One Album Wonders (Or, Whatever Happened To The Propellerheads?)

About five years ago, in one of my iTunes running diaries, I touched upon a British big beat techno band called The Propellerheads and lamented that they had never released a follow-up to their 1998 debut, Decksandrumsandrockandroll. Unfortunately, the band has still not come out with a proper follow-up.

Unlike some other bands, there isn’t a really good indication online for what the issue is. Since 1998, they’ve released one new song according to Wikipedia – “Ten Years (Johnston’s Strut Part One),” which was a single track for a compilation in 2003, and is so obscure it’s not even on YouTube. The band’s debut peaked at No. 6 in the UK, and went gold, so it’s odd that there was no second album. They’re one of the ultimate “you’ve heard them, even if you’ve never heard OF them,” thanks to their appearances on The Matrix soundtrack and other spy stuff. “History Repeating” with Shirley Bassey was their one U.S. radio hit.

This got me thinking about some other One Album Wonders (in contrast to One Hit Wonders) floating about in my iTunes collection. From that same blog post, there is New Radicals. Their front man, Gregg Alexander, was strongly anti-corporate and odd, and the band self-destructed as a result. They have one album, the wonderfully-named Maybe You’ve Been Brainwashed Too, and they’re best known for the earworm “You Get What You Give.”

The Postal Service was a side project of the guys from Death Cab for Cutie and other stuff. Unlike the first two bands mentioned, they actually did claim for years to be working on a second album to follow up Give Up. However, it never materialized between 2007 and 2012. The band then got back together for some shows in 2013, and disbanded again. How frustrating! (Also, this is somehow the first time I’ve written about The Postal Service, even though they were basically my soundtrack for sophomore to senior years of college. I was probably just burnt out on them for a couple years after…)

There is also the case of the Weezer side project Homie, which didn’t even get to one-album status. They had a single song, “American Girls,” that was awesome and on a movie soundtrack. (Meet The Deedles, a horrible Disney movie that attempted to hijack surf culture and starred Paul Walker.) “American Girls” is peak-Rivers Cuomo, and Homie also featured members of Cake and Soul Coughing. Apparently, there are live performance bootlegs out there, but I haven’t listened to them… yet. (One other “incredible soundtrack song” from the 1990s is “JAR” by Green Day, which was initially only available on the soundtrack for the otherwise forgettable Angus, but has since made its way on to some other Green Day releases.)

The Top 20 Stephen Greenwell Music List: This One Does Not Go To Eleven

10) “(If You Are Wondering If I Want You To) I Want You To” by Weezer – 24 plays.

Stupid song name, horrible verses, but my goodness, Weezer sure knows how to make a catchy beat and nifty chorus. My friend Pat and I discussed this, and even with all this song's obvious shortcomings, it's still really great in some parts.

9) “Gives You Hell” by The All-American Rejects – 25 plays.

I'm surprised this one isn't a little bit higher, but I've only had it in my iTunes for about a year, so some other songs no doubt have it beat. It's probably got the highest playrate, considering its age. I make no apologies for having it on this list; it's a fun little song. If you don't like it, well, go spit.

8) “Sink Into Me” by Taking Back Sunday – 27 plays.
7) “Savior” by Rise Against – 30 plays.

If I'm not mistaken, Rise Against is a fairly popular band. However, this is the only song I have by them, so I couldn't really comment on this. I think this one because it is loud and angry. Sometimes, you need a loud and angry song to listen to. The same thing applies to Taking Back Sunday – I realize that they have a following of some sort, but this is the only song I've really been exposed to, and that's primarily because it got some mainstream radio play.

6) “Adelaide” by Ben Folds Five – 31 plays.

I'm generally a slut for anything Ben Folds does, and this song combines the best of his traits. Hypnotic piano riff right off the bat? Check. A chorus and other lyrics you can sing along to loudly in the car? Check. A song actually about something? Check! It's good times all-around.

5) “Let's Dance to Joy Division” by The Wombats – 33 plays.

I'm not normally a huge fan of WBRU nowadays, since they've shifted from the angrier, punkish rock of my generation (the 1990s and early 2000s) to, frankly, weird shit. One exception would be the #1 song on this list, and another one would be this song. It has enough of an edge and a catchy chorus, enough to keep me quite interested.

4) “Naive” by The Kooks – 36 plays.

Okay, confession: I've only ever heard this song on my iTunes and on one of those Guitar Hero or Rock Band games. However, once I start hearing it, I can't stop it midway through and move on to something else. It's a good song to sing along to in the car, the bass / guitar line is very, very catchy.

3) “The Underdog” by Spoon – 38 plays.

