Greetings pop pickers and please be welcome to tonight’s Fabulously Flamboyant Friday and another of our fortnightly mastications upon the marshmallowy pillows of musical magnificence.
Tonight, dear reader, as we respectfully mark Hamster Awareness Month, Ivory Cutlery (currently numb of buttock, sore of foot and tired of limb) will once again be taking the night off.
I’m currently labouring in “that there Lunnon” and I’m afraid the onerous real-world pressure of being a full-time useless pillock has somewhat limited my opportunities for detailed, rigorous, fact-checked, Puffin-quality research.*
*a transparent tissue of lies – it’s all done by Grok
Because of this, tonight’s missive will be a shoddy and shambolic affair; a puerile stream of consciousness, written rapidly in a succession of shabby hotels and deeply insalubrious crew catering areas.
And so, without further ado, laydees and gentlebodies, Fabulously Flamboyant Friday proudly presents… um… some of my favourite… um… *shuffles frantically through notebook*… one-hit wonders! Not Arf!
For tonight’s entertainment we shall draw an arbitrary line at the official top 40 singles chart. We might very well take a look at the US charts in another missive, but for tonight we shall focus on the UK’s top 40.
Of course, someone had to be first and the The Guinness Book Of Hit Singles informs me that the very first officially recorded UK one hit wonder was Little things Mean A Lot, released in 1954 by the American singer Kitty Kallen. Our Kitty (who was a bit of a babe, by the way) was a wartime forces favourite, a top-notch big band singer during the swing era (a favourite of Tommy Dorsey, apparently) and enjoyed plenty of hot chart action stateside. However, Kitty’s Little Things Mean A Lot gets things a-rollin’ in our one hit wonderland as it remains her one and only UK top 40 hit and the UK’s very first one hit wonder.
Taffys… We seem to be blessed with an inordinate number of Taffys on this site, so I should probably mention the first officially recorded UK one hit wonder by one of our sheep bothering brethren from the western townships. That singular honour goes to Ricky Valance (not to be confused with the American throat warbler, Ritchie Valens).
Valance covered the very substantial US top ten hit, Tell Laura I Love Her, by Ray Peterson, which, despite being a roaring success with the Merkins, wasn’t originally released in the UK. Decca Records considered songs about messy teenage death and tragedy to be in particularly bad taste and therefore thoroughly unsuitable for we sensitive souls in the Blighty. Undeterred, Valance jumped at the chance to record it and in fact produced a pretty decent cover.
Unfortunately for Valance, the po-faced mandarins at the BBC refused to play it. They agreed with Decca that teenage tragedy songs were simply not cricket, old boy, and Valance’s big break seemed doomed to failure. Fortunately for our boyo – and of course the rich tapestry of Taffy tuneage – substantial airplay over on Radio Luxembourg ensured his version of Tell Laura I Love Her became very popular with the teeny demographic of the day and they eventually landed Valance with a No.1 hit in September 1960. It also gave him the honour and distinction of being the very first Taffy geezer to reach the UK’s top spot on the singles chart (with the very first Taffy to top the charts being Tiger Bay top totty, Shirley Bassey, in 1959). Valance managed to land a few other hits around the world and had a crack at Eurovision, but Tell Laura I Love Her remains our boyo’s one-and-only chart hit in the UK.
And we really can’t consider one-hit-wonders without mentioning Whitby’s finest barnet burner, the self-styled God of Hellfire, the Satanic legend that is Arthur Brown.
First of all – was there ever a less rock ‘n’ roll name than Arthur Brown? Well, Jeffrey Osborne, perhaps; and secondly, has anyone ever managed to milk a solitary hit single to greater effect than Arthur did with his 1968 chartbuster, Fire? Astonishingly, his band, The Crazy World of Arthur Brown, are still treading the boards on the back of that one single and still pulling decent crowds – and the silly sod is still setting his head on fire! I should probably caveat that with the news that Arthur (now well into his 80s) is apparently a bit poorly at the moment and was forced to cancel a few dates over the summer, so I’m sure we all wish him well.
