One Hit Wonders - Defined and Ranked

[Radii]

Originally Posted by Breeze

10. The Vapors – Turning Japanese (1980)

Well that was not on my radar at all.

[Breeze]

9. The Proclaimers - I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles) (1993)

Total Points – 326
Charts – 4
Top 40 – 1
Top 20 – 1
Top 10 – 1
Total Ranking – 8, 17, 26, 51, NR, NR

The Proclaimers are just a duo consisting of twin Scottish brothers Charlie and Craig Reid. They came to public attention following a letter a fan sent to the English band the Housemartins, who were impressed and invited the Reids on their UK tour. That exposure got them a spot performing on TV and their first single “Letter from America” peaked at #3 on the UK Singles chart. This song was off of the band’s second album and it reached #1 in Australia and New Zealand in early 1990, and it peaked at #11 on the UK chart. In the US the song wasn’t released until 1993 following its appearance in the movie Benny & Joon, and it managed to reach #3 here on the Hot 100. The song was written by Craig, who was waiting to travel to a soccer match, and while waiting he started to wonder how many steps it would take him to walk to his new classroom. From there he quickly figured out the chords and the whole thing was written in about 45 minutes. He felt the song had the potential to be a hit, but he had no idea the level of popularity the song would achieve. Interestingly, The Proclaimers rerecorded the song in 2007 with tv comedy actors Andy Pipkin (Matt Lucas) and Brian Potter (Peter Kay) for Comic Relief. A long list of celebrities appeared in the music video, and this new version was also released as a single – and it reached #1 on the UK Singles Chart, outperforming the original.

[Breeze]

8. Los del Rio - Macarena (1996)

Total Points – 298
Charts – 4
Top 40 – 0
Top 20 – 0
Top 10 – 3
Total Ranking – 1, 2, 6, 65, NR, NR

This is the 5th of the 6 songs to receive a #1 ranking by the seeding lists. It is also the first song to have an overall score below 300 and to be ranked in the top 10 of three separate lists. The Spanish Pop duo formed in 1962, and they are so popular in their hometown that the music hall was renamed in their honor. This song appeared on a 1993 album and was a huge international hit and dance craze in ’95, ’96, ’97, and ’98. Apparently, the inspiration for this song came when the duo’s lounge act went on the road to South America. While in Venezuela, they were invited to be part of a party held by empresario Gustavo Cisneros. During the party, a flamenco dancer did a performance, which caused one of the duo to spontaneously say "Give your body some joy, Magdalene, 'cause your body is for giving joy and good things to it", which ultimately became the chorus. The Magdalena label in Andalusian culture is associated with Mary Magdalene’s alleged seedy past at worst, and minimally describes a woman as sassy or sensuous, so the name was changed to its current title. The song musically matches "'Tain't What You Do (It's the Way That You Do It)", written by Melvin "Sy" Oliver and James "Trummy" Young, first recorded in 1939. The similarity is particularly apparent in remakes done by the Fun Boy Three and Bananarama. The woman's laugh at the beginning of the song was a sample from Yaz's song "Situation". This song is actually the Bayside Boys Mix version which reached #1 on the Hot 100. A month later the basic Macarena version was released and it made it to #23 on the chart as well. Oh, and for good measure, in December the Macarena Christmas song also charted, peaking at #57.

[Butter]

Man, I hate that Proclaimers song.

Macarena, not surprised this is a top 10 song. I like to put it on and see how long it takes before my wife asks me to turn it off. Usually less than 30 seconds.

[QuikSand]

Originally Posted by albionmoonlight

I'm 42 years old. This might be one of those instances where just a few years make a huge difference.

I'd buy that. I'm in that "a few years" older band, and this was a big song.

[Izulde]

Macarena was actually my bet for #1

[QuikSand]

Originally Posted by Izulde

Macarena was actually my bet for #1

Mine too

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by Butter

Man, I hate that Proclaimers song.

I Googled it up & listened.

To my knowledge today was the first time I've ever heard it.

(just using your post as a jumping off point, not a direct reply to you or anything)

[Warhammer]

Love The Proclaimers song. Honestly surprised that the Macarena was not #1 on the list.

