – it could stand next to Beck’s sound from Odelay (like “Devil’s Haircut”), and it brushed against the weird faux-nostalgia that often characterized media for 20-something bar dudes (like the movie Swingers). Unfortunately, McCrea didn’t have Beck’s stylistic range to push Cake to a larger audience, and those bar dudes had a habit of just listening to popular singles and not necessarily becoming faithful fans of an album, let alone a band (see also “Tubthumping”).
Day 13 – Luscious Jackson, “Naked Eye”
As I come to the end of this section of the list, I want to talk about an underlying trend. Many of my selections for part 1 are examples of Fusion – they bring together two or more musical styles and genres of their particular time period in ways that briefly capture mainstream attention. The problem with Fusion is that if even one of the elements falls out of favor the whole thing suddenly sounds dated.
Luscious Jackson had a widely varied sound, but songs like “Citysong” and “Naked Eye” showed off a particular Fusion that was solid at the time but unfortunately fell out of favor. These songs blended a Liz Phair-style pop alternative sound with rapid but mellow spoken word rap. They also benefited initially from being on Grand Royal, the Beastie Boys’ vanity label. (Drummer Kate Schellenbach had been one of the founding members of the Beastie Boys in their pre-rap punk days.)
Unfortunately, none of these elements ended up providing long-lasting security. The Sarah McLachlan/Lilith Fair bubble broke in the late 90s (see my previous lists for more on that), which made it much harder for women musicians to get noticed outside of the TRL pop machine. Also, Grand Royal started declining and eventually folded due to financial troubles, forcing the label to sell off most of its assets and back catalog (but of course not the Beastie Boys material). There were still a few opportunities to be had in teen TV series, but I’ll talk more about that in my next section…
Part 2 – Soundtracks and Special Appearances
Day 14 – Scott Joplin, “The Entertainer”
In this section, I want to talk about how movie and TV soundtracks have defined our understanding of music on numerous occasions. Some songs become so strongly tied to a piece of visual media that they lose any previous or external association. Some songs would barely be recognized today if it hadn’t been for those ties, as is the case with the first selection, Scott Joplin’s “The Entertainer.”
There are plenty of examples in popular music history of white people deciding when black music is important, but “The Entertainer” so clearly illustrates the problem that I can’t help but talk about it. Scott Joplin was well known in his day as the King of Ragtime. His first big hit was “The Maple Leaf Rag,” a song which was used by Joplin and others as the template for basically all of the Ragtime genre. He had several other great Ragtime hits published, but as his health declined so too did Ragtime fade into Jazz and Swing. People still remembered him, but they had moved on. Ragtime was largely sidelined until the 1970s.
Joshua Rifkin, a white musician, conductor, and academic, recorded a series of albums covering Joplin’s body of Ragtime works. The first of these was released in 1970, sold over 100,000 copies in its first year, and sparked a 1970s Ragtime revival. The album opens – as it should – with “The Maple Leaf Rag,” and there are plenty of other great Ragtime songs on there that might have captured the public imagination if it hadn’t been for a certain massively popular movie that was released at the end of 1973.
The Sting, starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford, won 7 Academy Awards AND was one of the top-grossing films of the pre-blockbuster era. (It was one of only 3 movies before Jaws to break 200 million.) The movie’s opening credits music was of course “The Entertainer,” which quickly became the most recognizable Ragtime song for modern audiences. Ironically, the use of this song (and other Ragtime tunes) on the soundtrack for The Sting is completely ahistorical. The movie is set in 1936, well after Ragtime’s popularity. Swing would have been much more accurate.
So there you have it – a black composer popularized a genre that almost entirely featured black composers, but his song is remembered because of a white academic and a movie written and directed by white guys and starring two iconic white actors. Oh, and just to ram the point home – I searched and searched and could not find ANY videos of black pianists playing this song.
