There are artists where greatness comes out like a torrent, and their greatest work will be entirely a matter of individual choice – from Bowie to Abba and The Clash. There are those who have one great album in them – from the Stone Roses to Leftfield. And then there are those where lightning strikes. Just once, but boy what a strike. There are four Mazzy Star albums, all full of their very palatable Velvets meets the Mary Chain schtick. And there’s Fade Into You – when for the only time they pulled all their mood and vibe into an Absolute Killer Tune. There are three Only Ones albums. But only one Another Girl, Another Planet. With some apologies to @freddy-steady whose thread does tread on this . If you can assist, nominations please for otherwise competent, even good artists, with a respectable body of work, who once, just once, are struck by lightning.
Lighting struck my Fender – nominations please
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The lightning strike is of course very different from the one-hit wonder. I would think that two LPs are the minimum entry requirement.
Gerry Rafferty, who has been a bit quiet of late, can command 2 potential inclusions.
There is some exceedingly fine stuff in his catalogue, but only one Stuck In The Middle With You and only one Baker Street
The La’s – There She Goes
Only one proper studio album, but lots of compilations. The very definition of a lightning strike.
David Essex – Rock On
Finlet Quaye – Even After All
Speech – Ask Somebody Who Ain’t
Steve Forbert – Romeo’s Tune
John Mellencamp – Jack & Diane
Blue Öyster Cult – Don’t Fear The Reaper
Golden Earring – Radar Love
Not Steve Forbert. Case for the defence: “I’m In Love With You”. A second strike, I’d suggest.
Coming on the back of an already very good first album, the 2nd is a bona fide masterpiece. Since then, nah. But that still makes 15 to 20 songs.
Great idea for a thread and absolutely no treadage. Your Mazzy Star choice is spot on. I have that album (and no more) and Fade into You is really all you need.
How about the Icicle Works? We bellow the chorus of this song out at their gigs ( looking forward to the Chameleons double header at the Ritz, Manchester.) … “We’ll be as we are, when all the fool who doubt us fade away…”
No, no, no …. can’t be having any of this “lightning struck once” nonsense about the Icicle Works.
In addition to Hollow Horse, I’d suggest All The Daughters (Of Her Father’s House), Seven Horses, Understanding Jane and Who Do You Want For Your Love? as lifting the Icicle Works out of the one-moment-of-inspiration club.
@pajp
You are completely correct of course. I knew it was nonsense as soon as I wrote it but I love the song. Or maybe it’s the chorus wot does it…hmm, idea for a thread perhaps,
Not forgetting Birds Fly (A Whisper To A Scream).
And… Out Of Season.
Conclusion: they had more than one decent song.
Love Is A Wonderful Colour
Alright alright!
And “When it all comes down,” But not the lame remix.
Take a jobbing, meat and potatoes rock band and apply to a Blue song.
Nazareth – This Flight Tonight
Lightning strikes twice – the cover of Love Hurts runs it a close second
Great shout – who’d have thought Nazareth could produce the definitive version of a Joni Mitchell song?
Oi…what about My White Bicycle?
When I saw this in Updates I assumed it was about Neil.
Mink is rare and much sought after but just for one song.
Mink DeVille – Spanish Stroll
I can’t be agreeing with that one. Spanish Stroll is great, but it’s not Mink’s best. He recorded many a fab tune.
Yessir!
Did you threaten to overrule him?
Did you threaten to overrule him?
…
Did you threaten to overrule him?
and so on.
Michael Penn – March is a halfway decent album but this is the best thing he ever did by several furlongs.
I met a punkish girl at a wedding in 1997. She said she liked Chumbawumba in that “you won’t have heard of them” kind of way. She wasn’t aware that Tubthumping was roaring up the charts. She thought I was joking.
Anyway, a thirty year career – halfway through you bash out yet another shouty song. And for some reason that one song goes global.
It’s like when that drooling kid who’s always swallowing his erasers hands in the best essay you’ve ever read..
