One Hit Wonder? According to Who?
And since when did Black folk buy into it?
It had to be October or November of 1984. Intramural “soccer” was over and I decided against playing basketball to take computer classes instead; learning BASIC & COBALT and the like. Either Richie Mendoza or Kenny (who’s last name I can never remember) insisted that I listen to this song.
“Ya’ll want this party started right? Ya’ll want this party started — quickly.”
Song was 9 minutes and some change and unlike anything I had ever heard. It fit in no category. It became like our theme music. The title alone, “Set it Off” would have been enough but like I said, “Set it Off” was like nothing that I ever heard.
Of course there’s an air of mystery to who exactly is responsible for the song. Strafe is said to have played every instrument as well as handling singing duties, yet the president of Jus Born, George Logios is given production credits. Add to that the fact that Walter Gibbons is said to have mixed it, we’re left with many uncertainties.
But what is certain is: the song was recorded, 1,000 albums were pressed and sold out of George Logios trunk, DJs played it to death, and 32 years later, you can still hear “Set it Off” played on mainstream radio and at dance parties and clubs.
Strafe went on to record other songs, none of which I know, and recently has made a comeback of sorts — Al Hamdulilah to all of that. In modern parlance, Strafe is a “one-hit wonder” but we never used to look at it like that.
Now, fans become upset if an artist makes a hit and doesn’t have seven follow up albums in the wings.
What happened? What is the origin of the “one-hit wonder?” Who is categorized as such and when did Black people start to care?
When you’re bored, Google: “One-Hit Wonders.” You will be totally shocked to see some of the names on the list. Funkadelic appears with their one hit being cited as “One Nation Under a Groove.” But you already know where I stand on them, as per my “Beatles…Stones — Eat Crow…” piece.
I was blown away to find the S.O.S Band on the list with “Take Your Time (Do it Right)” as their “hit.” Whether you’re a fan of the S.O.S. Band or not is of no consequence. A walk through their discography would give you reason to pause. S.O.S. Band had (in chronological order) “Tell Me if You Still Care,” “Just Be Good to Me,” “No One’s Gonna Love You,” “Weekend Girl,” “Sands of Time,” and “The Finest”…to name a few.
What then is this “one-hit wonder” philosophy based on? We’ll get to that in a second, first — a flashback.
“Double Dutch Bus,” “She’s a Bad Mamma Jamma,” “So Fine,” are all songs that came out around 81–82 — all of which still get spins at the family cookout.
A good song was a good song. Although a song may have been attached to an album like Junior’s “Mama Used to Say,” the single was often enough to etch the artist in our collective memory forever.
It was the rare bird who purchased a non-event album — event album being any album from the huge artist of the day — Michael Jackson, Prince, Rick James, Maze featuring Frankie Beverly, Lionel Richie — them types.
Whether the artist had a good A&R who knew how to pick a song that would connect with the masses or the artist received an album deal based on their hit single, an album wasn’t expected. I know for a fact that my mom bought entire albums for the hits, never listening to deeper album cuts.
The reality is, the concept of the album as a work of art or something more than a compilation of hit singles is a modern concept.
Ask the average so-called Bob Marley fan what their favorite Marley songs are and they’ll likely run them off in this order: “Is This Love,” “No Woman, No Cry,” “Could You Be Loved,” I generally cut them off before they say, “Three Little Birds.” Most people are not fans of Bob Marley…they’re fans of the compilation album, Legend. Released in 1984, Legend is the #1 selling reggae album of all-time with over 15 million sold in the U.S. alone.
Legend was a throwback to the content of the original LP (long-play album). The album contains ten of Bob Marley’s Top 40 singles which is what most LPs used to do. A look into most artist’s discography prior to the 1960s will reveal their first album, more often than not, is an LP that covered hits from a time period of one (like Bob Marley and The Wailers first album, The Wailing Wailers) to two years (like James Brown’s Please, Please, Please LP).
Most Blues and Jump Blues artists rarely released albums. And that’s not just the so-called “one-hit wonders” either. Muddy Waters had been recording for over ten years before Chess released an LP of his music. Louis Jordan released his first, Somebody Up There Digs Me, sixteen years after his first hit and H-Bomb Ferguson never had an LP (until a compilation was made in the 80s).