Day 15 – Rose Royce, “Car Wash”
There have been other bands created specifically for movie soundtracks, but few quite as successful as Rose Royce. Car Wash (the movie) came at the end of the Blaxploitation era. The most well-known soundtracks of that era came from established R&B artists like Curtis Mayfield and Isaac Hayes. Creating a new band was a gamble, but it paid off well for the movie and the soundtrack.
One of the unique factors in creating the Car Wash soundtrack was that the songs were composed (by the great Norman Whitfield) during filming rather than after the fact. This allowed for even better blending of visuals and music.
Rose Royce had a few more albums that did well on the R&B charts in the late 70s, though they were actually more popular in the UK than the US. However, lead singer Gwen “Rose” Dickey left the band in 1980. Though the band kept going, they were never as successful after that.
Day 16 – Harold Faltermeyer, “Axel F”
There are plenty of film score composers who have broad name recognition – John Williams, Hans Zimmer, Danny Elfman, Ennio Morricone – but if you’re not someone who regularly checks the “Music by” credits, you may not know the name Harold Faltermeyer. There’s no question that you know his music, though.
Harold Faltermeyer’s particular brand of synth-pop was suddenly omnipresent for a few years in the mid-80s. Faltermeyer did both Fletch movies, both Beverly Hills Cops, Top Gun, The Running Man, and more, and most of those gigs came as a direct result of the success of “Axel F,” the theme for Eddie Murphy’s character Axel Foley from Beverly Hills Cop. Even if you’ve never watched the movie, you’ve probably heard this song. I even heard a marching band perform it at a competition in the late 80s.
In the 80s, the common thread of media consumption was MTV, and at the time MTV was JUST music videos. There was some news here and there, but 90% or more of the airtime of MTV was covered by music videos. To get people interested in their movies, studios had to have music videos that featured their images. Ghostbusters, The Goonies, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off – so many of the movies we think of as iconic 80s movies started their marketing with a strong music video or two. (Even after you’d already seen Ghostbusters once, Ray Parker Jr got you excited to go back.)
Harold Faltermeyer’s spike in popularity lasted for only a few years, but he has continued making soundtracks for movies, TV, and video games ever since. But he has never again released anything as prominent or ubiquitous as “Axel F.”
Day 17 – Glenn Frey, “You Belong to the City”
Glenn Frey wasn’t exactly a nobody when he hit it big as a solo artist in the mid-80s. As a member of the Eagles, he had already had plenty of big hits in the 70s. But the Eagles broke up (for a time) in 1980 and Frey started doing solo work. His solo albums did moderately well, charting at the low end of the top 40, but the two songs that made him a voice of the 80s as well as the 70s were both soundtrack songs. The first was “The Heat is On,” another song on the Beverly Hills Cop soundtrack and a collaboration with Harold Faltermeyer. The second was “You Belong to the City.”
If you didn’t live through the mid-80s, it’s hard to explain what a profound cultural impact the TV show Miami Vice had. The series defined cool for the latter half of the decade – from fashion to cars to music, Miami Vice was the source and/or gathering point for much of our collective memory of the era. In addition to iconic original music like this one, the series regularly spent thousands of dollars per episode securing the rights to popular or up-and-coming songs. (The driving scene set to “In the Air Tonight” is a standout example, but there were many more great selections.)
Many people think of saxophones as part of the defining sound of the 80s, and that’s not wrong – saxophone was a regular fixture in rock music at the time – but this one stands out in its focus on a more pure bluesy-jazz sound. “You Belong to the City” was more of a Blues/Rock Fusion than many of the Rock+saxophone songs out there. Yet it became a defining anthem for the mid-80s.
Day 18 – Paula Cole, “I Don’t Want to Wait”
Yesterday was all about giving people of my generation some good TV nostalgia; today I give it to the Millenials. The WB, predecessor network to The CW, initially struggled to find its footing. Buffy the Vampire Slayer was one of its first successful draws, so the network decided to lean into the teen drama demographic with Dawson’s Creek. Dawson’s Creek was such a hit that it bolstered the viewership of existing shows like Buffy and 7th Heaven, and the network soon defined much of its programming around teen dramas like Felicity and Charmed. However, the network’s failure to broaden its demographic in the mid-2000s led to its decline and eventual transformation into The CW (a joint-venture network between prior rivals WB and UPN).
