Bloomsbury Academic One-Hit Wonders: An Oblique History of Popular Music

The one-hit wonder has a long and storied history in popular music, exhorting listeners to dance, to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony, to ponder mortality, to get a job, to bask in the sunshine, or just to get up and dance again. Catchy, memorable, irritating, or simply ubiquitous, one-hit wonders capture something of the mood of a time. This collection provides a series of short, sharp chapters focusing on one-hit wonders from the 1950s to the present day, with a view toward understanding both the mechanics of success and the socio-musical contexts within which such songs became hits. Some artists included here might have aspired to success but only managed one hit, while others enjoyed lengthy, if unremarkable, careers after their initial chart success. Put together, these chapters provide not only a capsule history of popular music tastes, but also ruminations on the changing nature of the music industry and the mechanics of fame. Review One-hit wonders are pop’s overachieving underachievers, winners-but-losers that stretch categories – up to a point. In this big book of small fries, academics and musicians reckon with the results, from bubblegum to global pop – every musical identity ersatz, every twist and turn a chance to marvel, yet again: “How Bizarre.” --Eric Weisbard, Professor of American Studies, University of Alabama, author of Top 40 Democracy: The Rival Mainstreams of American Popular Music (2014) A fascinating look at the cultural and personal context around one-hit wonders, this collection deftly explains why some of these songs escaped obscurity ― and makes excellent cases why others might be best left in the past.<br> --Annie Zaleski, editor, music journalist, and author of Duran Duran’s Rio (2021) in Bloomsbury's 33 1/3 series <i>One-Hit Wonders</i> is a treasure trove of analysis into why particular songs resonate at specific moments in history and how quickly they can date. Hill’s collection is full of insight into the vagaries of taste, the nature of audiences and why certain musical moments remains timeless. It poses fascinating questions about what happens to those whose careers are defined by that one hit song.<br> --Kirsty Fairclough, Reader in Screen Studies, School of Digital Arts (SODA), Manchester Metropolitan University, UK, co-editor of Prince and Popular Music: Critical Perspectives on an Interdisciplinary Life (Bloomsbury, 2020) About the Author Sarah Heaton is Head of English at the University of Chester, UK.