For the past few weekends, Music Max have been running “Pick your party max” where viewers can chose one of four different channels to watch. Themes of the channels are usually decade or type of music based - like 70’s party, 80’s party, rock party, and the like.
One of the channels they had on this weekend was called “One hit wonder party”. On this channel, you would expect to find only one hit wonders played. But after leaving it on for a while, I started noticing that some of the songs they were playing on the one hit wonder channel were not one hit winders as well.
Some examples include “I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)” by the Proclaimers, “Mr Vain” by Culture Beat and “The Only Way is Up” by Yazz.
The Proclaimers actually had two songs that did very well in 1989. “I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)” was one of them, the other was “I’m on my Way”. So that rules them out of being a One Hit Wonder. If I remember correctly, both were top 10 songs.
As a former DJ in the 1990’s, I know that Culture Beat in fact had numerous songs released from 1993 on. There most well known and biggest hit was of course “Mr Vain” which went top 10. Then there was “Got to Get It” which also went top 10, and the third single was “Anything”. Although it did not do as well as the other two, it was still a top 40 single in 1994. The 4th single “World in Your Hands” barely charted. Regardless, Culture Beat are far from being a one hit wonder.
As for Yazz, “The Only Way is Up” was the major hit, but it was followed up by other songs that went top 40 as well.
As far as I am aware, the definition of a one hit wonder should be artists who have only had one hit as such - that is, they release a song, it goes top 10 or number one even, then you never hear from them again with anything that they follow up with failing to make it into the top 40 at all. Songs like “Video Killed the Radio Star”, “Pop Music”, “Shy Shy”, “Turning Japanese” and “Achy Breaky Heart” are classic examples of one hit wonders.
Still, at least you don’t see any subscription SMS advertising on these Music Max channels - that is a big bonus as the only reason I refuse to watch or leave on in the background channels like V, V Hits or VH1 is because they have subscription SMS advertising. Those ads should be banned.
