Three Tune Friday: One Hit Wonders

When you have been writing about random songs for over six years, you tend to forget which ones have already passed through your HIVE and/or STEEM fingers.

I have done it on several occasions, which to me is unintentionally duplicating content, and for that, I apologise. What you will find the second time around is a rewrite and likely a slightly different approach, but never the same words.

I have a shit memory, a 'feature' of getting older.

I am semi-confident that the following haven't passed HIVE before, though regarding the 'Amber-Simone' one, I somehow have a nagging feeling about it.

One Hit Wonders, are just that; an artist or band springs up, has a big or minor hit and then disappears into oblivion. My take on this is quite different in that said artist may have had many hits, but only a single track resonates with me.

Feel free to tell me otherwise, there may be others that I have not heard by the following acts, but I may disagree.

Amber-Simone – Only You (Single - 2019)

No Wikipedia entry Amber-Simone? It’s unusual for me to pick up on such a recent tune and even more so being a female black R&B artist.

Where did I hear this?, in Amsterdam at the Student Hotel during HiveFest 7, October 2022. I did look back , and don't seem to have mentioned it.

While everyone else was over the road at the Golf, it was only me at the 'other hotel' which played music in the lobby all the time. I heard this one, and thought 'Nile Rogers'.

...'the legendary Nile Rogers, on an almost unknown English based R&B artist song, surely not?;...
Source

That jangly guitar, so reminiscent of Chic from the 1970s and more recently, the catchy 'Daft Punk Feat Pharrell Williams - Get Lucky' was catching my ear. Shazam was out in a second and I had captured the song.

Amber doesn’t seem to be doing much anymore and has faded into the limelight. Trying to find information without a Wikipedia page is hard work and tells me she was never over-popular.

Do you have to be a dinosaur artist to merit one of these? Nile Rogers, I don't think so but that guitarist is doing a fine job and this is a catchy song with just enough melancholy to grab me.

The Brand New Heavies – Sometimes (Shelter - 1997)

This is a band I am not a fan of; it's quite embarrassing to be even connected with them. The name is not positively conducive thinking for one…, it generates an image of a bunch of young fatties prancing about the stage.

'We are Brand New and we have big arses.' - It's about as good a name as 'HIVE' is.

Secondly, my ex who was a fucking psychotic bitch introduced the band to me long ago. '…you have to listen to The Brand New Heavies…', yeah right. At the time I was more interested in Nirvana's 'In Utero', not this boring tedious shite.

'Sometimes' is the best of the bunch, and a song I listen to alone as it’s too embarrassing to share, besides with you lot. Like the last track, it is more R&B but with some Jazz infusion. Not that old type of Jazz bullshit from decades ago, but the newer variant.

If you call 27 years ago, new; this was one of their bigger UK hits, but still failed to crack the top ten. In America, it was almost passed over.

Here's the Guilty Pleasure.

k.d. lang – Constant Craving (Ingénue - 1992)

You tell me... has k.d. lang (intentionally lowercase), been associated with any other song than this? Her discography shows several albums, but nothing else seems to have come out of the woodwork.

1992, is a long time when she came on the scene with this gem. I don't want to knock the young 'k.d. lang', but that hair that short, she reminds me of young Bryan Ferry.

...'you have to admit, there's some similarities in this look..., is daddy Bryan?'...
Source - Source

Is it just me, or does she sport a conscious ‘man’ look?

Coming out as lesbian in 1992 saw several US country stations banning her music, and she faced a picket line outside the 1993 Grammy Awards ceremony where she would receive the Grammy Award for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance. – Source

Who cares, it shows how we have moved on with the times, and possibly explains that short-hair look; she likes to wear the trousers.

The voice is far from masculine and is up there with the finest female vocals I have heard with a perfect vibrato to finish off those long steady unfaltering notes.

'Constant Craving' is one of those on my eternal playlist and did surprisingly badly in the charts of the time. #15, is a a travesty, she and this song deserved more attention.

Guitar Image - Source
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