One-Hit Wonders Who Deserved More Fame

not every music act can be a hit-making machine like Taylor Swift from a 60s rock group that claimed Neil Young as a member to a Scottish band that made the bagpipes popular these one-hit wonders deserve a second look if you're familiar with 1979's chart-topping hit cars you may have figured that a computer brought Gary Newman into existence for the sole purpose of creating that song but

this diminishes the legacy of the man who invented industrial music even if Newman himself is too shy to ever make that claim I felt Lucky from the beginning I never felt talented I never felt special in any way at all so whatever happened to Gary Newman well the singer says that his nerves an intense stage fright are probably one reason why his career stunted rather than

follow-up cars with more hits he chose to go small for the last three decades Newman has recorded and performed for his Tiny But devoted fan base who call themselves numenoids during that time however he's been invited to collaborate with the likes of Kanye West Queens of the Stone Age and Prince all of which he turned down by the way that thing about inventing Industrial Music we

didn't say it Trent rezner did it this comment even led to a friendship brief collaboration and several performances together the monster hit Rock Me Amadeus is so catchy that you probably forgot that the majority of the lyrics are in German recorded by the Austrian rapper Falco the song was also the first by a male rap artist to hit number one in the U.S as for Falco

himself he began his career in the early 80s when American rap was still considered a fringe fad he penned the original version of the international hit der kamasar before dropping Rock Me Amadeus in 1986. despite dying tragically in a car accident in 1998 Falco is still well Remembered in his native Austria after all he's still the country's best-selling artist ever with ridiculous sales of around 60

million however his more impressive Legacy is that future rap powerhouses like Eminem and Drake were all forced to follow a trailblazed by a European dude rapping about Mozart while wearing a powdered wig you probably remember Biz markie's hit song Just a Friend the tune is about a guy whose lady companions all run around with other guys while insisting they're just friends it's just a song that

you can sing along with no matter how bad you can sing but the biz transcends this borderline novelty tune for one simple reason he's a founding member of the juice crew the juice crew is most famous for being involved in one of the first ever beefs known as the bridge Wars with Bronx crew boogie down production but they also bred Legends like producer Marley Marl as

well as rappers Big Daddy Kane and Craig G just a friend may have been the only time bismarckey came within shouting distance of chart success but his late 80s and early 90s albums are considered classics by fans one of them undeniably changed rap Forever For Better or Worse 1991's I need a haircut was at the center of the court case which forced artists to clear all

their samples sadly bismarcki passed away on July 16 2021 at his home in Baltimore he was 57. in the spring of 1983 Thomas dolby's hit single She Blinded Me With Science peaked at number five on the U.S charts his musical mad scientist Persona may have seemed like a good fit for the Golden Age of New Wave however it's not a Persona Dolby really is some kind

of mad scientist and he's been finding ways to get into your ears for decades for starters his work has appeared in a truckload of films TV episodes and video games then there's his side career as a Silicon Valley entrepreneur while working in Valley Dolby founded a company that created part of the technology that led to the ringtone explosion of the early 2000s moreover he also served

as musical director for the Ted conference for nearly two decades Dolby retired from that job in 2012 to become a professor at Johns Hopkins University on occasion however he'll still manage to pull out an awesome live rendition of the tune that everyone makes fun of him for in 1990 practically every musical Legend alive gathered for a tribute to Roy Orbison the revered rocker behind 60s hits

Like Only the Lonely and crying on stage were heavyweights like George Harrison Jeff Lin BB King Bob Dylan and a guy named Benny mardones during the show mardones took the spotlight for a solo rendition of orbison's 1962 hit Running Scared nobody in the crowd might have known who Benny was or what he was doing there but everyone on stage sure did mardones was the guy behind

the monster 1980s single Into the Night a power ballad that's been called one of the best rock love songs of all time the song was so good that when mardones threw it on his little herd 1989 self-titled album it charted again unfortunately mardones career was derailed by the same thing that sank many promising music careers in the 80s lots of cocaine he credited the birth of

it refers to a collective of Atlanta area artists who were all attempting to make National waves in the 1990s an outcast was one of their Premier acts the other was goodimoff for a while it was a toss-up as to which of the groups would attain super stardom first goody mobs idiosyncratic rapping debuted in the 1996 single cell therapy a surprise hit that prompted one producer to

