Sometimes you hear that song that immediately brings you back to what seems like ages ago. A song that was once your favorite, with lyrics sung by a voice that now invokes nostalgia with each syllable and beats that bring back the oldest memories. At that time you probably hoped to hear again from those artists. But some of them just didn’t come back. These are our one hit wonders.
5: MC Hammer with Can’t touch this
Hammer Pants!
This song came in at the climax of the 80s. Let’s ignore the more than obvious fact that MC Hammer stole Rick James riff from ‘Super Freak’ and read on from here. Because Rick James didn’t come up with a catchy phrase to fill in the upbeat-lowbeat gap. This song made MC Hammer the first hip hop artist to achieve Diamond status on his album. He is also considered the innovator of this music genre. But much to Rick James’ delight, that is the only one song MC Hammer is remembered for, and the only thing that MC Hammer can’t seem to touch anymore is the top of the charts. The last time I heard about MC Hammer was on the Oprah Show flaunting his iPad along with it’s iPad case. Let’s just says that he’s transcended to a different level. Now he’s an ordained minister too. Here’s a fun fact. M.C stands for Man of Christ. A little bit of a blasphemer considering the coveting of others goods background this song has.
Not Pictured: Is mc hammer serious about those pants?
But let’s face it. ‘U Can’t touch this’ is a better song than ‘Super Freak’ and for this he will remain remembered, and titled a one hit wonder.
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Republica with ‘Ready to go’
This song my first taste of good punk electronica and also my last. In between watching Rugrats on the telly and sharpening pencils over my colouring book, I distinctly recall dancing to this song when I was, I don’t know, 5? ‘Ready to go’ came out in ’96 and after that of course, I never heard from them again. Maybe there was a hidden meaning in that song title that I didn’t quite catch. Where were they ready to go really? Honduras? Heaven? Hell? In 2010 they did a remix of the same song and got recognized minimally in comparison to the spotlight recognition in ’96. With Evanescence and Paramore looks like we’ve seen enough of punk/rock female fronted bands. Another single like ‘Ready to go’ could turn things around, but don’t get your hopes up.
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Hanson with MMMBop
Hanson was my first glimpse of an American boy band. They came out with MMMBop in ’97 and to me, they pulled a Houdini. They’re blonde, long haired and fabulous. It’s no mystery that the 3 of them are brothers. These boys can sing, these boys can play their own instruments. So why didn’t they come out with more songs like this one hit they made? Even though the chorus has absolutely no lyrics, the harmony in the mere ‘mmmbop’s and the ‘yeah yeah’s is infectious. I liked it then, when I was probably basking in the triumph of being potty trained, and even now. Because the Jonas brothers are not working for me.
Did Hanson just take a bow after this hit and disappear?
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Hanson’s first record company, Mercury records merged with Island Def Jam records in 2000. Hanson was on tour at this time, and also wrote songs. The new management didn’t seem to like their new songs, and everything went downhill from there. But Hanson are ‘Strong Enough Break’ and they have the film documentary titled the same to prove it. Hanson left Island Def Jam and are now recording under their own label on a quest for creative liberation. But still though, they haven’t produced anything comparable to MMMBop and they even chose to star in Katy Perry’s T.G.I.F video. I wish it weren’t true. Maybe if The Jonas Brothers went bald Hanson could rise again. There’s probably some underlying hair anxiety issue. For the record Hanson, you guys are definitely cuter.
Snow with Informer
Informer. Has any other artist used that word in their music? I don’t think so. If somebody were to use the word ‘informer’ in regular conversation, I would launch into the feat of attempting to sing chorus of this song (in vain that is) simply because this is the only thing I can relate the word ‘informer’ to and the entire song is un-singable. This song is the Usain Bolt of all songs reggae. Go on, try singing that chorus. It’s so fast it’s almost indecipherable. This song has eternal greatness. Unfortunately to this first hit single he made, Snow himself will never be able to reach up to. Turns out Snow does follow up with some of his reggaeshiz, but to me it fails to impress. Maybe because he isn’t battling assault charges and jail time and doesn’t have that to sing about. Go figure.
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I do not believe that any reggae song will bring about the ‘Informer’ amount of musical joy in our lives while our hearing capacities are intact. Thank God for this song, Thank God for Snow.
Mattafix with Big City Life
This song is the soul (pun intended) song I know and love. I’ve never heard anything quite like it, and neither have Mattafix ever again produced anything as successful. When you hear this song it makes you wish you were listening to it at the heart of a time-square-like place standing amidst all the neon lights with a good pair of Sennheiser headphones (which I do not possess, do you?) on full volume, and weirdly so, not appreciate the city.
If you’ve heard this song, you’ll know what I’m talking about. If you haven’t, here’s a feel good tip. Listen to it on your best speakers, when you want some calm and quite after a long and hard day.
Though Mattafix has struggled they haven’t done anything quite as good as this song. But for this one song they’ve provided the world with, we’ll vouch for Mattafix.
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It’s a pity these artist have turned out to be one hit wonders. We’re not so sad about Jojo and Las Ketchup being one hit wonders. We’ve got our fingers crossed for Willow Smith and Rebecca Black to follow suit.