Just a straight-up awesome song. Great lyrics, and it has everything – Drums, guitar, some horns, a tambourine... When Adam Carolla complains about bands that don't really have chops anymore, he should listen to some Spoon instead. Because they're awesome.

2) “Safe European Home” by The Clash – 40 plays.

I really got into The Clash a little while ago, once I learned that “Train In Vain” was by them. (Actually, I'm a bit surprised that that song doesn't beat this one out.) Like many of my favorite songs though, this one is loud with heavy guitar and features yelling. These are two important qualities for almost any song.

1) “Cousins” by Vampire Weekend – 44 plays.

This tops the list for several reasons. One, because it's only 2:25, it makes it a relatively easy listen. Two, I really like this song. Heck, I wrote a blog about it in the past. And three, it is somewhat-acceptable cool music, whereas most of the crap I listen to doesn't really have any artistic cache.

The First Annual Random Music Awards, hosted by Steve

To randomly celebrate by 550th post (this one right here), I thought the best thing to do would be to award some random songs. I am arbitrarily making up these categories as I sit here. If you're one of the artists, feel free to send me a check for $500 - for shipping - and I'll send you your glorious award. And everyone else, feel free to nominate others for some awards, or to heap glorious praise upon me for my 550th entry or just "me" in general.


- Best Love Song Involving The Holocaust: "Alive With The Glory Of Love" by Say Anything. First, I've always liked this band for the simple reason that its name is based on the absolute best John Cusack movie. Some people swear by High Fidelity, but that just gets hype because it's about music. He acts like a conceited asshole that entire movie. No, I much prefer Say Anything as a straight-up romantic comedy.

Second, I also like Say Anything because they have incredibly catchy songs like this... even though it involves the Holocaust, you know. I'm a sucker for just about any kind of pop punk, so this song and "Wow, I Can Get Sexual Too" are both good to move. (Although, this one is much, much better than the other.) Say Anything also does a neat cover of "I Got Your Money", which was originally done by Old Dirty Bastard. You can find it on Punk Goes Crunk, purchasable here. Speaking of covers...


- Best Acoustic Covers of Rap Music by a White Girl: Karys Rhea shushyermouth. I was originally going to give this award to Karys Rhea, a singer I really liked on YouTube who did a bunch of acoustic covers of artists like Usher, M.I.A., The Beastie Boys and others, but she took down all of her videos. Womp womp womppppp. So, while I support her still, because she has a nice voice and what not, I'm (not so secretly) disappointed that she took down all the covers. Shame!

Therefore, the winner by default is shushyermouth, mostly because I like her YouTube name, and even though she is Asian (maybe?) and not white. Her video is the one above. I was tempted a bit by the version by Karla Davis, but I didn't quite care for her rant at the beginning of the video. Just get to the coverin', not the moralizing!


- Best Music Video For A Song I Don't Like At All: "Come Into My World" by Kylie Minogue. YouTube must know that I don't really care for the song, since it won't let me embed the video, which you can watch here. The use of repetition in the video is awesome, and reminiscint of "Star Guitar" by The Chemical Brothers, except that's a song I actually like. And because I can actually link that video, you can see it above. (Sorry, Kylie. I still think you're mad attractive though.)


- Best Job Deciphering Daft Punk Tunes: tombola2004. It's linked above. All I can say is, good work. That's a job well done, tombola2004. It's a proud day for your family.


- Best Chorus In An Otherwise Bad Song: "(If You're Wondering If I Want You To) I Want You To" by Weezer. The lyrics from this song are horribly whiny and wimpy, but that chorus? That's good times. I don't give an eff about Rivers eating meatloaf even though he don't eat meat.


- Best 1990s Song That Almost Everyone Universally Likes: "No Diggity" by Blackstreet. We used to play this song all the time at college parties, because girls liked to dance to it (and girls liked to dance when they were drinking) and because it was one of the few rap songs my prickly roommate liked.

Belatedly Liking Stuff: Vampire Weekend

Yeah, that's right - Yet another header for a "regular" feature on this here blog. Don't worry, this will be a quick post, since I'm positive that everyone has heard of Vampire Weekend, except me, by this point.

But hey, just in case you haven't... They're a snazzy indie rock band from New York City, according to their Wikipedia page. The newest single from the band, "Cousins", is linked above, and I must say that I'm a bit smitten with the video. I love how ridiculously literal yet bombastic it is.

Apparently, they have a bit of a trend going with literal videos, since their other big hit - "A-Punk" - also features them just playing their instruments. Unless you're a 1980s hair band, I've always felt that this was a simple and easy way to get your face out there to music fans. Hey, it worked for "Buddy Holly" by Weezer, so why not others? (p.s. Weezer with the Muppets is also great.)

