ARBITRARY LISTS: The Top 10 Absolute Worst One Hit Wonders...EVER

You know the phrase “so bad, it’s good”? Yeah…that doesn’t apply to any of these songs. Sometimes there are one hit wonders you would think have another hit in them somewhere, but with these guys it’s pretty easy to see why they were such failures after their hit. Frankly, the fact that some of these even charted is enough to suggest that the human race is, in fact, a failing species. These are unscientifically non-proven to be the absolute worst one hit wonders in the history of both the UK chart and the Billboard chart in the USA of America.

There is some criteria, though: no novelty songs. If you’re wondering why Teletubbies and Disco Duck don’t appear, it’s because these are songs are by people actually trying to make a good record and failing, rather than trying to make a fast buck with a lame dance craze or cash-in on a popular ring tone (Crazy Frog has no place on ANY music-based countdown of any kind, thank you very much).

Brace yourself…it’s going to be a bumpy ride…

10. Afternoon Delight (Starland Vocal Band) [1976]

UK #18/US #1



One of the few songs ever written with no redeeming qualities whichsoever. What’s even more striking is the subject of the song. It’s about sex? Look at these people. I’m surprised they’ve even heard of sex. Apparently, they were relatively popular at the time in the US. They even had their own TV show. They didn’t have another real hit though. Thank Zeus.

9. Boom Boom (Let‘s Go Back To My Room) (Paul Lekakis) [1987]

UK #60/US #43



The lowest charter on the list, and coming over a decade before popular 90s Village People variant Vengaboys managed to figure out that “boom” rhymed with “room”, the HI NRG scene tossed out this. Like most dance music, it’s difficult to imagine actively listening to this in any other context other than it’s intended venue. In the case of most HI NRG, that means gay clubs in the 1980s. One look at Lekakis’ bare oily chest, tight white pants and thrusting pelvis tells you that they got that stereotype down to a T, to be fair. Electronic dance music in general is often quite hollow for me, so that alone means this is unlikely to appeal to me. But, of all the HI NRG stuff I’ve heard (which is probably more than I’d care to admit to), this one is particularly mind numbing.

8. How Bizarre (OMC) [1995]

UK #5/US #4



New Zealand has never really been a hotbed of musical activity. Split Enz, Crowded House and Lorde are the only major-ish New Zealand acts I can think of. I guess at a push you could say Flight of the Conchords. Unfortunately, this is the biggest hit in the history of New Zealand. Late front man Paul Fuemana looks and sounds completely disinterested throughout, doing this weird talk-singing thing that isn’t quite rapping, but seems to be what he’s aiming for. The 90s were a big decade for slightly novelty peppy songs that tried to mix traditional music from other cultures with pop stylings in an attempt to get a big summer hit (Sex on the Beach, anyone?), but How Bizarre is on another level of earworm. And, to be fair, I have no idea what's going on lyrically, so I guess the title is apt.

7. I’ve Never Been To Me (Charlene) [1977/charted 1982]

UK #1/US #3



In the 1960’s and early 1970’s, Motown was arguably the greatest record label in the world. Things had gone somewhat awry by the 80s. DeBarge were hardly The Temptations, I Just Called To Say I Love You was hardly Signed, Sealed, Delivered I’m Yours and this was probably the worst thing the label ever put out. And we were nearly saved. It was first released in 1977 and sank without a trace, but became a big hit in 1982. The universe was conspiring against us.

6. Bad Day (Daniel Powter) [2006]

UK #2/US #1



A horrible, saccharine adult contemporary piece of nothing that people who don’t like music think is a deep, powerfully emotional song. It makes me feel actually sick. ACTUALLY SICK. Ironically, there have been times when I’ve been having a good day until I hear this song and my day is positively ruined.

5. Party All The Time (Eddie Murphy) [1985]

UK #87/US #2



Yes, THAT Eddie Murphy. Murphy had a history of doing impressions of James Brown in his notoriously raunchy stand up act. And he was pretty good. You could imagine him making some decent funk records. You’d think if Eddie Murphy was going to make a record with Rick James, it would be down and dirty. Instead, we got Party All The Time, a song where Murphy sounds weedier than he does in those awful family films he makes, and complains that his girl just wants to party all the time. Let me re-iterate this: Rick James and Eddie Murphy wrote a song complaining that their girl parties too much. Rick James. Eddie Murphy. Outside of the dreadful use of the word “party” as a verb, that just doesn’t chime with either of their images. Plus the song is just generic 80s semi-funk that makes Michael Jackson sound like George Clinton. I particularly like Rick James in the video. He has a look on his face that suggests that this is jammin’. It isn’t.

