18 posts
One Hit Wonders
Phyllis Nelson was an experienced disco singer and her 1985 single Move Closer was a radical departure into all-out soulful schmaltz that clambered slowly but purposefully to No.1 for a…
Top 40 80s One-Hit Wonders
Our love affair with the one-hit wonder is often intense, but alas, all-too-brief. Here’s Classic Pop‘s rundown of the greatest one-shots ever to earworm their way into the charts and the…
One Hit Wonder: Air Supply – All Out Of Love
There have probably been thousands of soft-rock songs about pain and loss, and Air Supply’s contribution to this much-maligned genre was an enormous worldwide hit in 1980. The Australian band…
One Hit Wonder: The Dazz Band – Let It All Blow
‘Danceable jazz’ was the raison d’être of the group that singer and saxophonist Bobby Harris wanted to form when he left jazz-fusion band Bell Telefunk in 1976 to start afresh…
One Hit Wonder: Pebbles – Girlfriend
Pebbles has had six real surnames in her eventful life, so probably one of the more astute things she ever did was giving herself an easily recognisable pseudonym when launching…
One Hit Wonders: Adrian Gurvitz – Classic
You have to admire the nerve of any lyricist who claims that the words ‘classic’, ‘attic’ and ‘addict’ rhyme, but veteran rocker Adrian Gurvitz had the songwriting gravitas to do…
One Hit Wonders: Terri Wells – I’ll Be Around
It‘s not common for a backing singer on a well-known soul hit to later outperform the original with her own pop version, but that’s what Philadelphia’s Terri Wells did in…
One Hit Wonders: Yarbrough & Peoples – Don’t Stop The Music
It was a piano teacher that first brought Cavin Yarbrough and Alisa Peoples together in the early-60s. A lifelong romance began alongside an endearing musical partnership. Forming a funk duo…
One Hit Wonders: Black Slate – Amigo
Black Slate established a huge reputation as a backing band for the most highly-rated reggae singers of the 70s, so there was ample goodwill when they went into the studio…
One Hit Wonders: Will Powers – Kissing With Confidence
Rock photographer Lynn Goldsmith‘s unusual foray into the pop world brought her a wonderful hit single in 1983, aided by some of-its-time vocal technology and a fine guest appearance by…