(The Primitives – Crash)
In the early 90s, Manchester’s odd boys out The New Fast Automatic Daffodils were never better than on “Big”.
Life is an Accident? That was alright.
Sort of one hit wonders, where there wasn’t even the ballast of that song being a hit?https://youtu.be/_2M3P3TRaUU
And preferably not the extended version.
I’m off to see them at the end of month! But have you forgotten about Nowhere Girl?
And this, but deffo the dance mix….
Plus, of course
Which is a shame, as their first two albums were chock-full of tunes. I bought the third LP in a chazza for a quid yesterday. My mate Gary (no, not that one) bought it at the time, but I haven’t seen him since 1989.
Any excuse to listen to Broken Land.
Aussie band The Sports….Who Listens To The Radio.
Originally recorded in Australia, the band came to Britain and were pushed into a re-record.
The first version….available on YouTube is ok if slightly ploddy.
The new version…beefed up and slightly faster rocks.
To my ears it sounds very early Cars, and he very definition of Power Pop.
I feel that Britpop could be a fertile area for lightning strikes. Virtually the last time a hot gig in a N London pub and a killer 4-track demo could lead to a 3-album deal overnight. Case in point: Marion somehow got two albums on the back of this absolute screamer.
Hmm, first album was pretty strong, second album less so. Too much scag apparently.
Again, Britpop probably the last time that this was a predictable career route. Thereafter it was yoga, kale smoothies and mindfulness all the way.
@moseleymoles
Damn you. Resisted for a couple of weeks but finally ordered their two albums from the taxdodgers. I know the second album won’t be much cop but really liked one of the singles of it, Miyako Hideaway.
Well I hope they turn out to be more than a lightning strike, but I think I played the debut once and was not that impressed.
Chris Isaak came straight to mind. This live version is sublime –
I wonder if Mazzy Star liked this track…
Blimey Lunaman, that is sublime as you say.
AOR is another area where frankly Journey/journeyman bands come up with something that becomes way way bigger than the band. There’s Don’t Stop Believing and this – from a group with six studio albums to their name.
More accurately, the work of Tom Schultz, who took about five years to put this track together (with help on drums and vocals), later assembling a band to tour the album.
A staggering piece of work, never bettered.
Tom SchOltz.
Sorry Tim, I mean Jim!
The Blue Oyster Cult case is also interesting as actually they are a pretty big band, with some other very good songs, yet…
So, secondary challenge. Is there a bigger band than the Reaper-makers for whom we can all agree on a lightning strike track.
Wikipedia says Extreme sold over 10 million worldwide & had the lightning strike of More Than Words
24 million albums for the Reapermeisters, still bigger, , More Than Words is one of my least liked tracks of all time. Not so much lightning strike for me as pact with the devil.
HOWEVER…Extreme are the most lightening strikey band yet by miles in terms of the multiplier between their first and second most played tracks on Spotify. Most are going in at 4 x – 6 x but MTW is on 236 million, next track 6 million – a multiplier score of a whopping 40X!
I wouldn’t be surprised if either 4 Non Blonde’s monstrosity ‘What’s Up’ or Spin Doctors ‘Two Princes’ gave them a run for their money.
Clearest winner I’ve seen recently is Babybird’s You’re Gorgeous – about 11 million to 100,000
I know a Babybird superfan who will be gutted at that. He persuaded me to listen to a greatest hits, which was not at all bad. You’re Georgeous is down as a reverse lightning strike for me. The multiplier is 70…making Extreme look stuffed with great tracks.
Those are reverse lighting strikes surely, in which their big hit is also so awful that nobody is tempted to investigate their album tracks.
Might seem a bit perverse or provocative to say so but White Rabbit is the only song by Jefferson Airplane that really is sensational and truly great. There are other songs that are decent of course but this one is in another league I’d say. Grace of course brought it with her from her previous group so that doesn’t say too much for the Airplane’s oeuvre.