Paula Cole’s inclusion for the theme song was part of a cross-promotional effort by Warner Brothers that would continue throughout the existence of the WB network. (More about that tomorrow.) Cole released her second album, This Fire, on Warner Records, so Warner was well-situated to bring “I Don’t Want to Wait” in as a theme song to their new series. And they used the song EVERYWHERE, including all the commercials for Dawson’s Creek during other WB series. (As someone who was only there for Buffy, I can attest to that.)
Paula Cole did the Lilith Fair circuit in the late 90s, but then took a pause after her third album to raise her daughter, Sky. She returned to making music in the late 2000s and has recorded six more albums, with another on the way this year. Since 2013, she has also been a vocal instructor at Berklee College of Music in Boston. With this widely-varied career, however, I will always remember her for her breakthrough as part of Peter Gabriel’s tour band for Secret World Live. That was her first introduction to the international stage, and arguably a big reason why she was able to get her second album picked up by Warner. (For more on that, see my month-long introspective on Peter Gabriel, further back in my timeline.)
Day 19 – Cibo Matto, “Sugar Water”
The 90s were the decade that witnessed the slow decline of MTV from actual Music Television into reality TV hell. Perceptions of the network – and music videos in general – are a clear generational divide between Gen-Xers and Millenials. The late 90s and early 2000s brought us iconic works by some of the greatest music video directors of all time, but the landscape was changing so that the general public barely noticed. Well before Adaptation and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Michel Gondry was directing jaw-dropping videos like this one.
Despite the amazing video (and amazing song of course), Cibo Matto’s big breakthrough came from another Warner Brothers cross-promotion when they played on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. This appearance happened at the beginning of Season 2, which launched in late spring of 1998, only months after the debut of Dawson’s Creek. More and more artists started appearing on teen television (especially on the WB), and this contributed even further to the decline of the music video as a marketing tool.
Cibo Matto ended up making only one more full studio album before taking an extended hiatus, but Viva! La Woman remains a defining moment in Trip Hop / Trance music. Michel Gondry continued making fantastic music videos and then feature-length movies, and I highly recommend checking them all out. (I’ve played Bjork’s “Army of Me” video on past lists. I also recommend Daft Punk’s “Around the World” and “Let Forever Be” by The Chemical Brothers.)
Part 3 – Mainstream Visits the Club
Day 20 – Peter Schilling, “Major Tom (Coming Home)”
Throughout the 20th century, there were often divisions between “dance” music and “listening” music. This began with the advent of radio, when people would dance to Swing in the dance halls but listen to Jazz and Blues on the radio. The 50s and 60s brought them together somewhat, where danceable music was often sold to radios, but then they started to split apart again in the 70s with the emergence of Disco. By the 80s, there was a further division between dancing that happened in the clubs and dancing that happened out in public (specifically Breakdancing). Again, this division was at least somewhat driven by technology – the availability of the boombox made impromptu street dancing possible.
In the early 80s, Synth-Pop ruled the clubs as the successor to Disco. Devo, Gary Numan, and The Human League led the charge, but were followed by many more. Electronic music had largely begun in Germany with Kraftwerk, and the 80s sound owed more to that band than to any of the Prog Rock groups that used synthesizers in the 70s. And it is from that German electronic music heritage that Peter Schilling emerged.
For his first three albums, Schilling released both German and English-language versions. His first and only breakthrough international hit was the English version of “Major Tom (Coming Home),” released in 1983. This retelling of “Space Oddity” with an updated early-80s sound captured the American imagination at the height of the country’s excitement about the Space Shuttle program. It also has an extremely catchy refrain that even has a countdown leading into it so you can easily join in.
