The Best Of is a project born of many happy hours in pubs and on walks spent dreaming up greatest hits album titles by artists who are known for one huge, beloved song that outshines all the others in their catalogue.
Call them one-hit wonders, call them signature songs, there’s a story and an artist behind every one. We think they deserve a little more love. Words by Chris Price, pictures by Mike Smith. Enjoy!
“You have so many relationships in this life, only one or two will last,” goes the unexpectedly sombre opening line of 1997’s bouncy and inescapable teen smash MMMBop. “You go through all the pain and strife, then you turn your back and they’re gone so fast.” In a post-grunge, post-Cobain era, maybe the world needed its existential angst repackaged in the form of saccharine-sweet plaid-clad doo-wop. Taylor Hanson even looked like a young Kurt.
For a one-hit wonder, Trevor Horn has had an awful lot of hits. One half of late 70’s new wave studio band The Buggles, Horn might be the only artist in our series who was actually trying to have just one hit – after all, he only needed one. As he told the Independent in 2004, the aspiring producer was in a catch-22: “I couldn’t have a hit without a decent artist, and I couldn’t work with any decent artists without having had a hit.”So he took matters into his own hands.
The list of break-up duets is, as you might expect, pretty short. Break-up songs? Ten a penny. Duets? Where to start! But break-up duets? Not so many. Don’t You Want Me by The Human League; Broken Strings by James Morrison & Nelly Furtado; Fairytale of New York at a push. But the break-up duet to end all break-up duets? Somebody That I Used To Know by Gotye featuring Kimbra.
