Ep. 60: One-Hit Wonders of the 70s

There's something really interesting about a song that simply shows up and it takes over the airwaves, and then it just disappears.

I know that, uh, the song itself might linger.

You might hear it, I don't know, grocery stores, movie soundtracks.

Maybe they're just kinda hanging out in the back of your memory at these really random moments.

But the artists themselves, a lot of times they never quite repeat that whole lightning strike.

So today, we're gonna take a look at some of those songs.

We saw one-hit wonders across the genres of that era.

We saw them in glam rock, disco, soft rock, punk, which makes sense because this was still the time when the music industry and the Billboard charts were wide open.

Radio still had a lot of power and could turn a single track into that cultural moment overnight it seems like sometimes, for better or worse.

Some of it was definitely worse.

Looking at you, Rick Dees and Disco Duck.

But, uh, with that kind of environment, it's almost inevitable that some artists would break through once in a really massive way.

But one-hit wonder is also kind of a tricky label.

It sounds a little dismissive, like a footnote.

In reality, a lot of these artists were really talented, hardworking musicians who just happened to catch the exact right or wrong combination of timing, taste, and industry momentum.

Some had long careers behind the scenes.

Some were regional stars.

Some just could not replicate the magic of that one perfect song, and that's really what I wanna explore a little bit here, not just the hits themselves, but a little bit more about the stories around them.

Because if you go back and listen closely, a lot of these tracks are more than just, I don't know, nostalgic throwbacks.

They capture something very specific about the moment they came from.