Proclaim them the next Public Enemy but although their 1997 sophomore album sold reasonably well outcasts began crushing it the following year with the release of Aquemini goodie mob's label was disappointed when they were unable to follow suit and subsequently dropped the group after the release of their third album 1999's world party the group got back together briefly in 2013 but their reunion went mostly unnoticed in

the early 80s when synths were beginning to rule pop music Harold faltermeyer was responsible for a piece of music that we guarantee is etched deep into your brain faltermeyer is the composer of the catchy synth-pop instrumental Axel F which was also the theme to Beverly Hills Cop we're not going to fall for a banana and a tailpipe you're not going to fall for the banana the

tailpipe he began his career by helping electronic music pie in the air Giorgio moroder with his Arrangements faltermeyer was then recruited for the Hollywood Machine by Mega producers Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer after they heard his keyboard playing on Donna Summer's Hit album Bad Girls Axel F was one of his first efforts for film and it shocked everybody involved by becoming a massive pop hit he

would go on to contribute similarly catchy Tunes to a number of 80s movies including Fletch The Running Man and Tango and cash however further chart Toppers failed to materialize even Top Gun Anthem failed to make a dent in the charts faltermeyer ultimately took a two-decade break from Hollywood to be a family man but returned to score Kevin Smith 2010 film Cop Out Harold faltermeyer may not

have the name recognition he deserves but he can always take solace in the Deep discography of awesome artists he's worked with as well as his two Grammys imagine if you too was Australian and 10 times more political you are now picturing Australia's own Midnight Oil one of the most awesome politically charged rock bands of all time with their aggressive Pub Rock meets hardcore punk sound and

the Border line terrifying presence of lead singer Peter Garrett the band quickly became known for its Fierce live performances and Firebrand politics even their sole U.S hit 1987's Beds Are Burning was a protest song decrying the theft of lands from native Australian peoples the oils as they're known in Aussie land kept up touring and recording until their breakup in 2002 but they've recently found a purpose

to reunite Donald Trump thank you as a result the band launched a world tour in 2017 and if you're skeptical of the ability of an aging political rock band to enact any change you may want to think twice before dismissing the oils during the band's Hiatus Garrett put his money where his mouth is he ran for elected office in Australia and won serving for a total

of nine years if you're a fan of 80s music then there is an insanely catchy bass and synth line that pops into your head upon hearing the words crack that whip this is thanks to Devo whose 1980s single Whip-It became a number 14 U.S hit and garnered even more attention thanks to its jaw-droppingly weird music video it was the band's only significant hit but this is

only because Devo the very definition of art rock was not exactly designed for the mainstream formed by Mark mothersba and Gerald Casale while still in college the band's motif of D Evolution was expressed through their complete deconstruction of every element of pop music the idea of de-evolution and talking about that they just thought we were cynical and had bad uh that attitude there are robotic vocals

and insane visual aesthetic confounded casual fans and critics however the band's artsy technology driven approach to their craft was also at the bleeding edge of the new wave movement whippet was among the first hit songs to feature a synthesizer lead moreover Devo proved to be a massive influence on future critical Darlings like Radiohead and LCD Soundsystem mother's ba went on to a sterling career as a

composer for film and television and a few lineup changes notwithstanding Diva was still playing music to this day the name Little Peggy March might not immediately ring any bells however the name of her chart-topping hit song 1963's I Will Follow Him certainly should born Margaret batavio the English vocalist was only 14 years old when she was signed to a recording contract with RCA at 15 her

debut album I wish I were a princess and its smash single became All the Rage among her high school age peers however marches would be rise to fame came at an inopportune time in 1964 a bunch of mop top Brits calling themselves The Beatles led a takeover of the U.S Airwaves in the process they ushered in a new age of innovation and creativity in rock that

left comparatively traditional singers like March in the dust March never had another hit record after that year at least not in the states as her fellow Brits invaded the country she in turn stays an invasion of Europe going on to record a number of successful albums in German Spanish Italian and even Japanese she even represented Germany in the legendary Eurovision Song Contest in 1969 and 1975.

he in 1985 she finally achieved another U.S hit as the co-writer of when the rain begins to Fall by Jermaine Jackson and piezadora the descriptor's one hit wonder and Rock and Roll Hall of Famer don't often intersect but then Elven Bishop has not had the most conventional career path as a member of the Paul Butterfield blues band Bishop helped to inspire generations of rock artists to

embrace the genre's bluesy Roots while the outfit didn't make the biggest impact in the Billboard charts their impact on their fellow artists was far greater Bishop recorded four albums with the band before relocating to the Bay Area to Embark upon a solo career it was a career that went relatively unnoticed but for one hit song this would be the 1976 single Fooled Around and Fell in