[Vince, Pt. II]

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

I Googled it up & listened.

To my knowledge today was the first time I've ever heard it.

(just using your post as a jumping off point, not a direct reply to you or anything)

Blows my mind that you haven't at least heard it on a commercial or something. That song seems impossible to have avoided in the last thirty twenty-six years.

[Butter]

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

I Googled it up & listened.

To my knowledge today was the first time I've ever heard it.

(just using your post as a jumping off point, not a direct reply to you or anything)

And??

[Breeze]

7. Terry Jacks – Seasons in the Sun (1974)

Total Points – 293
Charts – 5
Top 40 – 2
Top 20 – 0
Top 10 – 1
Total Ranking – 2, 30, 33, 41, 75, NR

Another Canadian OHW in our countdown, Jacks was raised in Winnepeg and moved to Vancouver in the 60s. He started a band called the Chessmen who were extremely popular in Vancouver. Later he formed a second band with his future wife Susan called The Poppy Family, and that group sang “Which Way You Goin’ Billy?”, which reached #2 on the Hot 100. He also had the follow up to that single “That’s Where I Went Wrong” which checked in at #29. There were a few other hits that reached the chart, one at #45, the other two at the extreme back end. Originally, this song was written for the Beach Boys, but they decided not to release it, so Jacks recorded it himself on his own label, and it became the largest-selling international single by a Canadian artist at that time. It earned Jacks two Juno Awards. The song is basically an English-language adaptation of “Le Moribond” by Belgian singer-songwriter Jacques Brel, with lyrics rewritten by American singer-poet Rod McKeun. The single was a #1 hit on the Hot 100 for 3 weeks and it was the second biggest hit of 1974 behind only Barbara Streisand’s “The Way We Were” (it was clearly a real uplifting time in music if these were the top 2 sellers). While extremely popular at the time, modern criticism hasn’t been kind, calling Jack’s version over sentimentalized. In fact, it is often cited as an example of bad music, it’s even been included in several worst songs lists, including being #5 on CNNs 2005 pool of bad pop songs.

[Breeze]

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

I Googled it up & listened.

You could have clicked the link and it would have taken you to the youtube video/song...just an FYI

[Breeze]

6. Divynls - I Touch Myself (1991)

Total Points – 268
Charts – 5
Top 40 – 2
Top 20 – 0
Top 10 – 1
Total Ranking – 5, 26, 27, 48, 50, NR

Unlike Turning Japanese (#10), that was rumored to be about masturbation but apparently isn’t; this one absolutely is. The song was written and recorded by the Australian Rock group the Divinyls, it was the lead single off of their 4th album and it’s a paean to eroticism, orgasm, and female masturbation. The band started in 1980 and has gone through numerous lineup changes. It started as a 5 piece, but the only constants have been lead singer Chrissy Amphlett and guitarist Mark McEntee. The band garnered widespread attention in Australia thanks to Amphlett’s stage act of wearing a short school-girl uniform with fishnet stocking and using an illuminated neon tube to display aggression towards other band members and the audience. When this band first stared out they were considered Hard Rock, but they slowly changed through the years to this version that is clearly a glamour pop. The band, while being a OHW here in the US was inducted into the Australian Music Hall of Fame. This song was the band’s only #1 hit in their home country, it also reached #10 in the UK and #4 on the Hot 100. As you can probably guess, the song caused a considerable amount of controversy when it was released, which hindered its ability to get airplay. In fact, at one point when performing live in Texas at Austin Aqua Fest, the plug was pulled on the band mid-set by the organizers. The band’s future success was stifled by a disagreement with their record label, so they didn’t produce a 5th album until 1996. In the meantime, they did release a few remakes as singles to be used in movies, including: the Young Rascals' "I Ain't Gonna Eat Out My Heart Anymore" for Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992), the Wild Ones' "Wild Thing" for Reckless Kelly (1993), and Roxy Music's "Love Is the Drug" for Super Mario Brothers (1993).

[albionmoonlight]

When I was in high school, jokes that were variations of "When I think about ewe I touch myself--Ha ha, you wanna fuck a sheep" were considered very very funny.