4. Achy Breaky Heart (Billy Ray Cyrus) [1992]

US #4/UK #3



It’s rare that anyone is responsible for anything so annoying, even rarer that they are responsible for two things so annoying. So, for all the cringing you might direct at Miley Cyrus, it is nothing compared to her daddy’s hit Achy Breaky Heart. Let’s even forget that “breaky” isn’t a word. Here is my charge: this is a novelty song masquerading as country music. This is now what we are accustomed to thinking of when we think of country music; barely talented hunky red neck mancakes, bad line dancing, awful lyrics, catchy in a way that good songs never seem to be. BAH! Oh, Johnny Cash - why did you leave us?

3. Just a Friend (Biz Markie) [1989]

UK unkown/US #9



Biz Markie, the Clown Prince of Hip Hop, is one of the most bizarre musical figures that could spring to mind. He just does everything wrong. He looks awkward. He sings like he’s so constipated that he‘s actually in pain. His rapping lacks any flow and his rhymes are just…weird. His faux piano playing is ridiculous. And yet there is something weirdly loveable about him. To be honest, I find this a lot more appealing than Lil’ Wayne constantly using faecal matter as a metaphor (seriously, what’s that about?). I guess Biz is the Tommy Wiseau of rap, and this song is a hip hop equivalent of The Room. Oh, snap!

Trivia: that's actually Mozart. Who'd have thunk?

2. Fuck It (I Don’t Want You Back) (Eamon) [2003]

UK #1/US #16



In the USA of America, they often ask the question; “where were you when Kennedy was shot?” Everybody remembers where they were when they heard the news, such a powerfully disturbing moment it was. I had a similar experience the first time I heard this. I was in the kitchen, and heard Eamon’s whiney, tuneless voice barking heavily edited nonsense and knew, just knew, that this was a new low for popular entertainment. There is a slight doo-wop feel to it, and the legendary Ellie Greenwich and Jeff Barry are listed as songwriters on the track (I assume for a sample, but for the life of me I can’t place it).

Oh, and you may recall the “answer song”, by the supposed ex that Eamon didn’t want back? Yeah, that definitely wasn’t a cynical marketing ploy at all, was it?



1. Float On (The Floaters) [1977]

UK #1/US #2



Modest Mouse have an excellent song called Float On. Sadly, it has nothing to do with this. It sounds like a parody, but apparently it is not. The Floaters (yes, that is actually the name of the group…The Floaters…I’ll leave you to make the obvious joke yourself) were a 70s make vocal group. And this is there only hit. #2 in the US and, embarrassingly, #1 in the UK. “What makes it so bad?”, I hear you ask, metaphorically, in my head. Well…

There is very little singing in this. There are no instrumental breaks. It attempts to be a seductive, Marvin Gaye-type ballad. It doesn’t quite reach those heights. Hell, Barry White is more seductive than this. Each member of The Floaters (*guffaw*, I mean, really? Did they not even think about that?) introduces themselves by stating their star sign. I’d heard that “what’s your star sign?“ was a cliché of bad pick-up artists, but I didn’t think anyone actually used it.

Thing is, it doesn’t work all that badly (well, it IS bad, but not as bad as you might think). I mean, “Sagittarius” is quite a nice word. So is "Libra". Sadly, the final member of The Floaters to introduce himself, the surprisingly boisterous “Larry”, was born between June 22nd and July 22nd. This makes him a “Cancer”. So, in the middle of this seductive music, you have a weird voice yell out “Cancer! And my name is Larry!”

How the hell was this ever a hit? It has nothing at all going for it. You can't get frisky to it, as intended, because the group is called THE FLOATERS, and a man yells out "CANCER".

