One-Hit Wonders

Over the summer I became a bit obsessed with making playlists. I go through phases where, for whatever reason, I don't have the patience to listen to albums in their entirety. It just becomes far too tedious to listen to the same voice for 45 minutes to an hour and I crave the variety that a good playlist can provide.

One of the playlists I worked diligently to create and thoroughly enjoyed listening to was titled "One-Hit Wonders". Now when I say one-hit wonder here I'm not talking what you might traditionally think of when you hear this term; a single song that created and defined a band's 15 minutes of fame and usually resulted in you recalling the song 10 years later and remarking "I wonder whatever happened to those guys?" The one-hit wonders I'm talking about are those songs that seem to come out of nowhere, hit you over the head, and force you to seek them out and listen to them obsessively until your friends and family politely tell you to please take the cd player off repeat and move on with your life. A bit dramatic, maybe, but I think we all can relate to those songs that, for whatever reason, have a tendency to make us stop, listen, and then really need to listen again.

For better or worse (i.e. my freshman year Spin Doctors obsession) here are my top 10:

1.) Joyride - Roxette
God I loved this band. Granted, I was in the sixth grade when this song came out and we can't always vouch for the depth of taste displayed in our early music selections, but the Joyride album was one of the first cds I ever bought. Remember when cds came in those ridiculous and useless thin cardboard boxes ? I cut the picture off of this one and hung it in my room as a poster (I was a very resourceful child) and shrine to my favorite band. When I started middle school and found that my 7th grade english teacher had the same haircut as Marie Fredrikson I almost crapped my pants. It was a musical obsession as only a 12 year old could have. (And Joyride was a much better track than The Look, which still gets fairly regular airplay on monotonous pop stations.)

2.) Love Shack - The B-52s
Another middle school favorite. I'll admit it, I still have an obsession with the B-52s. I am not ashamed of this fact. I pretty much literally drove my family crazy with B-52s albums for at least a couple of years, but none were in higher rotation than Cosmic Thing and Love Shack is what started it all for me. (Roam was definitely a close second.) When I first started taking guitar lessons my teacher asked me about the music that I liked and I told her my two favorite bands were Roxette and The B-52s. She immediately starting teaching me Beatles and Led Zeppelin tunes and tried to pretend we'd never had that conversation.

3.) Little Miss Can't Be Wrong - Spin Doctors
It was the 8th grade and I was risking life and limb watching MTV before my mom came home from work (the channel was banned in our household until I was well into high school) when this video came on. The video was something ridiculous with the band having some sort of fight with paint brushes, but I was immediately hooked on this song. I was just beginning to learn to play guitar and I loved the opening riff and the catchy chorus. And you have to admit, it's a pretty funny break-up song. Cheesy but lovable.

4.) Stairway to Heaven - Led Zeppelin
Before I'd even heard this song I was laughing hysterically at the "NO STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN" joke in Wayne's World and pretending I knew what they were talking about. Once I heard it and began learning to play it on the guitar it became my greatest eight minute obsession. It's beautiful, it's epic, and it has one of the greatest guitar solos of all time.

5.) Because - The Beatles
I didn't really become a true Beatles fan until high school when I was forced to listen continuously to their entire catalog through the wall that separated my brother's and my bedroom. I actually first fell in love with Because when I head the acapella Elliot Smith version during the closing credits of American Beauty. Such a hauntingly beautiful song.

6.) Shelter From the Storm - Bob Dylan
Thanks to my dad, I grew up listening to, and not always enjoying, Bob Dylan songs. The turning point for me in my relationship with Bob Dylan, however, was when I first heard this song. Not to mention the fact that it comes from one of the best albums ever made.

7.) Momentum - Aimee Mann
Creating this playlist made me realize how often I am drawn to particular songs within the context of a film. This song first caught my attention when I saw the trailer for Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia. It was, in fact, the main reason I later went to see this film that has since become one of my favorites. It is a short yet extremely dramatic track that will stick in your head for days. The lyrics are brilliant.

8.) Dry the Rain - The Beta Band
I was never a huge Beta Band fan until I heard this song. It was featured in one of my favorite movies (a great book too), High Fidelity, and I've been a devoted follower ever since. There is something about the chorus of this song that just makes you want to get up and pump your fist with a big grin on your face, and I'm not really a fist-pumping kind of girl.

9.) Transamericana - Muckner
You're just going to have to take my word for it on this one, since I'm pretty sure most people have never heard this track before. Muckner was a hometown band until their singer/songwriter/guitarist up and moved to New York City. I randomly came across this song while surfuing the web at work about 8 years or so ago. I don't know how I found it, but once I heard it I couldn't get it out of my head. This song has a beautiful rootsy-folk tone and the lyrics have that dusty old Steinbeck novel feel to them. After becoming obsessed with this track online I emailed the band's singer-songwriter, Dan Erb, and asked how I could get my hands on their EP. He told me he normally sold them through his website for five bucks, but he was so pleased with the fact that I had been drawn to the song that he mailed me a copy for free. Still one of my favorite songs and the other two songs on the EP are excellent as well. Hit me up for a copy of it if you're interested in checking them out.

10.) Blonde on Blonde - Nada Surf
This has been one of my most recent obsessions. I am definitely a late arrival on the Nada Surf bandwagon, but this is truly a beautiful song; one of those perfectly arranged tracks that leaves you totally satisfied with each listen. I picked up the album, Let Go, not expecting to find much more that I would enjoy as much as Blonde on Blonde but was pleasantly surprised. The first half of the album has some incredibly addicting songs and overall it's really solid.

Honorable Mentions:
Falling Slowly by Glen Hansard (from the film Once)
Son of a Preacher Man by Dusty Springfield (Pulp Fiction. Need I say more?)
All These Things That I've Done by The Killers (The BEST song to run to. Ever.)
Most of the Time by Bob Dylan (another High Fidelity moment)
Say Something New by The Concretes (until the Target commercial ruined it)