Day 21 – Information Society, “What’s On Your Mind (Pure Energy)”
The 80s club scene was at times a tug of war between Synth-Pop and Industrial (with Industrial gradually taking over). By the late 80s, long-time club mainstays like Depeche Mode and New Order were incorporating more Industrial elements for a sound that managed to blend both successfully. Such a crossover was fairly easy to sell for established artists, but one new group that epitomized that blended sound – and did very well with it at first – had trouble sustaining popularity after their initial success. However, their sound was only part of the story.
Information Society formed in Minneapolis-St Paul and was extremely popular in the Twin Cities club scene. They managed to get one of their early electronic tracks some rotation in NYC clubs, and this helped them secure a recording contract with Tommy Boy Records. They were fortunate enough to leverage Tommy Boy’s distribution deal with Warner Brothers, so their first major label release was distributed through Warner/Reprise. That helped them get traction for their first two videos, “What’s On Your Mind (Pure Energy)” and “Walking Away.” The former got plenty of airplay, partially because of how well it fit in the 1988 zeitgeist and partially because of the nerd cred of the Star Trek dialogue samples. (Fan of the band Adam Nimoy had gotten his father to help secure the rights.)
Despite the success of their first self-titled album and lead singer Kurt Harland’s willingness to push the band even more Industrial, Information Society didn’t get much promotion from Tommy Boy Records. During the 90s, the label focused more and more on its Hip Hop artists rather than the few Electronic and Alternative groups in the stable. Information Society’s albums have been widely spaced, and they did have a short hiatus, but they are still recording and touring today.
Day 22 – M|A|R|R|S, “Pump Up the Volume”
House Music is in many ways one of the purest modern forms of music that is specifically intended for dancing. It is built around loops, synthesized drums, and heavy sampling, all put together at a consistent 4/4 fast-tempo rhythm. It’s not written per se – it’s more accurate to say that House Music is crafted. The term “House” emerged from Chicago (long explanation saved for another time), and for its first few years that was the genre’s home. But, like other movements in music at the time, there was a bit of a conversation happening between Chicago and the UK – specifically 4AD Records.
M|A|R|R|S (a name formed from the first initials of the group’s members) was a collaborative project that combined several 4AD artists from the groups AR Kane and Colourbox. The members didn’t actually gather for the collaboration – instead they built the music electronically and sent it to each other for updates and additions. The collaboration lasted only long enough to put together two songs, “Anitina” and “Pump Up the Volume.” The former barely got noticed, but the second made a splash that was absolutely game-changing.
This song sparked an international interest in House Music and an even broader revolution in electronic sampling. Suddenly everyone was doing it, and many of the artists and labels being sampled were not happy. It would take over a decade for the musical, legal, and even moral implications of sampling to settle down a bit, and we still hear echoes of that today.
Day 23 – Technotronic, “Pump Up the Jam”
The video you are about to see is a lie.
Belgian electronic music project Technotronic was formed by musician Jo Bogaert and rapper Ya Kid K. Bogaert had been relatively popular in Belgium with his instrumental works, but it was Ya Kid K’s vocals that helped launch their first single, “Pump Up the Jam,” onto the international stage.
The woman you see in this video is NOT Ya Kid K.
Technotronic emerged on the European Synth-Pop scene at a time when creating fronts for the band – fake singers who got the public credit – was not uncommon. This song hit it big just as the Milli Vanilli lip-syncing scandal was coming to light. So Jo Bogaert went by the alias Thomas De Quincey and he got a model named Felly Kalingi to lip-sync on the video and appear on the album cover – all without Ya Kid K’s consent.
Many of the early reviews of the song made reference to “Felly Kalingi’s vocals,” which became more of a problem as the backlash grew against Milli Vanilli. By the time Technotronic released their second single, “Get Up! (Before the Night is Over),” they had abandoned the pretense and started releasing songs as “Technotronic featuring Ya Kid K.” Ya Kid K then appeared in subsequent videos and album covers.
For reference, I am also including a second video below so you can see Ya Kid K do the song herself.
Day 24 – The KLF, “3AM Eternal”
One of the biggest things to happen in music this year is that The KLF have started restoring their entire back catalog, including putting their videos on YouTube and their songs on most streaming services. This is a big deal because…well because The KLF is basically half band and half work of anarchist performance art.
