I feel bad for anyone under twenty because they have not lived in a world where there was great RnB music being made. The nineties was the last great era of the genre and since then there have been good albums but Alicia Keys and John Legend, but not that much else. The best RnB album of the nineties was Diary of a Mad Band by Jodeci. The group released one more album after that before splitting. It has been twenty years since that last album and now the boys are back to show these youngin's how its done. Sure Every Moment is not great, no one at this point wants to see a music video set in the snow, and K-Ci is slowing morphing into a Dave Chappelle, but mediocre Jodeci is better than no Jodeci and much better than pretty much everything else that passes as RnB this millennium.
One of my favorite pastimes is checking out a follow up single from a newly minted pop star and debate with myself if the new song can lift them out of one hit wonderdom. 2014 was a weak year for new artists. You had Sam Smith but he quickly got a second hit. Same for Meghan Trainor and Iggy Azalea (though I do wonder if history views them like Vanilla Ice, someone who had a legitimate second hit, but some still think of him as a one hit wonder). The only new artist that is still looking for that elusive second hit is From Eden - Hozier. Listening to his debut album, I did not hear a second hit, but hearing From Eden (dude loves his religious metaphors) outside the context of the album, and I do think it has some potential, though ultimately think it will not make much of a dent on the pop charts. The music video is kind of interesting, we have seen the Bonny and Clyde motif many times before, but this is the first time a kids was involved, well, if you do not count Raising Arizona.
Though they never crossed over, I guess you could also call Maddie and Tae a country one hit wonder from 2014. And they are kind of the trickiest of one hit wonders as Girl in a Country Song was essentially a novelty song bordering on a "Weird Al" Yankovic type style parody of the bro-country movement. But it is not an impossible stigma to shed: look at Beck, from Loser, a one hit wonder if I have ever heard one, and two decades later he collected an Album of the Year Grammy. But where Beck pushed the boundaries of music on his Loser follow up, Fly pretty much sounds like a sound Martina McBride could have sung back when Beck was starting out.
Fun. also quickly exited one hit wonderdom back in 2012, but could they end up in the elusive one album wonder category with all their hit off the same LP. Guitarist Jack Antonoff released a side project last year (oh yeah, Bleachers is another act from last year on Wonder Watch), and now another member is going solo but Nate Ruess was quick to note the band has not broken up when announcing his solo work. Smart move because Nothing Without Love sound like Nate is destined for no hit wonder territory alongside the lead singer of The Killers the members of Blink-182 and Fall Out Boy. The song sound like a middling, non-single Fun. track.
No comments:
Post a Comment