[QuikSand]

So, and again nothing against Breeze who's a hero for all this work... I'm finding some of the rankings unsatisfying. Nothing against Divinyls, it's a fine catchy song and a worthy player somewhere in here... but if you asked 100 musically knowledgeable people which would rank higher here between "I Touch Myself" and (randomly up on my Spotify now) "I love The Night Life," would the response be a lot more than 60/40 either way? I don't think so. And yet, these composites end up ranking them far, far apart.

What other "greatest" list makes that logic work okay? You rank all time baseball players, and if you take a guy rated by most people at #6 (idano, Ted Williams?) and you decide to put him at #212, you are banned from any further discussion, right?

How many songs could possibly appear as #1 on this list we're unrolling right now, as a composite of multiple group's work? (From the beginning, not excluding the ones we have seen) A hundred? Basically anything on this list? Where else is the crown that up for grabs?

Is it just the nature of music that does this? You can look at sales or weekly/yearly rankings, but that doesn't really capture "impact." I think that's the answer here, but it's peculiar.

[Warhammer]

Not sure, but from a radio play standpoint, I’d say most of these are pretty spot on. #6 seemed to be on the radio all the time for at least 3 years.

[Radii]

Originally Posted by QuikSand

Is it just the nature of music that does this? You can look at sales or weekly/yearly rankings, but that doesn't really capture "impact." I think that's the answer here, but it's peculiar.

Maybe just the nature of music, but maybe its related to available data and ways to analyze it. I'd love to see some of the creators of the original lists response to our overall ranking. The two unranked for the Macarena, when its #1 on one list and top 10 in two others - is it excluded for a specific reason, did some individual just subjectively hate the song so they left it off, or would there be a lot of responses of "holy crap we forgot about that song entirely, whoops."

I think there would be a lot of that final option. Using the baseball comparison, anyone compiling a greatest players of all time list has so much easy access to so much data that's already presented in easily sortable fashion, it should be impossible to play around with the data and just forget that Ted Williams existed via a brain fart and leave him off completely.

Since most of these lists come up from analyzing a 70 years of a single weekly top 100 chart, having to subjectively decide which songs qualify - the "whoopsie" impact is probably huge here, and for a compilation of lists it has the potential to throw things off in a huge way.

[Radii]

Some stuff I was writing up before realizing this was more a side track away from the original "is this just the nature of music" question and more about the "finding some of the rankings unsatisfying" comment:

Look at Macarena vs I Touch Myself. Three top 10's including a #1 for Macarena, but it didn't appear at all on two lists. That causes it to be ranked below I Touch Myself, with only 1 top 10, lots of middle of the road rankings, but it was only excluded on one list. I think we can clearly see that Macarena should have been higher.

In retrospect a different scoring system or different way of handling the unranked ones would produce dramatically different results with less instances of a specific ranking feeling wrong.


Some ideas:

- Drop the lowest rating - but the penalty for NR is so big that doesn't seem like it fixes much.

- Some sort of bonus points for top 10 and top 25 on a list. Being #1 on one list and left out of another shouldn't score lower than being #50 on two lists in my opinion.

- Some sort of scaling based on the number of NR's. Being left off of one list but on the other 5 - no matter what the rating - I feel like that shouldn't hurt you very much. Being left off a second list should hurt a bit more, a third even more, etc. I don't have an exact idea for what kind of scaling there, but it should probably be pretty significant, something that could possibly account for the Macarena/I Touch Myself problem - when it is on a list it ranks significantly higher on average - but it happens to be left off of one additional more list than something that on average is far lower when it is put on a list.


A combination of the last two probably works the best. Giving bonuses to songs when they're ranked sufficiently high, while making it so that being left off of one list doesn't hurt much, but being left off of more of them gets progressively worse.



And to re-iterate QS's point - nothing against Breeze because this has been one of the best and most engaging threads on FOFC in years IMO - but after seeing the results its interesting to see different things that could be done.

[Radii]

Lets go for a good 'ol double dola here:

A well timed and related high effort reddit thread on the "DataIsBeautiful" subreddit:

https://i.redd.it/rmsp53vcz8b31.png

The image is huge so I can't embed it, but its worth the click, I promise.

