12 posts
One Hit Wonders
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…
One Hit Wonders: Cock Robin – The Promise You Made
There’s something endearingly sedate and conformist about Cock Robin’s only UK hit, which made the Top 30 in 1986. The vocals from Peter Kingsbery and Anna LaCazio are very precise…
One Hit Wonders: Sly Fox – Let’s Go All The Way
The title of American vocal twosome Sly Fox’s only hit has an obvious sexual connotation, but there was much more to this bombastic, macho single of 1986 than that. Gary…
One Hit Wonders: Susan Fassbender – Twilight Cafe
Twilight Cafe is a genuine lost gem of the 1980s, co-written and performed by a bespectacled Yorkshirewoman who vanished as quickly as she arrived. Susan Fassbender was only 21 when…
One Hit Wonders: Althea & Donna – Uptown Top Ranking
There are one-hit wonders, and then there are No. 1-hit wonders – and Althea & Donna are in that very rarefied latter category. Jamaican singers Althea Forrest and Donna Reid…
One Hit Wonders: The Normal – Warm Leatherette (1978)
The Normal was, of course, the alias of Mute Records founder Daniel Miller. Their sole single nominally featured TVOD as its A-side, but it was the blank robotic chill of…
One Hit Wonders: Timbuk3 – The Future’s So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades
Husband and wife duo Timbuk3’s 1986 debut single The Future’s So Bright… is something of a pop anomaly (with an equally oddball part-animated video). What right did a twanging Fifties…