Bill Drummond (King Boy D) – former manager of Echo & the Bunnymen – and Jimmy Cauty (Rockman Rock) started the project under the name The JAMs, or The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu. From the beginning they leaned heavily on Illuminati imagery, creating an entire fictional world around invented organizations like KLF Publishing and the K Foundation, as well as fictional locations like Trancentral and Sample City. Under the name The Timelords, they released the instant UK hit, “Doctorin’ the Tardis,” about which they then wrote a book called The Manual (How to Have a Number One the Easy Way).
Their early career had involved quite a bit of sample theft, much of which had caused them legal trouble, so as they made the transition to using the name The KLF, they began developing a road movie and soundtrack called The White Room – the story of the search for an imagined paradise room where copyright no longer mattered. Although the movie was never released, you can find bootlegs of both the original 1989 version and the recut 1991 version on YouTube.
As they ran out of money, they decided to remix some of the songs from The White Room soundtrack into what they called Stadium House, bringing in MC Lyte and other “additional Communicators” to collaborate. One of the most popular of these was “3AM Eternal,” which earned them a performance slot at the 1992 Brit awards. They purchased a dead sheep to disembowel on stage during the performance, but the BBC prevented them from doing so. Instead, Drummond fired machine-gun blanks over the heads of the audience and a voice following the performance informed the audience, “The KLF have now left the music business,” and they announced that they were deleting their back catalog.
They weren’t quite done making a splash for a few more years. Most notable was their filmed performance piece of literally burning 1 million pounds cash that remained of their profits as The KLF, but that was definitely not their only stunt. And now the history of their work has returned, and I encourage everyone to take a deep dive.
Part 4 – Supergroups and Side Projects
Day 25 – Emerson, Lake, and Powell, “Touch and Go”
The late 70s and early 80s were a time of significant reshuffling among Prog bands – from Peter Gabriel leaving Genesis and Steve Howe leaving Yes all the way through Roger Waters leaving Pink Floyd. In the midst of that, Emerson, Lake, and Palmer also went on hiatus, with drummer Carl Palmer joining the supergroup Asia – a group that had formed from the aftereffects of several such departures. When Keith Emerson and Greg Lake decided they wanted to get back to making music, Palmer was unavailable because of his commitments to Asia, which was very successful at the time.
Emerson and Lake auditioned several drummers and ended up bringing in Cozy Powell. Although the band insisted that Powell wasn’t chosen just because of the P in his surname, they did like to joke that he beat out “Phil Pollins” and “Ringo Parr.” The band’s only album was very much in the classic Prog sound, including a rework of “Mars, Bringer of War” similar to the one Lake had done with King Crimson.
Unfortunately, the promotional tour suffered from bad management, and Emerson, Lake, and Powell never made a second album. “Touch and Go” was their biggest single, and it never even broke the Top 40. Classic Prog had lost too much ground by the mid-80s, and the audience just wasn’t there.
Day 26 – Mike + The Mechanics, “All I Need Is A Miracle”
You gotta respect the way Mike Rutherford handled his side projects. The bass and guitar player for Genesis put together a couple of solo albums in the early 80s before deciding that writing music alone didn’t quite work for him, so he formed a whole band to cowrite with him. Their first album went so well – both personally and commercially – that Rutherford decided to keep going with the project for 10 more years, even while Genesis was still active.
Mike + The Mechanics’ first two albums were the most successful in the US, with their third falling off here but still doing well in the UK. They kept making albums but lost their US distribution, dissolved and reformed a couple of times in the following decades, and are still going today with a somewhat different lineup.
This video in particular got a lot of play on MTV because of the way that it incorporated dialogue and told a story. (That’s why I linked the full version and not the one on the band’s official channel.) This was just a couple years after “Love is a Battlefield,” which introduced the idea of dialogue in music videos, and “Thriller,” which exploded the genre into being more about filmmaking. Dialogue and story in videos were very much in vogue at the time, and “All I Need Is a Miracle” took advantage of that. Plus it’s just a great comfort song.