The full discussion on it is here:

[OC] A History of One Hit Wonders : dataisbeautiful

[Radii]

Fuck it, triple dola!

A perfect comment from a friend of mine who shared that thread:

"Do you think the guy who coined the term one hit wonder ever came up with any other good phrases, or was that it for him?"

[QuikSand]

Okay, so somebody went to a lot of trouble to make that graphic on reddit. it's interesting, I will read more. It lists "Come On Eileen" as barely making its Top Ten of the 1980s. And, presumably, that's among the few we haven't yet seen on this list being unrolled here. Just fuel to my fire that this seems nutty.

And "Sail" is the greatest OHW of all time? Omm, okay. That's not even Sadaharu Oh or John Gibson, that's like some Cuban dude.

[albionmoonlight]

Another complication that we've discussed that does not come into things like ranking baseball players is some fuzziness about what makes someone a "one hit."

If an artist has a pretty decent and critically successful career in another genre or another country, and manages to make one pop song that gets onto the American Billboard Top 100, then they meet the technical definition. But they don't feel as pure to me as some guy who basically had one pop song that took off and never did anything else of note in another country or another genre.

I'm not sure at all how to account for that, but it does add to some sense of the difficulty in trying to nail this down.

I do like Radii's idea of cutting the bottom votes (maybe even the bottom two) and giving a bonus for making the top 10 of any given list.

And, yeah, Breeze is da real MVP for creating such an awesome thread. Sad that we are almost to the end of it.

[QuikSand]

Originally Posted by albionmoonlight

I do like Radii's idea of cutting the bottom votes (maybe even the bottom two) and giving a bonus for making the top 10 of any given list.

So, we run with this. We improve the list, working from Breeze's data set.

One way to do it would be to weight the ordered list of rankings in some top-heavy fashion, logarithmically or something.

[Radii]

Originally Posted by QuikSand

Okay, so somebody went to a lot of trouble to make that graphic on reddit. it's interesting, I will read more. It lists "Come On Eileen" as barely making its Top Ten of the 1980s. And, presumably, that's among the few we haven't yet seen on this list being unrolled here. Just fuel to my fire that this seems nutty.

And "Sail" is the greatest OHW of all time? Omm, okay. That's not even Sadaharu Oh or John Gibson, that's like some Cuban dude.

Some of that does get explained in the second half of the image, changes to the data the hot 100 used to make it more accurate, showing that record sales for many of these songs continue to thrive much longer than was assumed - so Come On Eileen is likely artificially low here because of false assumptions based on limited data.

Other changes to the hot 100 system in the last 25 years are mentioned as well, and the ability for social media to make something go insanely viral probably matters a ton too.


Back to the baseball reference, comparing Come On Eileen's numbers to Sail seems like comparing stats from the dead ball era to modern times.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by Breeze

using an illuminated neon tube to display aggression towards other band members and the audience

Just so I've got this straight (no pun intended): was that aggression as in "tube as phallic symbol" or as in "threatening to bash someone over the head with it"?

#TheMoreYouKnow

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by Breeze

You could have clicked the link and it would have taken you to the youtube video/song...just an FYI

DOH.

At no point did that ever dawn on me. I've Googled numerous times in the thread

[Ryche]

I had never heard Seasons in the Sun before. That was a good thing.

[Breeze]

love the discussion and will be glad to help with a different weighting system for the songs...I knew that the methodology was problematic and tried to express that up front. Glad you guys are enjoying it.

[Vince, Pt. II]

Originally Posted by Breeze

love the discussion and will be glad to help with a different weighting system for the songs...I knew that the methodology was problematic and tried to express that up front. Glad you guys are enjoying it.

Enjoying it more than you know. This has spawned numerous offline discussions for me with people who don't even know this board exists.

[cuervo72]

Macarena was #1 for 1996 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #2 on their list for the decade. Granted, the Hot 100 isn't the end-all-be-all, but that's pretty huge.

[Edward64]

Originally Posted by Breeze

7. Terry Jacks – Seasons in the Sun (1974)

Wow, I remember this song. It must be 30+ years since I last heard it.

