The 90's - land of a million one hit wonders! (UPDATED 10/13)

I've noticed something about a lot of my favorite songs from the Nineties... the artists faded away shortly after the song I liked. This happened nearly every time. But... they were such great songs!

So here's my goal... to make a list of 50 great one hit wonders from the Nineties. Perhaps I'll find 'em all and post them here in ZIPs when the list is done, for anyone who wants to reminisce. For now, I'm jotting down all the ones I can think of, in the hopes that someone could add to this list. :-)

UPDATED: We finally hit fifty! No help from anyone else, mind you...

Here's what I have so far.

001) The Proclaimers - "(I'm Gonna Be) 500 Miles"

002) Chumbawamba - "Tubthumping"
* other notables: "Amnesia", "She's Got All The Friends That Money Can Buy"

003) Stakka Bo - "Here We Go"

004) Tag Team - "Whoomp! There It Is"

005) Lucas - "Lucas With The Lid Off"

006) 4 P.M. - "Sukiyaki"

007) Nicki French - "Total Eclipse Of The Heart"

008) Kris Kross - "Jump"

009) Stereo MC's - "Connected"

010) Crystal Waters - "100% Pure Love"

011) Los Del Rio - "Macarena"

012) The Rembrandts - "I'll Be There For You"

013) Sir Mix-A-Lot - "Baby Got Back"
* other notables: "Put 'Em On The Glass"

014) Scatman John - "I'm The Scatman"

015) Smart-E's - "Sesame's Treet"

016) Rednex - "Cotton Eyed Joe"

017) 20 Fingers with Gillette - "Short Dick Man" [aka "Short Short Man"]

018) Adina Howard - "Freak Like Me"

019) Snow - "Informer"
* other notables: "Girl I've Been Hurt"

020) Right Said Fred - "I'm Too Sexy"
* other notables: "Don't Talk, Just Kiss"

021) Spin Doctors - "Two Princes"
* other notables: "Little Miss Can't Be Wrong"

022) Billy Ray Cyrus - "Achy Breaky Heart"

023) Gerardo - "Rico Suave"

024) Marcy Playground - "Sex and Candy"

025) Semisonic - "Closing Time"

026) Hanson - "MMMBop"
* other notables: "Where's The Love", "Man From Milwaukee"

027) Deee-Lite - "Groove Is In The Heart"

028) Big Mountain - "Baby I Love Your Way"

029) Wreckx-n-Effect - "Rump Shaker"

030) OMC - "How Bizarre"

031) Inner Circle - "Bad Boys"
* other notables: "Sweat (A-La-La-La-La-Long)"

032) The Rentals - "Friends Of P"

033) 4 Non Blondes - "What's Up"

034) Luscious Jackson - "Naked Eye"

035) B*witched - "C'est La Vie"

036) Deep Blue Something - "Breakfast At Tiffany's"

037) Del Amitri - "Roll To Me"

038) Joan Osborne - "One Of Us"

039) Green Jello - "Three Little Pigs"

040) Harvey Danger - "Flagpole Sitta"

041) Eagle Eye Cherry - "Save Tonight"

042) The Ben Folds Five - "Brick"

043) Natalie Imbruglia - "Torn"

044) Lisa Loeb - "Stay (I Missed You)"

045) Squirrel Nut Zippers - "Hell"

046) Baz Luhrmann - "Everybody's Free (To Wear Sunscreen)"

047) Vanilla Ice - "Ice Ice Baby"

* other notables: None, really, but I'll give credit to his stupid 'comeback' song about "rolling up the hootie-mack". Just for its usage of the phrase "roll up the hootie mack."

048) Shampoo - "Trouble"

* I have no idea how I forgot this! I actually owned this awful song!

049) Lou Bega - "Mambo No. 5"

050) DiVinyls - "I Touch Myself"

HONORABLE MENTION: The Four Seasons - "December 1963 (Oh What A Night) [Dance Version]"
* Not strictly a one-hit wonder, as they had more than their share of hits in their prime; but this was a mere one-off hit during their brief Nineties comeback.

Well, that's fifty, finally!!

(Incidentally - notice how many of these were either a) used by Weird Al in either a parody or a polka, or b) parodied on Bill Nye The Science Guy...)

Late night rambles #1

It's 2:01 AM, and I'm not particularly tired, and I don't particularly want to try and force myself to sleep, so I thought the best thing to do would be to just spew out whatever random thoughts might occur to me. :-)

* I'm listening to "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" for probably the 550th time in my life, this time because it happened to be on my iTunes... two things occurred to me. One, that this would make great music to accompany some sort of large-scale police bust of a psychopath in a movie; and two, that it's already been done. (I was momentarily unaware that I pretty much pictured the ending to the late Eighties "Silence Of The Lambs" prequel, "Manhunter." There's a big scene where the crazy guy roughs up a blind girl to the accompaniment of "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" while the cops surround his house.)