Arthur’s band had some serious talent in the ranks, including Vincent Crane and Carl Palmer (both of whom will no doubt feature in upcoming editions of When Dinosaurs Ruled The Earth), and Fire sold well over a million copies, was awarded a few gold discs, reached number one in the UK and Canada, and produced a very substantial number two in the US. The success of his single (and of course his iconic ‘elf n safety bothering fiery hat shenanigans) boosted the album, The Crazy World of Arthur Brown, into the top ten around the world and, for a while at least, Arthur’s popularity was such that his group would frequently share top billing with the likes of Jimi Hendrix, The Who, Frank Zappa and the Doors.
Sadly, however, that was about it for The Crazy World Of Arthur Brown. One album, one single; done and dusted (although various archive recording have emerged over the years). Nevertheless, despite his very limited chart success, Arthur seems to have remained a significant influence on a wide range of musicians and is now considered to be something of a pioneer in the shock rock genre and a substantial influence on artists such as Alice Cooper, Kiss, Ozzy Osbourne and Rob Zombie. Arthur is certainly an interesting chap, so we might very well take a look at some of his more intriguing work (notably With Hawkwind and Kingdom Come) at a later date.
Something In The Air (1969), Thunderclap Newman’s one and only top 40 UK hit and a cheery call for armed insurrection, began life as a Pete Townshend side-project. Townshend first encountered Andy “Thunderclap” Newman at Ealing Art College, was deeply impressed by his joanna-bashing skills and became determined to work with him on a professional basis. John “Speedy” Keen was Townshend’s multi-instrumentalist flatmate, part-time driver and occasional songwriting partner; Jimmy McCulloch was a hugely talented young guitarist who had toured (support act) with the Who. Pete wanted to make separate albums with all three of these musicians, but his manager, Kit Lambert (possibly concerned that Pete was in danger of neglecting his Who duties), suggested putting them all together in the same band.
Kit’s bright idea certainly seemed to work: Speedy wrote Something In The Air, sang the track, played the drums, and to the delight and surprise of all concerned it turned out to be a great success. Something In The Air became a No.1 hit in the UK, a top ten hit in several other countries around the world, and suddenly the boys were in great demand. Not wishing to waste their opportunity, they quickly hit the road to gig and tour in support of their now very substantial hit single. Unfortunately, their early live appearances did not go down very well with the paying punters. Apparently, their shows were somewhat shambolic affairs and audiences were quick to display their displeasure. The band were frequently booed off stage, sometimes well before they could finish their set, and on at least one occasion they had coins and various other objects thrown at them to encourage a prompt departure from the stage.
Undaunted, they retreated back to the studio to lick their wounds and begin work on Hollywood Dream (1970), their one and only studio album. Happily, this turned out to be a rather splendid one. Sadly for the boys, by the time their album was released, all the momentum and profile created by Something In The Air was long gone and, despite some pretty decent reviews, the album sold poorly and they very soon threw in the towel and disbanded.
To be strictly accurate, Thunderclap Newman were not one hit wonders. In 1970 they crept back into the lower reaches of the top 50 singles chart with Accidents – a song that seems to be concerned with the dangers of trainspotting. However, our entirely arbitrary and deeply unfair cut-off point for this evening is top 40 success, so Thunderclap Newman are well and truly in.
And as it’s a Friday evening, it’s probably time we examined some pert Germanic bottom, tightly clad in leather (well, possibly PVC) and, as a bonus, a cracking piece of ’80s euro-cheese as well.
In January 1983, the dreaded Phil Collins was No. 1 in the United Kingdom with his hideous cover of You Can’t Hurry Love. But in Germany, an interesting new genre of dance-worthy German-language songs were doing rather well in the Teutonic charts. Because they were German, they inevitably featured lots of 80’s synthesizers and electronic drums, and had their musical roots very firmly in Germany’s popular Krautrock scene of the 1970s. Groups and artists such as Spliff, Fräulein Menke, Peter Schilling, Trio and Hubert Kah all belonged to this genre, which the local music press had dubbed Neue Deutsche Welle. From the end of the 70s and into the early 80, these band began making their mark in the German charts and sat very comfortably alongside international stars like the aforementioned (and at the time hideously ubiquitous) Phil Collins. As a result, the German charts of the day were a lot more interesting than the equivalent UK charts. Artists like David Bowie and Brian Eno had famously been drawn to the German music scene in the late 1970s and its profound influence on the UK’s synth pop movement has been well documented.