[Breeze]

5. Nena – 99 Luftballons (1984)

Total Points – 267
Charts – 5
Top 40 – 1
Top 20 – 1
Top 10 – 2
Total Ranking – 8, 10, 15, 34, 88, NR

Gabriele Susanne Kerner, a German singer-songwriter, actress and comedian who while vacationing in Spain as a child with her family acquired the nickname, Nena (which means little girl). Nena started her musical career at 19, when she was asked to lead sing for band after the guitarist watched her dance as a club one night. The band was The Stripes and they performed English lyric songs and even managed to have a minor hit, but they never achieved mainstream success so they broke up. However, The Stripes label offered Nena her own contract if she’d perform German lyric songs, so she and her then boyfriend moved to Berlin and formed the band, which also went by the name Nena. The band experienced success almost immediately, having a huge hit only 2 months after forming. In 1983, they released this song, which was a #1 in German and the Netherlands. The English version became a #1 hit in the UK. Interestingly, the German version made it to #2 on the US Hot 100, kept out of the top spot by Van Halen’s Jump. In 1984, Casey Kasem’s American Top 40 played a sliced version mix of the English and German versions which was a huge it in many other countries. The idea for the song came when one of the band members was attending a Rolling Stone’s concert and a bunch of balloons were released. He watched them float away and noticed them changing shapes and thought that they looked like a UFO. When writing the song, they found an article about a 1973 prank where a group of boys released 99 mylar balloons (they lost one in transit or it would have been 100) to simulate a UFO. The song does depict the innocent launching of balloons leading to panic and eventually nuclear war. I’ve linked the English version here, if you prefer the German version, it is also available on YouTube.

[Butter]

Yeah, I knew Nena was coming up. There are maybe 2 more I can think of that we haven't seen yet.

Just like Falco's "Der Kommissar", I hated the English language remake of this when it came out. Although it was done by the same group, the song just doesn't flow as well in English.

[Radii]

Originally Posted by Breeze

5. Nena – 99 Luftballons (1984)

A long time favorite of mine, preferred over all of the one hit wonders that still get played today from this time period. Apologies to Eileen, of course, know that you're a fairly close second.

[Radii]

Originally Posted by Butter

I hated the English language remake of this when it came out. Although it was done by the same group, the song just doesn't flow as well in English.

I like both but do prefer the German for sure.

[sabotai]

Originally Posted by Ryche

I had never heard Seasons in the Sun before. That was a good thing.

I didn't think I did either until the chorus kicked in. That I've heard a million times in commercials, TV shows, etc. But never any other part of the song.

[Breeze]

4. Soft Cell – Tainted Love (1982)

Total Points – 261
Charts – 4
Top 40 – 0
Top 20 – 2
Top 10 – 2
Total Ranking – 2, 3, 12, 20, NR, NR

Amazingly, this song reached number 4 in our countdown despite the fact it is only ranked in 4 of the 6 seed lists, making it’s final score better than 8 of the 10 songs that were ranked in 5 lists and better than 1 of the 2 that were ranked in all 6. Out of the 4 lists that this song appears in, it is always ranked in the top 20, and in two cases is ranked in the top 3. Soft Cell is a duo consisting of vocalist Marc Almond and instrumentalist David Ball. The two came to prominence in the early 80s, generating 10 top 40 hits on the UK singles chart, including 5 hits in the top 5. However, the band’s only #1 single was this song, which coincidentally was also the best selling UK single of 1981. In the US, the song had a strange path in the Hot 100. It debuted on the countdown in January of ’82 at number 90. It climbed for a few weeks, but stopped at #64, then it fell to number 100 at the end of February. It stayed at 100 for a second week, before it oddly started climbing again. This time taking 19 additional weeks to crack the top 40. The song continued its slow progress up the charts and eventually peak at #8. At the end of the song's run it spent a then record-breaking 43 weeks in the Hot 100. The song was originally written by Ed Cobb of the group The Four Preps and recorded by Gloria Jones in 1964. Soft Cell originally recorded the song in 1976 as a dance number which had a significantly different tone and tempo even being described as frantic. The song was re-recorded with producer Mike Thorne, who admitted that he was originally surprised that this song was chosen to be the single, because he didn’t care for the 1976 version. However, he noted after seeing the band live, he heard a novel sound and a better voice than he expected. The song was slowed down significantly, and the key was dropped to G in order to make it a more natural fit for Almond, and the rest is OHW history. This song has been covered and sampled numerous times through the years. It was also featured in a very memorable Levi’s jean’s commercial, where a patient’s heart monitor creates the distinctive ‘bink bink’ hook in the song. Interestingly, that commercial was directed by Spike Jonze.

