The One After the One-Hit Wonder, Part 2

Very few recording artists are ever lucky enough to land a hit single on the Hot 100 — and fewer still have managed to pull it off more than once. They're often the target of derision, but there's really no shame in being a one-hit wonder; with that in mind, here's another round of looking back at follow-up singles that ended an act's chart streak before it really even had a chance to get started.

"Scales of Justice," Living in a Box
They're mostly forgotten now, but Living in a Box scored a Top 20 hit with the leadoff single ("Living in a Box") from their 1987 debut album (Living in a Box). After pulling off this impressively repetitive feat, they probably really had nowhere to go but down, which they did with a quickness; their next single, "Scales of Justice," hovered in the middle of some European charts, but didn't even crack the Hot 100 in the States. This continued with their second and final LP, 1989's Gatecrashing, which sold well overseas but was roundly ignored here, and they broke up the following year. But the story doesn't end there: Like virtually every other band that had even a minor hit in the '80s, Living in a Box has since reunited, albeit without original singer Richard Darbyshire.

Like "Living in a Box," "Scales of Justice" is a synth-fueled nugget of northern soul that isn't without its plasticine charms, but wasn't memorable enough to stand out from the growing glut of similar-sounding stuff around the time of its release. Still, if you're looking for something to slap on an '80s deep cuts playlist, you could definitely do worse.

"Shimmer," Shawn Mullins
"Everything is gonna be all right," Shawn Mullins crooned in the chorus of his debut major-label single and sole Top 10 hit, 1998's "Lullaby." That's turned out to be true for him — he continues to tour and record — but "Lullaby" had the unmistakeable whiff of a left-field, impossible-to-reproduce hit even when it was in heavy rotation. Can't blame a guy for trying, though, and with "Shimmer," you can almost hear the folks at Columbia Records saying "Here's another one with a programmed beat and talk-singing on the verses. What the hell, let's see what happens."

So what happened? Well, "Shimmer" failed to break the Hot 100 despite being featured in Dawson's Creek, although it went Top 5 on the AAA chart — which would be basically the story of Mullins' next decade as a recording artist, a span that saw him rack up four more hits within the format while he continued to be roundly ignored by Top 40 programmers. Still, no matter how many albums he puts out, he'll always be best known for "Lullaby" and his Soul's Core LP — something he tacitly acknowledged with his most recent release, 2018's Soul's Core Revival, which revisits and reworks songs from that record.

"Amnesia," Chumbawamba
It's perhaps a bit unfair to include Chumbawamba in a post like this, given that they never really seemed to care about hits and they always came across as more of an anarchist collective than a band. But regardless of their goals, it remains remarkable that a worldwide smash like "Tubthumping" led to absolutely zero subsequent charting singles, at least outside their native UK; that song was so huge that it'd be more than reasonable to assume their next release would gain at least a little bit of traction.

"Amnesia" wasn't a bad pick for a follow-up, either — it isn't as undeniable as "Tubthumping," but few songs are, and it's solidly in line with the Top 40 pop sound of its era. Maybe DJs were just tired of saying "Chumbawamba"?

"Melt in Your Mouth," Candyman
The first (but by no means the last) hip-hop hit to make heavy use of Rose Royce's "Ooh Boy," Candyman's 1990 debut single "Knockin' Boots" topped the rap chart and went to No. 9 on the Hot 100 by following the crossover formula of the day — take a well-known groove, interpolate rap lyrics into it, and keep things juuuuuust family-friendly enough to squeak by. "Knockin' Boots" remains a lot of fun nearly 35 years later, but it became pretty clear pretty quickly that as an artist, Candyman didn't necessarily have a lot of colors in his palette; follow-up single "Melt in Your Mouth" repeats not only the formula, revolving around the Spinners' "Could It Be I'm Falling in Love," but hangs its hook on a lyric he used in his breakout hit.

"Melt" puddled at No. 69 on the Hot 100 (nice), and represented the last time radio really bothered with Candyman on any format, but he continued to release new material at an impressive clip: His second album, Playtime's Over, arrived nine months after his debut LP, and that was followed by 1993's I Thought U Knew and 1995's Phukk Watcha Goin' Thru. That record marked the first (but by no means the last) time Candyman attempted to pique prospective buyers' interest by returning to his signature hit, recording "Knockin' Boots Pt. 2." Undaunted by that gambit's failure, he returned six years later with Knockin' Boots 2001: A Sex Odyssey. That remains his most recent collection of new material, but with the 25th anniversary of "Knockin' Boots" right around the corner, hope springs eternal for yet another sequel.

"I Got a Girl," Lou Bega
After topping charts around the world with "Mambo No. 5," a song about the numerous women in his life, Lou Bega returned with... "I Got a Girl," another uptempo number counting off his many girlfriends. The afterburners from "Mambo" were still strong enough to send its follow-up into heavy rotation throughout Europe, but American stations wanted absolutely nothing to do with it, and it never appeared on the Hot 100. Bega's next single, "Tricky, Tricky," made it as far as No. 74, but by the time he came back again with "Mambo Mambo," the bloom had well and truly worn off the rose.

We can at least credit Bega with persistence; although he's been a commercial nonentity outside Germany for well over a decade, he has continued to release new material on a regular basis, amassing a discography that includes 2013's horrifyingly titled A Little Bit of '80s, otherwise known as the album that answers the question "What would it sound like if the 'Mambo No. 5' guy covered 'Karma Chameleon,' 'Physical,' 'Come On Eileen,' and 'Smooth Operator'?"

In comparison, "I Got a Girl" is downright charming.

