1991 - ONE YEAR WONDERS

I figured we might as well continue our look at 1991; arguably the best year for music in a generation. Today I wanted to look at One Hit Wonders. Now, I was talking to Koz the other day about Jesus Jones, and he started crying like a Frenchman, about how they had some second album that he would listen to while he knitted or something. So, let me redefine. Let’s call them One Year Wonders. This seems like a better term. They may have had one or even two more hits (although you only remember one now), and sure they had other albums, but no one other than Koz actually bought them, right?

Another Note: while I did the albums pretty much on memory, I looked up the songs, and found over 45 legitimate one year wonders. I narrowed it down to 20, but couldn’t go lower than that.

THE TOP 20 ONE YEAR WONDERS

#20 Cathy Dennis (Touch Me (All Night Long)) – Make your own choice. I kinda like the top left one.

#19 Divinyls (I Touch Myself) – Madonna basically ruined an entire generation of female singers. Admit it, though; you’re humming that song in your head right now.

#18 London Beat (I’ve Been Thinking about You) – Sounds romantic, but it’s hard to do in 2/4 cut time.

#17 Heavy D and the Boyz (Now That We’ve Found Love) – My best memory of this song was when we got caught playing it during Sunday School and I convinced our teacher (this real tool named Jack who looked like the Greatest American Hero) that it was really “Now that we’ve found GOD….” Good Times.

#16 Stevie B. (Because I love You) – One of the two great songs you could always get girls to slow dance on.

#15 Color me Badd (I Wanna Sex You Up and I Adore Mi Amore) – I own this CD. I should do a top ten list of most embarrassing CDs you’ve ever owned. Sadly, I don’t know if they would even make the top ten.

#14 The KLF (3 AM Eternal) – I don’t know much about KLF, except I know that they will rock you. (This, according to KLF)

#13 C+C Music Factory (Gonna Make You Sweat, Here We Go and Things that Make You Go Hmm……) – These dudes virtually owned dance music for that year.

#12 Gerardo (Rico Suave) – I know what you’re thinking; how can he not make the top ten? I know, but it’s that good. Gerardo is nothing to sneeze at, though. This song had more sex than Ricky Martin could dream of, and just oozed all over you, in that sultry Latin way.

#11 Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch (Good Vibrations) – Who wants to strip down to their Calvins and dance around? Hard to believe they wouldn’t let him in NKOTB. Who woulda thunk this guy’d go on to be the much bigger star?

Up next: 10-1. A list so freaking good, you’re going to have no choice but to make a mix CD after you read it.