You could say the same for Man Of The World by Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac. That really doesn’t go down well.
David Hepworth has talked/written about how many acts have one song that was the big hit where nearly all the money comes from like Every Breath You Take by the EBYT hitmakers. That’s about sales of course but there is overlap with this thread’s nominations. The big hit may well be the one where lightning strikes. I don’t consider EBYT to be a great record though. The guitar hook makes the difference no doubt. Also there are a number of other Police songs of note.
‘The guitar hook makes the difference…’
While recording, Andy Summers came up with a guitar part inspired by Béla Bartók that would later become a trademark lick, and played it straight through in one take. He was asked to put guitar onto a simple backing track of bass, drums, and a single vocal, with Sting offering no directive beyond “make it your own.”
The song is credited to Sting and Sting alone. He’s made almost all the money. Still, as you say, ‘the guitar hook makes the difference’.
Yes Heppo brings that up when talking about how bands should share credit equally if they want to stay together.
Herb Alpert was hugely successful and did his thing very well but there was one time when there was a massive strike of lightning like no other and he got to make one of the greatest pop records of all time, namely This Guy’s In Love With You. Thanks to Bacharach and David of course.
I know they had others, but none as big as this:
This is straying into inevitable encore territory, thinking Whiter Shade of Pale, Nights in White Satin, all of that
A bit yes, but:
1. Cover versions not allowed (so no Love Is All Around).
2. Must be both their biggest and best song – so I’m sure Bryan Adams does encore with Everything I Do but there are many votes for other BA songs, not so many for other Boston songs than More TAF.
3. No one hit wonders.
4. And a general air of ‘wow where did that come from’ – Reaper definitely has this, with acknowledgement to @freddy-steady
I definitely think Whiter Shade of Pale is in there, but it’s the mid-range bands with one stonker that I think are the best examples: yer Las, Only Ones or Primitives.
Ace – How Long
Redbone – Witch Queen Of New Orleans
Having just done a piece about their song elsewhere, they actually had a bevy of hits at home. But I am sure this is still the one they all remember
Martha and the Muffins – Echo Beach
You know what? Nearly 40 years later I can’t get past the way she sings “clerk”, even though I’ve always liked the rest of the record.
PS. “Muffins”? Damn straight, right ladies?
The Passions – I’m In Love With A German Film Star
Blancmange – Living On The Ceiling
Ah, but remember their cover of The Day Before You Came, which presented us with the deathless mental image of the debonair Neil Arthur tucked up in his bed reading Barbara Cartland.
Not only made wayyy before it was acceptable to like Abba, but they persuaded Agnetha to appear int’ video…. looking, it has to be said, particularly delicious. Respect!
Blancmange? No way! Plenty of wonderful tracks from them. What next – The Beatles?
Oi…Blind Vision!
Nah, their version of The Day Before You Came trumps it.
I spent so long, er, checking the video that you beat me to it.
A band with a respectable catalogue but just one lightning strike. 😄
Cornershop. Do I even have to say the name of the song?
It was their big hit but actually they produced at least two whole albums of outstanding material. Great band.
Mention of Marion up there makes me think of Menswe@r. Had they heard of Wire, do you think?
Weekender, whatever it is you do, make sure it makes you happy.
Warning: recreational drugs may have been consumed:
I think this one joins my initial trio as a perfect example. Not even journeymen, Flowered Up were me-too baggie scene-jumpers as famous for drug-taking, chaotic live shows and Barry Mooncult as any actual music. Their debut album failed to set the world alight, dropped by their major label….then they come up with Weekender. My fav new fact is that the ‘radio edit’ was still 12 minutes long.
Also features the fragrant Kate St. John on Oboe, although (one hopes) not on recreational drugs.
Ooh I forgot about that. The oboe part is great.
“I was taken by surprise…”
Good call on the Then’s. Big shiny guitar rock with added cheekbones.