[Radii]

There went my early pick for #1. How in the world did this get left out of two lists?

[MIJB#19]

I've got my virtual money on

Spoiler

Las Ketchup - the Ketchup Song

[Breeze]

3. Chumbawamba - Tubthumping (1998)

Total Points – 259
Charts – 5
Top 40 – 3
Top 20 – 1
Top 10 – 0
Total Ranking – 19, 23, 23, 24, 58, NR

Chumbawamba is a British band that recorded their first album in 1982 and continued to perform together until 2012. The band constantly shifted musical styles from punk, to pop, to folk, but always focused on their political agendas, which were numerous and varied. In 1997, in a surprise move, the band signed with EMI Records, a shocking move considering their in 1989 the band released an EP called Fuck EMI. Unsurprisingly, the band received pretty harsh criticism from this move, including from the anarcho-punk band Oi Polloi, whom they had worked with on the Punk Aid EP “Smash the Poll Tax”. Oi Polloi released an ‘anti-Chumbawamba' EP called “Bare Faced Hypocrisy Sells Records”. The band argued that the primary reason they railed against EMI (they were allegedly supporting a weapons manufacturer) was no longer an issue, and by signing with EMI they could become financially viable as well as communicate their message to a wider audience, plus all record companies are driven by profit, including their previous one. This song was off the band’s 8th album (and first with EMI), and it was a smash hit worldwide, reaching number 1 in Australia, Canada, Ireland, Italy, and New Zealand. It also debuted on the UK Singles chart at #2. Unfortunately, for the band the song stayed at #2 for 3 weeks before staring it’s fall back down the rankings, blocked from the top spot by Will Smith’s “Men in Black”. In total, the song spent 11 weeks in the top 10. In the US the song debuted at #79 in the Hot 100, and during its climb it twice had the largest weekly jump of any song. Ultimately, the song reached #6, and it spent 31 weeks on the Hot 100. At year end, this song was ranked the 7th most popular single in the UK for 1997. It was #3 in Australia’s year end chart, and top 20 in Italy and Sweden. In the US it was 35th for the 1998 year-end review. The band did continue their anti-establishment stance even after signing with a major label. In fact, they urged fans that didn’t have the money to purchase their CD to steal it from major record stores (which prompted Virgin records to pull it from the floor and put it behind the desk forcing customers to ask for it). They also sold their rights to one of their other songs to GM to be used in an advertisement, then turned around and gave the money to anti-corporate activist groups who used that money to launch an environmental campaign against GM. This song was voted 12th in Rolling Stone’s list of the 20 most annoying songs ever, conversely, it was also voted by The Village Voice as the second-best single of 1997.

[Butter]

I was working at Clemson bookstore when this song came out. They usually played the local top 40 station as in-store music at the time. This song came on every 2 hours, like clockwork, for quite a while. You could literally set your watch to it.

Couldn't listen for a long time. Come to today, and I still enjoy it, but it's like 90 seconds too long, there is no reason for it to be over 4 and a half minutes, especially as repetitive as it is.

[albionmoonlight]

I'm gonna kick myself when I see whatever the other remaining song is.

I can only think of one obvious candidate remaining.

[Radii]

Originally Posted by Breeze

This song was voted 12th in Rolling Stone’s list of the 20 most annoying songs ever, conversely, it was also voted by The Village Voice as the second-best single of 1997.

I'll take the Rolling Stone side on this one.

[Radii]

Originally Posted by albionmoonlight

I'm gonna kick myself when I see whatever the other remaining song is.

I can only think of one obvious candidate remaining.

Spoilered in case people would rather just wait and see.

