The immortality of a one-hit wonder
Why flash-in-the-pan songs last longer than you think
One-hit wonders just hit different.
They’re those rare tracks that come along once in a while and like shooting stars, burn brightly for a moment, and then seem to linger in our collective memories for decades.
I mean, lets be honest: some of them are incredible, others are awful. Some are accidental, others are highly engineered.
Doctorin’ the Tardis by The Timelords (aka The KLF) is an esoteric one hit wonder of my generation. It’s absurd, catchy, and completely unexpected: everything you’d want in a fleeting, flash-in-the-pan hit. Despite its car-crashy blend of the Doctor Who theme tune, Gary Glitter riffs, and automobile noises, it represents a sort of musical archetype, and embodies to me, what a one-hit wonder is all about: emerging from nowhere, sticking around forever in the collective ear, and being immortalised for doing one thing really well.
What fascinates me about one-hit wonders is how they connect with Ernest Becker’s concept of immortality projects.
Becker believed that we create things (art, music, ideas) as a way to transcend death, hoping that these creations will outlive us and offer a kind of permanence in an impermanent world. A one-hit wonder is a perfect kind of immortality project. It’s a song that, by all accounts, shouldn’t have survived past its moment of fame, yet it does. It endures, sticking with us long after its creators might have faded from public life.
Or even beyond life. It extends even further when we think about the emotional impact of the musician’s death. When an artist dies – especially if they made a one-hit wonder – their music becomes their legacy. Because they’re so good, we listen to these tracks over and over, long after they’re gone, and in that way, they live on, just like Becker suggests.
It’s why I’ve always found myself drawn to artists who weren’t fully appreciated in their lifetimes. We all know the obvious ones, like Vincent Van Gogh, but I was obsessed with Egon Schiele as a teenager (dead at 28 from Spanish flu) and later Arthur Russell. Their work, much like a one-hit wonder, outlived them, becoming iconic only after they were gone. In a way, their art became their immortality.
I’ve always wanted to create my own one-hit wonder. It’s always felt like the most perfect relic to leave. Something that could last beyond my own time. I’ve made music in my life, in bursts of activity over the years. I’ve borrowed analogue synthesisers from friends and attempted to make the musical synth version of a Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster, or celebrated the birth of a friend’s baby by making Bairn Music for them, with nothing more than a crappy off-the-shelf music app.
After the KLF secured a number 1 spot with their supremely stupid song, they wrote The Manual (How to Have a Number One the Easy Way). It was - in a tongue-in-cheek way - their guide on how to get a number one (and by my definition a wonder) hit, even if you didn't have any musical talent or money.
I’m not a member of the KLF but the idea of creating something that stays with people, even if only for one hit, is incredibly appealing - and really does soothe me existentially. It’s life beyond death for me, in a way that transcends the body, and captures the essence of spirit: our human desire to connect, to express, to love. I can’t think of a better creative achievement in life.
Who knew one-hit wonders could be so powerful?
One-hit wonders to last forever
Here is a short collection of some of my all-time favourite OHWs.
Your Woman by White Town (1997)
Being 13 at the time of the release, the hormonal surge of adolescence likely helped dig itself deep into my psyche, but reading more about it now, its quite a radical song: the first gender-reversal song to hit number one, which the singer Jyoti Mishra said was about:
Being a member of an orthodox Trotskyist/Marxist movement. Being a straight guy in love with a lesbian. Being a gay guy in love with a straight man. Being a straight girl in love with a lying, two-timing, fake-arse Marxist. The hypocrisy that results when love and lust get mixed up with highbrow ideals.
It’s the perfect one-hit wonder because its on its surface, its about love, but its a complicated love (perfect for a teenager):
When you love somebody, it's not logical, it's not rational, and you think, 'This is ridiculous, I can never be with you, I can never be the person you need, why am I even feeling these feelings?' So, I was trying to write from all these different sides… I wanted people to go, 'this is catchy,' and sing it, but then be like, 'What the hell?' at the same time.
The whole experience of the song for Mishra sums up what I think is so incredible about one-hit wonders. As he reflected:
To be a professional musician and to be entertaining people twenty years after my biggest hit, I feel like I'm the luckiest person alive. Just to have one song that connects with people—most musicians dream their entire lives of having that.
Little Baby by The Blue Rondos (1964)
As someone on Discogs succinctly put its:
'Little Baby' is the greatest composition of the human race.
The Blue Rondos were a garage-rock band from Islington, made up of 17- year olds. They made two singles. Neither of them charted. Little Baby is the A-side on of those singles. It’s 2:39 of perfection.
In the Meantime by Spacehog (1995)
One-hit wonders are self-contained universes. They are the perfect 3-act story. All done within 3 minutes.
Sometimes though, they even transcend this. Case in point, In the Meantime, goes above and beyond in its lyrics. In learning the contexts to these songs (my genuinely favourite one-hit wonders) it’s fascinating to see the repeating motif of connection. As Spacehog singer Royston Langdon said (also with my Mortals-appropriate emphasis):
It's me trying to reach people. It's using some kind of metaphor of a worldly or inner-worldly search for the end of isolation, and the acceptance of one's self is in there. At the end of the day it's saying whatever you gotta do, it's OK, it's alright. And I think that's also me talking to myself, getting through my wan anxieties and fear of death. That's what it all comes down to. What's so beautiful about it is that it continues to connect with people.
Goodbye Horses by Q Lazzarus (1985)
The story of how Diane Luckey (aka Q Lazzarus) came to get her haunting Darkwave cult classic in the hands of film director Jonathan Demme and - subsequently and iconically - added to his film Silence of the Lambs, is a great one. But that’s secondary to the universe-in-a-song of this masterpiece, and going beyond the boundaries of 4 minutes of music:
The song is about transcendence over those who see the world as only earthly and finite.
I wanted to share the original demo that Luckey shared to Demme because even in its demo quality, it is astoundingly good, and can you imagine ever only doing one thing in life that remains, and it is something as beautiful as this song? What an achievement.