Love A Soulful number featuring a stellar lead vocal from singer Mickey Thomas the tune spent a whopping 17 weeks on the Billboard Chart peaking at number three it also became a staple of classic rock radio and gained even more exposure when it was featured on the soundtrack to Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy in 2014. Bishop has continued to record Blues records ever since but has never

again had that kind of chart success the same however cannot be said for Thomas owing partially to the success of Bishop's loan hit he was later invited to join Jefferson Starship that band which later became Starship was responsible for some of the most universally despised massive hits of all time and we built this city and nothing's gonna stop us now it would be tough to find

a band name more evocative of a mystifying Enigma than question mark and the mysterians nor a band more suited to the moniker than the one who took it on from its outset the Michigan outfit seemed determined to labor in obscurity they took their name from an obscure Japanese sci-fi movie and many of the fans who jammed out to their one major hit 96 Tears Could Have

Been forgiven for not knowing that the ban was uniformly Mexican-American an extreme Rarity on the 60s rock scene with that one song though the band Advanced a singularly unique Lo-Fi fuzzy sound that would proved to have a lot of legs speaking of which famed music journalist legs McNeil has credited the 1966 tune with being the first garage Punk song that said it would indeed be a

challenge to find an earlier example of a song fitting that description while they continued to bang their heads against the pop charts into the 70s mainstream success stubbornly eluded them however the band has continued to be a steady life presence to this very day citing the band's status as Pioneers lead singer question mark even lobbied for a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction in a

2019 interview with M live he told the outlet icky pop in the Stooges are already in there and Bob Seeger but they're not looking at who influenced those bands released during the summer of love in 1967. Buffalo Springfields for what it's worth is instantly evocative of 60s counterculture you may not know the song by its title which isn't featured in the lyrics however you certainly know

it by the chorus which goes stop hey what's that sound everybody look what's going down came smack in the middle of the band's extremely short run we're new at recording they only released three albums in two years between 1966 and 1968 with its members going on to other things after its demise but aside from that one iconic top 10 hit it's those other things that make

Buffalo Springfield noteworthy after all the band was nothing short of a breeding ground for amazing artists for starters Buffalo Springfield's guitarist and pianist was Neil Young whom you may have heard of when he wasn't dropping Classic Albums with this Band Crazy Horse young was teaming up with fellow former Buffalo Springfield members Steven Stills of Crosby Stills and Nash stills's folk rock outfit even occasionally attacked young

onto the end of their band name guitarist Richie foray and bassist Jim Messina would go on to form Poco who scored three top 20 hits Messina would later form a partnership with singer-songwriter Kenny Loggins who inexplicably dominated movie soundtracks in the 80s due to their influence on 70s album Rock and the fact that pretty much all of them are legends Buffalo Springfield was inducted into the

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997. singer Nick Lowe has a quirky way with words in the UK Lowe's scored a top 10 hit with the amazingly titled tune I love the sound of breaking glass in the U.S his only top hit came from his third album 1979's labor of lust which followed a pair of 1978 efforts titled Jesus of cool and pure pop for

now people that lone hit in the U.S was cruel to be kind the song about a guy whose girlfriend insists that her harsh treatment of him is a sign of her Undying Love peaked at number 12 on the charts aside from his incredible sense of humor Lo deserves a ton of credit for his Stellar work as a composer and producer he's not credits for the likes

of Dave Edmonds Johnny Cash Elvis Costello The Pretenders and the damned it may not surprise you to learn that his lone brush with pop stardom came very close to not even happening in an interview with the guardian Lowe remembered his response when Columbia Records executive Greg Geller expressed interest in releasing cruel to be kind as a single according to the guardian low recalled telling Geller oh

yeah you like that Greg great but I've got a better song hear about a woman who was eaten by her dog Big Country formed in 1981 after the demise of the skids a new wavy punk outfit that had some success in the UK in the late 70s frontman Stuart Adamson gave the new band a familiar face and voice but big country sound was unlike much of

anything that came before it it was genius really being from Scotland the band thought it might be interesting to take traditional instruments like fiddles and bagpipes and stick them where most of the electric guitar should be as it turned out they were right legendary producer Steve lillywhite polished the sound to a fine luster on big country's debut record 1983's the crossing the lead U.S single fields

of fire got some AirPlay and did well on MTV however it was the follow-up song in a big country that scored the band their only top 40 US hit big country's seven subsequent albums performed decently in the UK but the band was all but forgotten in America until Adamson sadly died by suicide in 2001. if you or anyone you know is having suicidal thoughts please dial

or text 988 to speak with the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline you can also seek help by visiting 988lifeline.org