Spoiler

A-Ha - Take On Me for the other one? Since I think we all have the same obvious candidate in mind

[MIJB#19]

Originally Posted by MIJB#19

I've got my virtual money on

Spoiler

Las Ketchup - the Ketchup Song

Apparently it wasn't a #1 hit in the USA (peaked at #54 in the hot100), only everywhere else in the 'western society'. Never mind...

[Breeze]

2. Dexys Midnight Runners – Come On Eileen (1983)

Total Points – 205
Charts – 5
Top 40 – 0
Top 20 – 2
Top 10 – 2
Total Ranking – 3, 4, 11, 13, 62, NR

The band’s name is derived from Dexedrine a stimulant typically used to treat ADHD or narcolepsy but was extremely popular as a street drug in Birmingham, England, where people would take it so they could dance all night. The band was signed by Clash manager Bernard Rhodes and they cut their first single. Rhodes was critical of lead singer Kevin Rowland’s singing style noting that it lacked emotion, so Rowland started trying to sound like General Johnson of Holland–Dozier–Holland band Chairmen of the Board. After opening for The Specials, who wore suits on stage as part of their image, Rowland decided Dexys needed a distinctive look (something that would become a theme for the band) they started with leather coats and woolly hats, like DeNiro’s character in “Mean Streets”. Their first single, “Dance Stance” made it to #40 on the UK singles chart, and their second single “Geno” was a #1 hit in the UK. Despite the early success things inside the band were extremely unsettled, in fact from the late 70s to the early 80s the band went through so many line up changes the only constant was Rowland. This song was released in June of ’82 and it was the band’s second #1 hit in the UK, and their first and only hit in the US, also reaching #1. By this time the band had adopted the baggy overalls as their look, one that would last for several years, but ultimately would be replaced by suits (just like The Specials originally did). Eileen won Best British Single at the 1983 Brit Awards and it was ranked #18 on VH1’s list of the best songs of the 80s. There are actually several versions of this song with most of the differences coming during the intro. One version has a fiddle intro and a second has an a cappella coda, both of which are based on Thomas Moore’s Irish folk song “Believe Me, if All Those Endearing Young Charms”. Interestingly, this song reached number 1 on the US charts April 23, 1983, and it prevented Michael Jackson from having back to back number 1 hits. “Billy Jean” was number one for 7 weeks prior to Dexy hitting the top spot. Immediately after Come on Eileen’s 1 week at top, “Beat It” became the number 1 song for 3 weeks. After the release of the Too-Rye-Ay album, which contained this single, the band took 3 years to have a follow up, then the 4th album wouldn’t be released until 2012 - 27 years later. These long gaps may have contributed to their inability to create a second hit in the US, but it didn’t really hinder them in the UK, where the managed 9 top 40 hits, including 2 number 1s and 2 other top 10 hits.

[albionmoonlight]

Originally Posted by Breeze

[size="3"]These long gaps may have contributed to their inability to create a second hit in the US, but it didn’t really hinder them in the UK, where the managed 9 top 40 hits, including 2 number 1s and 2 other top 10 hits.

And that would, I hope, explain the one list that didn't rank this song.

To stretch Quik's analogy, it would be like if Ted Williams isn't on your list of top 10 baseball players because you could make a colorable argument that he does not qualify as a "baseball player."

And, you know, I can buy that. I may not agree, but if you say that a band that had multiple top 40 and top 10 hits in the UK is not a one hit wonder and should not be on your list, I can't say that's crazy.

What I cannot understand is the #62 ranking. If you think that this song meets your criteria, how can you think that 61 other songs were bigger one hit wonders than this? If this song qualifies, then it is top 5.

[QuikSand]

Back to the tired baseball analogy, I guess "not voting for steroid users" would be the best logic to map onto "doesn't qualify because of other semi-hits" here.

Regardless, I do think it's really just a function of music being so subjective. Eileen was #1 in the USA for one week, apparently. Why is it a shoo-in for top ten, then? (Which I agree it is) I heard a pumped-up version of it in Ocean City MD a few years ago one late Friday night and the dance floor went berserk... is that basically why it's ranked ahead of "I Ran" or "Too Shy" or a dozen other OHW breakouts of the 1980s?

[cuervo72]

I very much dislike both #3 and #2.