Day 27 – The Honeydrippers, “Sea of Love”
The Honeydrippers was an extremely short-lived vanity project by Robert Plant, who had always loved R&B and got the opportunity to record some covers of classic R&B songs once Led Zeppelin split. They put out a 5-song EP, optimistically named The Honeydrippers: Volume One, and that was it. Despite the incredible success of “Sea of Love” and moderate success of a couple of the other tracks, Plant never got around to recording the full album that he promised.
“Sea of Love,” of course, had been a gold-record hit back in 1959. However, composer and original performer Phil Phillips received only a single payout of $6800 and never got any royalties from the song because of a predatory record contract. Covers of the song made lots of money for white performers like The Honeydrippers and Del Shannon, but not for its black creator.
This knowledge makes the video that The Honeydrippers put together a bit more problematic, considering just how white it is. It’s a story of pale blonde lovers growing up on the Mediterranean coast while Robert Plant airs out his suit and waits for the xylophone to warm up and grill him a nice steak (I guess – you watch it and tell me I’m wrong). Phil Phillips was from Louisiana, so he was probably singing about the Gulf of Mexico, but sure, whatever.
Day 28 – Electronic, “Getting Away With It”
Can a band be a supergroup with only two members? My emphatic answer is “yes,” especially if those two members are Bernard Sumner of New Order and Johnny Marr, former guitarist for The Smiths. Of course, it doesn’t hurt when your first single has Neil Tennant from the Pet Shop Boys as a producer and guest backup singer.
Electronic was a project that Sumner and Marr started talking about soon after The Smiths split up. Marr was obviously free, and Sumner had been trying unsuccessfully to convince his bandmates to incorporate synth programming, so he was itching for a side project. (This was right around the time of Technique.)
“Getting Away With It” exploded onto the UK charts, and the self titled album that followed also did extremely well. There was a bit of a lag before they could work on a second album, because Sumner was busy recording Republic with New Order at the height of that band’s internal strife. When they finally released it, they decided they didn’t want as much lag for the third album, so they recorded that quickly (with Karl Bartos of Kraftwerk) instead of touring. Again, both albums did well in the UK, but the lack of promotion left them out of the international loop. Electronic never formally called it quits, but they were basically done after that third album.
Day 29 – The Breeders, “Cannonball”
Sometimes, side projects become main projects, and that was the case for Kim Deal and The Breeders. Deal, her twin sister Kelley, Throwing Muses guitarist Tanya Donelly, and bassist Josephine Wiggs from The Perfect Disaster recorded an album and an EP while The Pixies and Throwing Muses were still going. Once the Pixies broke up, though, Kim Deal focused entirely on The Breeders.
It was during that time that the band released their most successful album, Last Splash, which included the single “Cannonball.” That might have secured their breakthrough into the mainstream, but the band was forced into hiatus by legal and health issues related to drugs. Both Deal sisters spent the next few years in and out of rehab, and they and other band members explored other projects.
The Breeders have reformed a couple of times with different lineups, and are currently together with the original Last Splash lineup (including drummer Jim Macpherson) except for Donelly, who is working on a Belly reunion.
Day 30 – Traveling Wilburys, “End Of the Line”
And so we end the month with the band I consider to be one of the greatest supergroups of all time. Founding members George Harrison and Jeff Lynne recruited Bob Dylan, Roy Orbison, and Tom Petty for an absolute powerhouse of singer-songwriters.
The five of them recorded only one album – Traveling Wilburys Vol 1 – before Orbison’s death. (The way they handle his absence in this video chokes me up every time.) The other four members went on to do a second album, which Harrison cheekily named Traveling Wilburys Vol 3, but then they were done.
Nevertheless, they left an indelible mark on music history. And, I believe, so did all the other artists on this list. I hope you’ve enjoyed this month of music. Who else would you include that left an impression on you despite a brief career?
Eric the Unabridged 