One hit wonders have been a staple in the music culture and buisness since its origin which is whenever your town got MTV of course.   We remember the songs but never the artist.   Bands and solo singers got their one chance to blow their creative load of pop after years of struggle to assure one thing, people in suits making tons of money off of them.   Alannah Myles probably doesnt have a futon right now to drape in “Black Velvet”, and Divinyls does in fact still “touch herself” when she is searching for change to get on a bus.   Fortunately, it was “Closing time” for SemiSonic long before we could finish our drinks.   That is why the master of the one hit wonder has released a new album to show these never were’s how sucking a career out of one song is done,  Lord Meatloaf. The sweaty opera scum artist’s latest album is literally titled, ”Bat Out of Hell  part 3″.  Brilliant.  Meatloaf is the king of my favorite type of one hit wonder, the epic one hit wonder.  Epics are more than story telling songs, they usually come draped with pretention or ill advised drugged up Mid-evil references.  These bands almost knew their career was over before it began, so they sucked every drop of blood from their 7:15 rock that crashed the airwaves for three months.  It was popularized in the 70s and mastered by Meat.  He now has three albums under the same name, so any song that comes out with a differnt title is simply an extension of “Paradise by the Dashboard Lights”, truly an epic. 

As far as other epic one hit wonders, few have had the painful success that the Loaf has created for himself, but the work still speaks for itself.    Don McClean’s “American Pie” is a quintessental epic one hit wonder, a song that easily could have been wrapped up in 4 and a half minutes, but Donny was getting his moneys worth.  However, he didn’t go as far say an Iron Butterfly, who wrapped their one hit up, “In-a-gada-Da-vida” in a tight 19 minutes.  “Hey guys you sure were all done with this halfwit mystic pompous noise shit we made?  It might be our only chance, lets say we tack on 9 more minutes of organ?  Done.”     Harry Chapin might have been a great social activist who helped pave the way for Live Aid,  but as a singer-songwriter, he left behind a nauseating epic one hit.  Although, “Cats in the cradle” is more story telling than the classic epics,  the heavy handedness of this moralistic bullshit launches into epic proportions for this article.  

I know Gordon Lightfoot had more hits than “The Wreck of Edmund Fitzgerald”  but sweet Jesus is that an epic if there ever was one.  Charlie Daniels scored a crossover epic one hit  with  “Devil Went down to Georgia”, then I guessed he released 48 more albums to his racist fan base.   This would not be a piece on the subject at hand if there was no mention of Norman Greenbaum’s  “Spirit in the Sky”.   This guy is great, he has made his entire 5 figure a year career off this confusing Jesus praising space song.    There are so many wonderful epic one hit wonders that I can not recall, and that is where the reader must come in.   Add to the list and make these artists step up their game with a failed epic career, my vote is for Evanescence.

17/12/2006
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