RockDocs: The Nation's Favourite Motown Song

There are many pointless things in this world; flies, Police Academy movies, Bryan Adams etc. But none of them really match the sheer desperation of ITV. Everything about it just pisses me off, especially the way they shoe-in references to the rest of their schedule with the most offensively obvious propaganda since Triumph of the Will. I’m not comparing ITV to the Nazis (well, maybe I am a little), but I do have to make this clear right now: I don’t like ITV. I never have. I never will. Loose Women can fuck off. Simon Cowell can fuck off. Piers Morgan can fuck off, come back, and then fuck off again, but HARDER.

Their music programming irks me like no other. They did a special on Elvis last year where they spent more time talking to Gareth Gates about covering Suspicious Minds than they did talking about Suspicious Minds. Lest we forget, Gareth Gates began life on ITV’s own Pop Idol. Not that I’m suggesting that this is why they gave him so much airtime. Except that I am. I am, I am, I am, I am. There! I said it.

So, it was with great trepidation that I approached The Nation’s Favourite Motown Song, the Motown version of The Nation’s Favourite Elvis Song that we sat through last year. Which, in itself, was the Elvis version of The Nation’s Favourite Bee Gees/Abba/Christmas/Dance/[insert whatever in here] Song. Like Elvis and the others, a tie-in album has been released, which essentially makes this whole special one massive advert for the album. But…surprisingly…after bitching about it at length here it wasn’t that bad. In fact it was quite – gulp! – entertaining.

Don’t get me wrong. It wasn’t perfect. In the grand tradition of ITV “documentaries”, it wasn’t aimed at fans of the subject. It was aimed at people who think Motown is a style of music rather than a label and that Motown includes The Drifters and Aretha Franklin. It was very much for the ITV audience so if you’re looking to learn something new here, you’re in the wrong place. And, once again, there were some very confusing interview subjects; Michael Bolton? Boyzone? Like, actually, why? Does anyone really care what Ronan Keating thinks about…well…anything? John Newman clearly had the knowledge of a spatula. When was the last time Suzi Quatro was famous? And I found it especially ironic that Pete Waterman was interviewed for the special. If there’s one guy who was able to take Berry Gordy’s theory for making music, but miss the point entirely, it’s Peter Alan Waterman, OBE. But, overall, it was a vast improvement over what they have had in the past.

After narrations from Liza Tarbuck, Rufus Hound, Kate Thornton and The Nation’s Favourite Simpleton (Fearne Cotton), this time around they went for Craig Charles, who is at least a noted Motown fan. His enthusiasm shone through, making it much easier to get caught up in the whole thing. Not that it would be particularly difficult. The music of Motown hits you in a place like no other.

The songs picked were pretty obvious choices for the most part, and I question some of the positions. The Tracks of My Tears at #13? It’s one of the Top 5 songs ever written! And that’s a non-proven unfact! Diana Ross’ version of Ain’t No Mountain High Enough and not Marvin and Tammi’s? What the hell is wrong with you, Britain?

In any case, here’s the unabridged Top 20, you should buy the album if you think Aretha Franklin is Motown. If not, you probably already have them all anyway.

20. Jimmy Mack (Martha & The Vandellas)



19. Uptight (Stevie Wonder)



18. Papa Was a Rolling Stone (The Temptations)



17. What’s Going On? (Marvin Gaye)



16. My Cherie Amour (Stevie Wonder)



15. I Can’t Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch) (The Four Tops)



14. My Guy (Mary Wells)



13. The Tracks Of My Tears (Smokey Robinson & The Miracles)



12. Reach Out, I’ll Be There (The Four Tops)



11. I Want You Back (Jackson 5)



10. Stop! In The Name of Love (The Supremes)



9. War (Edwin Starr)



8. Baby Love (The Supremes)



7. I’ll Be There (Jackson 5)



6. The Tears of a Clown (Smokey Robinson & The Miracles)



5. My Girl (The Temptations)



4. Dancing In The Street (Martha & The Vandellas)



3. Ain’t No Mountain High Enough (Diana Ross)



2. What Becomes of the Broken Hearted? (Jimmy Ruffin)



1. I Heard It Through The Grapevine (Marvin Gaye)




And finally, just to prove that ITV used to do music programming right, this is the legendary Ready Steady Go! Motown special from 1965 that basically introduced the UK to The Sound of Young America, introduced by Dusty Springfield and featuring The Temptations, Smokey & The Miracles, The Supremes, Martha & The Vandellas, Little Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye tagged onto the end from a different edition (also…for some reason, this video is out of sequence…but still…)

Rumour Mill: The (Potential) Return of Pink Floyd

I update rather infrequently here, and it’s not like I do this for my massive readership (because I really would be a delusional megalomaniac if that was the case). I do it because occasionally, just once in a while, something comes along that I just feel the need to write about. And last night rumours started circulating that perked my interest, and I haven’t been able to shake them; the return of Pink Floyd.

