One-Hit-Wonder Wednesday’s: The 80s

Join 96-7 The River every Wednesday night for 'One-Hit Wonder Wednesday' on The Night Shift with Craig Allen. Craig spotlights one-hit wonders and gives you some interesting little nuggets about those songs.

Tonight's Spotlight: One-Hit Wonders from the 1980s featuring:

• BIG COUNTRY - "In A Big Country"
• KAJAGOOGOO - "Too Shy"
• TUBES - "She's A Beauty"
• FRIDA - "I Know There's Something Going On
• PATRICK SWAYZE - "She's Like The Wind"

I think one-hit wonders get a bad rap sometimes. If you’re a one-hit-wonder song from 30ish years ago and that song is still getting radio play, you’re still getting paid for that song. That's assuming you songwriting credits, of course.

I’d rather have a one-hit-wonder that still gets played 30 or 40 years later than to have three or four hits during the time you were popular, and not have your songs ever get played again.

I have a friend who is part of a group that had one hit. I’m not going to say who it is, but I will just say that it’s a song from the early 90s that sounded a lot like Prince but was not a Prince song. And that’s all I’m a say about that.

Anyway, this friend, who was the primary writer of the song, made pretty good money off that song for many years. You don’t hear that song quite as much in the last 10 -15 years or so. But the point is you can still make a decent chunk of change if you’re a one-hit-wonder artist. So next time you hear somebody mocking one-hit-wonder song and/or that artist, you tell him that somebody is still getting paid.