The One After the One-Hit Wonder, Part 3

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.

"She Works in a Woman's Way," Edison Lighthouse
The early rock era is loaded with stories of unscrupulous promoters and/or label execs who took full advantage of the fact that no one really knew what many popular artists looked like, and hired quasi-soundalike facsimiles to tour as an act that was either indisposed or had actually broken up. Edison Lighthouse is a fascinating case in point: After scoring a huge hit with their 1970 debut single "Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes)," they absolutely tanked with the follow-up, which led singer Tony Burrows to quit in search of greener pastures.

This might have meant the end of Edison Lighthouse, were it not for the fact that "Rosemary" songwriter Tony Macaulay owned the rights to the band name, and he immediately set about putting together a new lineup. That iteration lasted for a year or two, at which point singer Brian Huggins and guitarist/bassist Peter Butt — previously of a band called Crush — were hired to front another new version for a Scandinavian tour, which must have gone well, because Huggins bought the Edison Lighthouse name from Macaulay in '74, and he and Butt have been touring with an ever-shifting lineup ever since.

This is legitimately fascinating to me. You're talking about a group that has maybe two studio albums to its name and hasn't released any new original music in at least 47 years, and yet they've continued to tour for half a century. What can their set lists possibly look like? What are people expecting when they buy a ticket to an Edison Lighthouse concert? Are they satisfied in any way? The mind boggles, but not enough for me to research the answers to these questions. I'm only here to bring you the aforementioned second single, which went to No. 3 in New Zealand and charted nowhere else in the world. I hear no injustice here.

"Are You Lonely for Me," The Rude Boys
The Rude Boys were one of roughly 500 Drakkar-scented soft R&B vocal groups to grace the charts in the early '90s; their big hit, "Written All Over Your Face," went Top 20 in 1991, giving sensual yuppies and well-dressed teens something to dance to while waiting for the next After 7 album. I really like "Written," but I have to admit there isn't anything about the song that makes you believe the Rude Boys were capable of doing anything any of their competitors weren't already doing, which is probably why Top 40 program directors immediately stopped caring abou them: "Are You Lonely for Me" was their second consecutive No. 1 on the R&B chart, but it didn't chart at all on the Hot 100. Kind of harsh — this is a perfectly serviceable ballad — but again, these guys weren't selling anything people weren't already getting from a bunch of other artists.

"Foolin' Yourself," Aldo Nova
As a kid, I always assumed Aldo Nova was a really stupid band name rather than something anyone would put on a birth certificate, and I was half right: This Canadian rock legend was actually born Aldo Caporuscio, which is definitely the type of birth moniker that will send someone hunting for a stage name. Anyway, Aldo broke big his first time out of the gate, scoring a No. 23 hit with "Fantasy," the leadoff single from his 1982 debut LP. From there, he had nowhere to go but down, which he did with a quickness; although he'd continue receiving a certain amount of attention at AOR over subsequent years, his time in the spotlight as a pop artist was over about as quickly as it started. "Foolin' Yourself" stalled at No. 65 on the Hot 100, and didn't even chart at rock radio, and though he was back with another album the following year, nothing he did was able to reverse his commercial decline. Nova's final comeback bid came in 1991, when he signed a deal with Jon Bon Jovi's short-lived Jambco vanity imprint and returned with Blood on the Bricks, which did about as well as any Jambco release. (Not very.)

"Bring Down the Moon," Boy Meets Girl
This is an utterly fascinating story — to me, anyway. George Merrill and Shannon Rubicam spent the '80s as one of the most successful professional/romantic duos in pop music, at least behind the scenes; for starters, they're the songwriters behind "How Will I Know" and "I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me)," either of which were big enough hits to keep them rolling in mailbox money for the next 20 years. Not satisfied limiting their efforts to writing material for other artists, they also embarked on a recording career as Boy Meets Girl; their first album, a self-titled effort released in 1985, performed okay, squeaking one single — "Oh Girl" — into the Top 40. It was the follow-up, 1988's Reel Life, that really made it seem like Boy Meets Girl was destined for superstardom — specifically the single "Waiting for a Star to Fall," which was rejected by Whitney Houston and Belinda Carlisle before Merrill and Rubicam took their version to No. 5.

"Waiting for a Star to Fall" is a pretty terrific pop song, and it deserved every ounce of heavy rotation it received; problem was, the Reel Life record didn't really have much else in the tank in terms of tracks that were equally radio-friendly. "Bring Down the Moon" peaked at No. 49, and didn't even have much of an impact at AC, which set the tone for the largely ignored singles to follow. After releasing New Dream in 1991, Boy Meets Girl went dormant until 2003, when the (by now divorced) duo returned with an independently released album that was followed by a new EP a few years ago.

As for "Bring Down the Moon"? The most interesting thing about it is probably its video, which was directed by Alex Proyas, who'd go on to helm a series of feature films that includes 1994's The Crow.

"Baby Jump," Mungo Jerry
Like most novelty songs that become big hits, Mungo Jerry's "In the Summertime" tends to provoke extreme reactions among listeners. I personally kinda like it, but I also didn't have to live through its moment in the sun; I can imagine that if you were listening to Top 40 radio when it was in heavy rotation basically everywhere, you were ready to forget Mungo Jerry ever existed by the time the song ran its course. Listeners were more forgiving in the group's native UK, but the Brits love novelty songs more than anyone else on Earth (hello and die, Crazy Frog); all told, Mungo Jerry scored another seven Top 40 hits back home, including "Baby Jump," which became their second and final No. 1 single. Here in the States, it failed to chart, just like every other Mungo Jerry single after "In the Summertime" — and we're talking about a lot of singles, mind you, because the band has remained a going concern since 1970, and has really never stopped releasing new music.

As for "Baby Jump," well, it's very easy to understand why American stations wanted nothing to do with it — rather than the goofy, good-natured vibes of "In the Summertime," it's more of a swampy soul howler, the kind of thing that sounds like it must have been a lot of fun to record, but has absolutely nothing to do with anything that's ever been popular on Top 40 radio.