Out of the fecundity of this Germanic post-punk melting pot came the band Nena – the nickname of the band’s vocalist, Gabriele Kerner. Their debut album, Nena, was released in January 1983 and the second single from that album, 99 Luftballons, became a very big hit in Germany. The song addressed the cold war tensions of the time, a period when the Soviet Union and the USA were still threatening each other (and the rest of us) with the grim prospect of mutually assured (and thoroughly crispy) annihilation.
99 Luftballons was a great success, reaching No.1 in the German charts and enjoying tremendous sales worldwide. It reached No.1 in Japan, Australia, Canada, Mexico and – quite unusually – even reached No.2 on the US Billboard chart – a feat that hasn’t been achieved by any other German-language song. In 1984, the band re-recorded the track in English and re-released it as 99 Red Balloons. Gabriele famously displayed her enticingly hairy armpits on Top of the Pops, and their English language version promptly topped the British charts, giving Nena their only Top 40 hit and their only UK No.1.
And I suppose if you’re gonna be a one hit wonder, then you’d best do it properly. And that’s exactly what Althea & Donna did in 1977, when they recorded their soon-to-be UK No.1 and international hit single Uptown Top Ranking.
The Jamaican duo of Althea Forrest and Donna Reid were just 17 and 18 when they recorded their track. It was based on a 1967 recording by Alton Ellis called I’m Still In Love, which was later popularised by Marcia Aitken. The version that became Uptown Top Ranking, with its infectiously spontaneous and unrehearsed karaoke vibe, was originally given airtime in the UK by the bbc’s John Peel, and legend has it that he was immediately inundated with requests to provide more information about the track and of course to play it again – which he cheerfully did. The song eventually hit No. 1 in February 1978 and spent a very impressive 11 weeks on the UK chart. Not a bad effort at all.
Incidently, Wikipedia, The Guinness Book Of Hit Singles, the bbc and various other entertainment sites all seem to disagree slightly on their lists of UK one hit wonders. Personally, I’m rather pleased about this as it gives us a wider variety of tunes from which to select. Additionally, as I was perusing the various web sites that detail this topic, I kept noticing two singles by two artists artists who were quite definitely erroneous entries on our list of one hit wonders: Chesney Hawkes with his 1999 hit The One And Only and Carl Douglas with his 1974 UK No.1, Kung Fu Fighting. As both these artists had subsequent chart hits in the UK (although, in the case of Mr. Douglas, that was largely achieved by producing new versions of Kung Fu Fighting), neither should really be included in any authoritative list of one hit wonders. However Chesney’s track (written by Nik Kershaw) is a cracking piece of highly polished pop cheese (and I like the guitar solo), so it gets an honorary outing here.
And we cant leave the subject of one hit wonders without paying our respects to global triumph of Joe Dolce’s Shaddap You Face – oft dubbed the most irritating song of the 80s, featuring two of the most annoying characters in musical history: Guiseppe and his Mama.
It was No.1 in the UK for three weeks, for eight weeks in Oz and was No.1 in a grand total of fifteen countries worldwide. It has been translated into umpteen different languages, has produced twenty five cover versions, sold well over 6 million copies worldwide, and is quite frankly the gold standard of irksome one hit wonders.
Originally from Ohio, Joe’s deeply irritating creation, Guiseppe, was a character he played in his cabaret show in his adopted home of Australia. He wrote and recorded Shaddap You Face in 1980 and it quickly became a massive international hit. In the UK it (quite rightly) knocked John Lennon’s Woman off the top spot and famously prevented Vienna by Ultravox reaching the coveted No.1 slot.
Rumour has it this deeply irritated some of the Ultravox lads and it apparently annoyed Midge Ure so much he refused to meet Joe Dolce when touring Australia. Midge claims the reason he snubbed his chart rival was not bitterness, saying “I’ve never met him. When I was in Australia I got a message from a promoter – do you want to meet Joe Dolce – and I said no… Not because of any gripe or bad feelings, but because I’ve had 40 years of people talking about Joe ‘bloody’ Dolce and I don’t want to spend what I’ve got left talking about when I met him… I just can’t go there”. Nah – doesn’t sound bitter at all, does it?
Anyway, I think that’s probably quite enough of my inane ramblings for one evening. So I shall bid you TTFN, dear Puffins. May all your pillows be tasty, your gardens inclined and your puddles well jumped.
Goodnight, and may your frog go with you – Not ‘arf!
Featured Image: http://www.cgpgrey.com, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
© Ivory Cutlery 2025
