So “Come on Eileen” helps explain the ’80s, and “Tubthumping” helps explain the ’90s. And those songs-because Dexys Midnight Runners and Chumbawamba did not endure as pop stars in the years to come-those songs come to define, and also perhaps helpfully explain the year, the decade in which they were briefly hit songs and those bands were briefly pop stars. The consequence for pop music is that you get fewer total flukes like “Come on Eileen” by Dexys Midnight Runners or “Tubthumping” by Chumbawamba. Taylor Swift is Spider-Man in this analogy, I guess. It’s like how film people complain that Marvel movies are crowding out everything else. The hugest artists dominate more and more of the Hot 100 now-as I speak, on this week’s Hot 100 chart, the top 10 is Taylor Swift. Songs spend more time overall in the Hot 100 now-months as opposed to weeks. And it’s a steady downward curve from 1965 to 2015. A graph showing artists who only had one song ever chart in the Billboard Hot 100, the definitive American singles chart. In 2015, this data website Priceonomics went semi-viral with a post called “The Death of the One-Hit Wonder,” and they used, ya know, data. There are fewer One-Hit Wonders now than in the ’80s and ’90s. There is, here in 2022, growing concern that the very concept of the One-Hit Wonder itself is in peril.
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