* Anyone who hated Chumbawamba because of "Tubthumping" could potentially find more fodder for their hatred - they covered "The Chicken Dance." And I don't mean that I was on Limewire and found a mislabeled cover version claiming to be by Chumbawamba; I mean, they actually covered it. I don't know why. Of course, since they're English, it wasn't "The Chicken Dance," it was "The Birdy Song." Either way, I want to see a group of aging anarchists flap their arms and shimmy! Speaking of Chumbawamba... I wasn't aware until recently that, after their stint as 'one hit wonders' in America (I still hate calling them that, it's so cruel), they came back a couple years later and tried to have another go with "She's Got All The Friends That Money Can Buy," another song in the "Tubthumping"/"Amnesia" mold. It did nothing. It was the equivalent of Tag Team's "U Go Girl" - same formula, unimpressed audience. (In the opinion of this particular Chumbawamba obsessive, its source album, "WYSIWYG," wasn't that great to begin with. It's cliche to say it, especially in the US, but "Tubthumper" did just happen to be one of their best albums.)

* I've heard it said that you have to be gay to appreciate Abba. If you think that, fuck you. You know why? "Take A Chance On Me." Great song. Besides, Anna-Frid (the brunette) was hot. I know, most people like Agnetha, the blonde; but Anna-Frid has that classic Seventies hot English girl look. Which is odd, because she's Swedish. Come to think of it, the brunette in Ace Of Base was pretty good looking too. What ever happened to Ace Of Base anyway? I mean, I couldn't stomach most of their songs, but still... they fell off the American map pretty fast. They did have one song that I really do like, though - "The Juvenile", originally written as "The Goldeneye." (Guess which movie it was written for! Didja didja?!) Buuut, it was on an album that came out long after "The Sign" did, so no one heard it.

* Are film companies stupid? I mean, seriously... they're supposedly deadset against movie piracy, obviously equating piracy with some guy sneaking a Digicam into a theater. However, they also distribute screener DVD's, with brand new films in crystal clear quality. It's unreasonable to think that not *one* of these screeners will fall into the hands of an everyman with access to either P2P or BitTorrent. They do. Sure, I mean, they've tried copy-protected screeners (I believe one of the recent Bonds came on a self-destructing disc... "Die Another Day", I believe?), but that seems to be very rare. Just a thought... I just don't understand how the entertainment industry works sometimes. Like, for example, Weird Al's "Straight Outta Lynwood." Hell was raised because his previous album "Poodle Hat" leaked a couple days in advance by some hooligans, but then "SOL" came out as a promo at LEAST a month before the commercial release. Most of us at weirdalforum at it long before it hit stores. (Don't get uppity at me, I bought the damn thing the day it came out, too.) My point of this whole long paragraph? STOP PROMO COPIES! YOU'LL PREVENT LEAKS! That applies to both the movie and music industries! If you don't put it out half a year in advance, no one can steal it!

* That's right, I never finished reviewing the Jay and Silent Bob series... I should, I'm long done with them. I dunno when I'll get around to it, but I'll say this - "Clerks II" really stands up well on its own, or just as a sequel to one film; but when you watch the Askewniverse series in order, it's such a huge anticlimactic ending. But I really enjoy it on its own. Kind of like "Smile" within the rest of the Beach Boys canon... on its own, it's a masterpiece. But in between the rest of their albums, it sticks out like a sore thumb.

* Why do people associate the Bee Gees with "Stayin' Alive" and ONLY "Stayin' Alive"? That always bugged the crap out of me. I mean, as a group and as solo artists, they've churned out fifty albums, and have composed over a thousand songs... and people only remember them for a song in a raunchy movie that wasn't even on any of their albums?! It also bugs the crap out of me that they're only remembered as "that disco group", when their disco period was short lived. (All of their truly 'disco' output falls between 1975 and 1979. Not a big chunk of a career that lasted from 1958 to what, 2001?)

* For "Doctor Who" fans... did you ever notice how all the best black and white stories are the ones that were burnt? I'm not being snide or anything, I'm serious - look at the missing Patrick Troughton stories alone. "The Macra Terror," "The Faceless Ones," "The Power Of The Daleks," and the repeatedly-mentioned "Fury From The Deep" are all missing. And all are absolutely awesome, if reconstructions tell us anything. (Which, given the accuracy of Loose Cannon's output, they should.) But look at the Troughton stories that still exist - "The Dominators," "The Ice Warriors" (okay, so it's kind of missing), "The Krotons"... weird, trippy garbage. "The Krotons" is like the Doctor Who story they wrote on acid. Even William Hartnell, who has more surviving episodes, is without his supposed best stories - "The Daleks' Master Plan" for instance. A twelve (or thirteen, depending on what you count) episode epic that was pure awesomeness. I mean, what other story ended with characters running through a forest, aging to death?! We might never see that scene in moving form. Thanks a lot, the BBC's Pamela Nash.

* Did anyone actually *own* a Sega CD? I know one person that actually did, but it seems to have been extremely unpopular. Shame... I mean, it did have "Sonic CD" for it... which, admittedly, I haven't played much of, but come on, it has the "Sonic Boom" song!

Okay, my laptop battery is running out... I should go. :-)