Sucks to be You—Prozzäk
#365Songs: Aug 23
Behind every one-hit wonder is a lifetime’s worth of a story.
Sometimes it’s a predictable story. Somebody somewhere wrote a whole bunch of songs. Nothing happened. Then, out of the blue, the stars temporarily aligned in an unexpected moment of serendipity, and one of those songs skyrocketed to an impermanent place of pride on the global cultural landscape.
Sometimes, the success is earned. Chris Isaak was on the road for many long years before “Wicked Game” hit the charts. Not that he was a one-hit wonder in the truest sense of the word, but it was certainly the song that plucked him from obscurity.
One-hit wonders can be a blessing and a curse. For the deserving, it can be a break. Marcy Playground was and is a brilliant band, but I’m not sure they’ve ever really been able to crawl out from under having been the band that wrote “Sex and Candy.” That said, that song paid a lot of bills.
The same might be said for Blind Melon’s “No Rain.” No “No Rain,” no money, no tours, no success. That said, the song was also a bit of a curse, in that it sounded essentially nothing like anything else they ever did. So they ended up trapped.
For Lou Bega, on the other hand, let’s be honest … we were never going to expect more than “Mambo №5.” He’s lucky he had that.
Some one-hit wonders are just stupid. They start out stupid, they stay stupid, and despite someone getting rich off them, they’re forever stupid. Irony can’t save stupid. Neither can superficial fake-feminist millennial repackaging. “Barbie Girl,” I’m looking at you.
When thing get really interesting with a one-hit wonder is when the backstory is genuinely unique. And I think it’s safe to say that the Prozzäk backstory is indeed unique.
Give “Sucks to be You” a listen, and chances are, your first instinct will be to file it away in the “I’m Too Sexy” bin.
But what if I told you that Prozzäk actually lasted for over 20 years?
And what if I told you that they beat Gorillaz to the punch by 3 years for being a “virtual” band?
And what if I told you that their debut album went triple platinum in Canada?
Well, it’s all true. That debut, entitled Hot Show, was one of the highest-selling albums in Canada for something like twenty years. Take that, Rush.
The song is actually genuinely delightful, despite sounding oddly like a sped-up version of OMC’s “How Bizarre”—another special one-hit wonder we might need to revisit!
“Sucks to be You” opens with what is at least arguably a perfect lyric:
I’m a bastard if it’s true
The things she did to me is what I did to you
I’m a bastard if it’s true
And I guess it’s true
Admitting one’s culpability, guilt, and overall bastardliness is no picnic, but to do so openly and honestly, only to be greeted by an agressively helium’d “sucks to be you” is … well, deflating.
One last note. The instrumental section with the Spanish guitar and soul claps is brilliant.
One-hit wonders are “ones” for more reasons than that it was the only hit for an artist. They often also only merit one listen. Not so “Sucks to be You.” I listen to it at least once a year.
It’s just so perfectly Y2k. For a Gen Xer hurtling toward what should have been the digital apocalypse, I think we all knew deep inside it wouldn’t be the end. Somehow we knew there were Musks and Zucks ahead. It did, indeed, suck to be us.
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