Category: One-Hit Wonder

Nothin’ My Love Can’t Fix by Joey Lawrence

Actors have crossed over to singing top 40 hits, and vice versa, almost as long as there has been a top 40 chart at all.  Obviously there were Elvis and Sinatra doing quite well on both fronts, but there were many, many others who had various degrees of success.  Do you remember Shaun Cassidy, Rick Springfield, Jack Wagner?  You might even recall the top 40 entries by Bruce Willis, Don Johnson, and Eddie Murphy.  Now – show of hands – who remembers when there was a very successful top 40 hit from…Joey Lawrence?

Whoa.

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Murphy’s Law by Chéri

In 1982, top 40 music was working its way through an identity crisis which started with the disco backlash three years earlier.  As the prevailing sound of rock music evolved, a lot of recording acts had their first hits, while many others had their last.  And, there were several acts which had their only hit during that time period.  One of those was the American-Canadian duo Chéri, whose hit was “Murphy’s Law”.

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Up in a Puff of Smoke by Polly Brown

Sometimes a recording artist will find chart success early in his or her career and then, despite years, or even decades, of further recordings, will never reach the charts again.  To add insult to injury, for some of those artists, their one and only hit is left behind by radio after its original chart run.  That almost perfectly describes the career of Polly Brown.

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Joy by Apollo 100

The early 1970s, more than any other time during the rock era, was good for instrumental hits.  Several instrumentals made the top ten during that period, and no fewer than three of them (“Frankenstein”, “Love’s Theme”, and “TSOP (The Sound of Philadelphia”) went all the way to number one.  One of those who capitalized on the then-popularity of instrumental music was a British musician named Tom Parker, along with his band, Apollo 100.

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How Do I Survive by Amy Holland

1980 was, to put it mildly, a year of upheaval in the world of top 40 music in America.  The disco era was ending rapidly, its end having been hastened by several causes, not the least of which was a changing in listeners’ tastes toward music such as “My Sharona”, which had been the previous year’s #1 song.  While some listeners embraced the new wave movement from whence “My Sharona” came, others moved toward a resurgence of a mellower sound.

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You Gonna Make Me Love Somebody Else by The Jones Girls

The end of the disco era brought quite a few one-hit wonders onto the chart.  Among that number were The Jones Girls, who, despite a fair amount of success on what was then called the soul chart, only placed one song into the Hot 100.  Do you remember “You Gonna Make Me Love Somebody Else”?

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This Beat Goes On/Switchin’ to Glide by The Kings

If someone were to mention The Kings to most Americans, my guess is that the most common response (other than “Who?”) would be something along the lines of “Hey, aren’t they that group that sang ‘Lola’?”  No, The Kings were a Canadian rock group that formed in the late 70s and, per the group’s official website, refer to themselves as a one-hit wonder…which they basically were…though their one hit was two songs together: “This Beat Goes On/Switchin’ to Glide”.

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Tarzan Boy by Baltimora

Baltimora, at least in the US, was definitely a one-hit wonder.  Interestingly enough, though, its one hit, “Tarzan Boy”, made it to Billboard’s Hot 100 on two separate occasions.  (Okay, yes, they made the Hot 100 with one other song, the title track to their first album, but they are known almost entirely in this country for “Tarzan Boy”.)

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Hold On by Jamie Walters

The name Jamie Walters probably is not familiar to people who either did not watch Fox or listen to top 40 radio in the early 90s.  And, even if you did listen to top 40 radio in the early 90s, you might have missed Mr. Walters.  After all, his first, and biggest, hit wasn’t even released under his name, but, instead, under the name of the Fox television program on which Mr. Walters had a starring role, The Heights.  (Ironically, the show was cancelled the week after “How Do You Talk to an Angel”, its theme, fell out of the number one position.)

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