"She's Gone," Steelheart
Released during the dying days of dominance for hair metal power ballads, Steelheart's "I'll Never Let You Go" peaked at No. 23 on the Hot 100 in 1991, fueled by the preposterously high upper limit of frontman Miljenko Matijevic's vocal range as well as his knack for striking dramatic poses in the band's videos. Having hit paydirt with one love song, the label decided to go all in and see if Steelheart could pull it off twice; the answer, somewhat predictably, was a resounding "nope."

Although "She's Gone" generated a bit of interest from PDs, peaking at No. 59, it's a far less distinctive song than "I'll Never Let You Go," and by the time the band returned in 1992 with their sophomore LP, Tangled in Reins, there was no room for them at pop or rock radio. (There was also the small matter of Matijevic getting crushed by a lighting rig during a show, which set them back even further, but he's feeling much better now, as evidenced by their 2018 live album Rock'N Milan.)

"A Girl I Used to Know," Danny Wilson
Perhaps the most interesting thing about Danny Wilson is that it's the name of a band, not a solo artist — and that no one named Danny Wilson was ever in the lineup. The Scottish sophisti-pop trio initially performed as Spencer Tracy, but were forced to change their name at the last minute and opted to go with the title character from the Frank Sinatra film Meet Danny Wilson.

Reception for their debut LP, 1987's Meet Danny Wilson, was initially promising — at least in the States, where leadoff single "Mary's Prayer" went to No. 23 after flopping in the UK. A reissue campaign eventually sent the song to No. 3 on the British charts, but the band quickly lost its commercial momentum; although they eked out another Top 40 hit in the UK with "The Second Summer of Love," from 1989's Bebop Moptop, the majority of their follow-up singles failed to catch on anywhere, and they never charted in America again.

Danny Wilson proved to be short-lived, but bassist Ged Grimes went on to stints in Ocean Blue and Simple Minds, and frontman Gary Clark has written and produced for a shitload of other artists. As for "A Girl I Used to Know"? It's inoffensive, but much like Living in a Box's follow-up single, it isn't anything a bunch of other acts weren't already doing. "Mary's Prayer," on the other hand, remains an '80s classic.

"Your Prayer Takes Me Off," Double
Swiss synth-pop duo Double (pronounced "doo-bluh," which I will never not find funny) hit it big with their 1985 single "The Captain of Her Heart," a sort of Pet Shop Boys-adjacent number that effectively played brooding keyboards against deadpan vocals. Follow-up single "Your Prayer Takes Me Off" is much more of a straightforward club cut, which is probably why it failed to duplicate its predecessor's success; frontman Kurt Maloo has a distinctive voice, but much like that one jackass from Crash Test Dummies, he's fairly limited, and once the novelty of hearing him sing wears off, you're left with some standard songs that don't really go anywhere. (In the case of "Your Prayer Takes Me Off" specifically, you're left with a song that doesn't really go anywhere for a full six minutes.)

Double's second album, the irritatingly named Dou3le, reached the Swiss Top 10 but was ignored everywhere else, and they split before the end of the year. Maloo and multi-instrumentalist Felix Haug came together off and on in subsequent years to try and finish their long-gestating third LP, but those plans were sadly canceled after Haug suddenly passed away in 2004.

"You Are My Everything," Calloway
There's an argument to be made against Calloway as a one-hit wonder, given that Reggie and Vincent Calloway enjoyed a successful run as members of Midnight Star before cutting out on their own. Nevertheless, if we're sticking with the bare facts, they are this: As a duo, the Calloway brothers only graced the upper reaches of the charts once, with their inescapably pervasive 1990 single "I Wanna Be Rich." An accurate and horribly catchy summary of the American outlook after nearly a decade of the Reaganites' rule, "Rich" seemed poised to pave the way for further hits, but appearances can be deceiving, and follow-up single "You Are My Everything" fully failed to chart.

Looking back, it's a bit difficult to understand why this song whiffed so badly. It doesn't sound anything like "I Wanna Be Rich" — more than anything, it sounds like a lost Lionel Richie ballad — but it's still a perfectly decent, mildly soulful ballad. Alas, the Calloway brothers never graced the Hot 100 again, at least not as recording artists; following the lukewarm reception afforded 1992's Let's Get Smooth, they moved on to behind-the-scenes work in the music industry.

"If I Am," Nine Days
The 1990s and early aughts gave us such a preponderance of hit singles from flash-in-the-pan pop artists that it would take me the rest of the day to list them all — and you'll be more than forgiven if you've forgotten more than a few of them. I mean, when you're already keeping track of your Tonics and your Fastballs and your Stroke 9s, you're bound to let some buzz bin bands fall into the memory hole.

All of which is to say that I'm willing to bet more than a few folks have no memory of Nine Days as a band, even if hearing the line "This iiiiiiiiiis the story of a girl / Who cried a river and drowned the whole world" is all it takes to make their biggest (and only) hit come rushing back.

Released in the spring of 2000, "Absolutely (Story of a Girl)" was a huge debut single for Nine Days, peaking at No. 6 on the Hot 100 and topping the Pop Airplay chart. And then after that, they... pretty much vanished, with "If I Am" rising no higher than No. 68. The band's next album was supposed to see release in late 2002, but Sony delayed it into infinity before finally dropping them. The silver lining here is that Nine Days had self-released three albums before signing a major-label deal, and they went right back to rolling their own after Sony cut them loose; they appear to still be active today, albeit under the "everyone has a day job" model adopted by other long-running under-the-radar acts like Buffalo Tom.

As for "If I Am"? Like "Absolutely," it captures the millennial pop-rock moment, straddling the line between crunch and gloss as effectively as anyone else was doing it at the time, with a totally TRL-friendly video to boot. I don't know what happened between these guys and their label, but listening to this now, it really sounds like another classic example of company politics harpooning the arc of a perfectly sellable band.