The sole purpose of an LP was to put all the hits in one place for the consumer.
Yes. I’m a Beatles fan. But not a true, die-hard one. My love of the Beatles starts with Rubber Soul, the first album that they consciously made as one cohesive piece of work. The albums title unto itself was a departure from the typical album titles of the day.
I think the title ‘Rubber Soul’ came from a comment an old blues guy had said of Jagger. I’d just read about an old bloke in the States who said, ‘Mick Jagger, man. Well you know they’re good — but it’s plastic soul.’ So ‘plastic soul’ was the germ of the ‘Rubber Soul’ idea. Paul McCartney
According to Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys-fame, this is what inspired him to make Pet Sounds, the Beach Boys opus (which I still don’t quite get…), and from 66 on, rock artists began focusing on making songs that contributed to a concept or theme and that became the album.
Although many Motown artists were inspired by the concept album, Berry Gordy, concerned about his acts destroying the goodwill that they had built with the people, was reluctant to allow his artist to go out on that limb. The first group he gave that freedom was The Temptations with Cloud Nine, their first foray into psychedelic soul. Released in 1969, it was a mild success. But nothing could prepare Gordy or anyone for what would happen when he let the reigns off of Marvin Gaye.
Marvin Gaye was frustrated from being put in the box from the get. He had signed with Motown in 1961 and for the next ten years was troubled. Acting as a producer wasn’t enough. Singing the clean-cut songs that he was required to sing wasn’t enough.
Marvin Gaye felt he wanted to write something that connected with the conditions of the people and the end result was “What’s Goin’ On.” Again, Berry Gordy was reluctant to release the song until Harry Balk & Barney Ales insisted on pressing up 100,000 copies of the single and taking it to various radio stations. That 100,000 quickly sold out. Another 100,000 was pressed until 200,000 turned into 2.5 million units sold — the fastest selling Motown single ever up until that point.
What follows is the example of the single’s success driving the album. Gordy ordered up an album from Gaye to capitalize off “What’s Going On” and Marvin Gaye delivered…in a month. The songs were recorded in March, the mix completed in April, and the album was released in May of 1971. What’s Going On the album would stay on Billboards Top 200 for a year and sell over 2 million copies.
Stevie Wonder took that model and ran with it releasing an array of hit albums from 1972 to 1976, culminating with the triple album, grand daddy of them all, Songs in the Key of Life, which debuted at number 1 in September of 1976 where it remained for three months. That bad boy sold 10 million albums.
But as we discussed in, “Just Don’t Call it Disco,” the world was changing yet again and the music industry was enamored with the single once more. This is the world I grew up in.
It’s amazing how in this new, so-called post-racial global society, so many people fail to acknowledge how segregated the music world was in the 80s and early to mid 90s.
We had groups like One Way, Lakeside, Maze featuring Frankie Beverly, Zapp, The Gap Band, Timex Social Club, Club Nouveau etc. — groups that never “crossed over,” groups that made hit after hit that were celebrated in the Black community but went practically unknown to white America.
And we had songs from artists that may have only had one hit…may have only released one single, but we were okay with that. (Look, if Allen Anthony never released another song after “Alright,” I would still thank Allah for his musical existence.)
Once Black music became big business and the dollar signs started racking up, not only did the way whites judge our music change, the way we looked at music became their way and that way is: did it chart on Billboard, how many units did it move, and most importantly, did it grow out of the “urban market” to the “mainstream?”
At the most, we looked at the Jet Top 20 Albums and Top 20 Singles to see how something charted, but we didn’t need a magazine to tell us that “More Bounce to the Ounce” was a hit…every car driving by, and every house playing it on Saturday morning told us that. We certainly didn’t need Wayne Jancik to write a book and tell us who is or who isn’t a “one-hit” wonder.
I can think of few songs that stick out in my head like “Set it Off.” Maybe it’s the pure WTF-ness of this Brooklyn dude who toured with Shannon…(“Let The Music Play” — in case you ain’t know white people)…or perhaps it was because there was nothing but that song…or maybe it was just how endearing the song is; the hand claps, the whistles, the length. Who knows.
All I know is, if someone says that Strafe is a “one-hit wonder” I’m liable to lose my shit. When did Black folk start thinking like that?