Sort of.

The unofficial announcement comes from the twitter feed of Polly Samson, the wife of one David Gilmour. She claimed that a new Pink Floyd album, titled The Endless River, will be out in October. Now, Samson’s twitter feed is unverified, so we can’t DEFINITELY say it’s her. However, she does appear to have some family-looking pictures of Mr Gilmour with a rather hideous beard, and has re-tweeted adopted son and sometime war memorial destroyer Charlie Gilmour. And long time Floyd backing vocalist Durga McBroom (which, as a name, always made me smile as a kid) confirmed that she had worked on some Floyd material as recently as last December...

The recording did start during The Division Bell sessions (and yes, it was the side project originally titled The Big Spliff that Nick Mason spoke about), which is why there are Richard Wright tracks on it. But David and Nick have gone in and done a lot more since then. It was originally to be a completely instrumental recording, but I came in last December and sang on a few tracks. David then expanded on my backing vocals and has done a lead on at least one of them.

Basically, what’s being touted here is an album made up of outtakes from the sessions of their last album, 1994’s The Division Bell. That might not sound too promising, but there’s been plenty of examples of that practice being successful in the past; Michael Jackson’s current posthumous release Xscape is miles better than the last couple of albums he actually made himself, Van Halen’s comeback with David Lee Roth in 2012 was the same kind of affair and was the best thing either of them had done for years. George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass is by far the best Beatles solo album, and yet it was made up almost entirely of songs that he wrote for The Beatles that didn’t get used because of the wealth of Lennon/McCartney material.



Slight difference, of course, is that all of Van Halen’s albums with David Lee Roth, and all of The Beatles’ latter albums, and most of the albums Michael Jackson made when he recorded the songs used on Xscape were…erm…better than The Division Bell. Don’t get me wrong; it’s OK. It’s better than their previous effort, A Momentary Lapse of Reason, but nowhere in the league of what the Floyd were capable of in the past. So…material not good enough for an album that was just OK? Not exactly promising.



Another thing to bear in mind here is that, given the timescale, it’s not really going to be all of Pink Floyd. Roger Waters, the creative force behind the band’s greatest years, left in 1983. Rather bitterly. So, any material recorded in 1994 will obviously not include him, and the likelihood is he won’t have returned to the fold to finish this material, because…oh, let’s not get into it. But, needless to say, it won’t have happened. Furthermore, keyboard player Rick Wright died in 2008. So, any re-recording or updates won’t include him either. Which leaves Gilmour and Nick Mason. Given Gilmour’s dominance of Floyd’s later years, it’s starting to sound more like a David Gilmour solo album.

So - the likelihood? Well, a 20th anniversary box set edition of The Division Bell came out a few weeks ago. Which struck me as odd from the get go, because I wouldn’t have considered the album critically or commercially successful enough to warrant anniversary box set treatment. But, it is plausible that when going through the tapes, Gilmour and Mason found this material and started working on it. Although, I am surprised that Gilmour is wanting to work on another Floyd project after years of refusing to do so.

As for promotion, I can’t see a tour. Once again, Gilmour’s reluctance to reform and tour Pink Floyd in the past is a signifier here. Plus, he had to be goaded into playing for 20 minutes at Live 8 in 2005 (which, to be frank, was a nice close to the Floyd legacy anyway). In addition, I can’t see a tour going down as well with fans as you may think either. With Wright now gone and, with this being a Gilmour-led project, likely no Waters, it would essentially be a Gilmour solo tour with Mason on drums. And though that’s as many original members as The Who tour with, it was also the same number of original members of Pink Floyd on stage as Gilmour’s last solo tour in 2006.

But, I guess time will tell. Post-Bowie, there have been a bunch of unexpected album drops, so who really knows? Guess all will be revealed soon.