David Bowie is the F-ing S

After a lot of careful thought – about 20 minutes – I've decided that if I could trade my musical career (none) with any successful artist's, it would be David Bowie. He was unquestionably cool during his musical peak, and he still is cool now, which is why shows like The Venture Brothers can cast him as the leader of the Guild of Calamitous Intent and get away with it.

In fact, David Bowie has so many hits that you probably don't realize how many hits he has. Here are hit singles and songs I've heard on mainstream radio, that you've probably also heard and never realized he did:

“Dancing in the Street.” “Modern Love.” “Blue Jean.” “Let's Dance.” “Under Pressure.” “Heroes.” “Fame.” “Golden Years.” “Knock on Wood.” “Sound and Vision.” “Young Americans.” “All the Young Dudes.” “The Man Who Sold The World.” “Changes.” “Life on Mars?” “Suffragette City.” “Rebel Rebel.” “Space Oddity.” “Starman.” “The Jean Genie.” “Never Get Old.”

That is 20 songs right there, and if some of those are debatable to you, just replace them with your personal favorites that I left out, like “Ziggy Stardust” and “Diamond Dogs.” Quite simply, you will be hard-pressed to name other bands with such a vast, expansive repertoire. Other bands or artists that I at least considered swapping places with:

- The Beatles. Like David Bowie, The Beatles have a slew of hits. However, I'm kind of narrow in my thinking; I want to trade places with just one person. And since I'm somewhat vain and egotistical, I'm not sure if I'd want to split credit like Lennon and McCartney do. Even George Harrison has at least one insanely catchy solo pop ditty.

As a result, the Beatles almost feel like an unintentional superband. McCartney is still cranking out hits by his lonesome and Lennon was a supernova once he left the group.

- Queen, Weezer and the Beastie Boys. Because they're all made up of multiple members, I have to lessen their accomplishments ever so slightly. Queen's Freddy Mercury was the closest competitor to Bowie's crown, except that I like Bowie's overall catalog a bit better. (This also overlooks that Freddy Mercury died of AIDS and liked boys.)

Queen has a lot of F'ed out, overplayed pop rock shmaltz that hasn't held up well to me. I'm specifically referring to “We Will Rock You” and “We Are The Champions,” which are always played 50 million times at any sort of sporting event.

Some of Queen's best work is also, well, downright odd. “Fat Bottom Girls” and “Bicycle Rice” are incredibly catchy tunes, but they're somewhat like Weezer (another band I mentioned in this paragrah) in that the songs won't really appeal to all audiences. They feel a bit too much like nerd rock.

The same applies to the best of Weezer's arsenal, for which the term “nerd rock” was coined, after all. I love all of their songs, from the Pinkerton tracks “El Scorcho” and “Falling For You” to the obvious pop bait like “Pork and Beans,” “Buddy Holly” and “Keep Fishin'”.

- Nirvana, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Sublime and The Doors / Jim Morrison. All of them are great, and all of them are dead, which I'm not really into. Overlooking this aspect, their premature deaths prevent them from possibly joining either the preceding or proceeding groupings...

- Pearl Jam and Stone Temple Pilots. If we were doing this list after initial albums, based on potential, then both these bands would rank highly, much like Ben Grieve would after his stellar debut for the Oakland Athletics in 1998. Unfortunately, Pearl Jam kept making weird, artsy records instead of doing good alternative rock, and Stone Temple Pilots fizzled out as Scott Weiland got hooked on heroin.

- Beck, Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails. Awesome artists, except that they're not that varied or commercial successful. If I want something besides industrial from NIN, I'm shit outta luck.

- KISS and The Eagles. The opposite of Beck and Radiohead, both these bands are hugely commercially successful, but not really that deep or critically acclaimed.

- The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Modest Mouse, The Killers, Queens of the Stone Age, Interpol, Girl Talk and The White Stripes. All these are somewhat new bands that have had some great releases, but do they have staying power? Can they change styles and stay fresh and still stay commercial and critically awesome?

iTunes Running Diary - June 7, 2009

Back in college, whenever I was a bit cramped for entertainment column ideas, or just feeling plain lazy, I would simply do a running diary of my iTunes library on shuffle. (That bastard Chuck Klostermann had the same idea in one his books that predates my column, as he comments on a straight 24 hours spent watching VH1 classic, but I'm going to pretend as if I don't realize I'm reinventing the wheel.) Anyway, from this long preamble, I imagine you know where I'm headed... The links in the entry are to the songs mentioned, when applicable.

1) “December” by Collective Soul. A pretty decent song, but Collective Soul is definitely on my list of “What the hell happened?” bands. For a period in the 1990s, every other song on radio was Collective Soul, either “December” or “Shine” or that either popular song who's name I never remember. Then, they were abruptly never heard from it again.

It wasn't an issue that was solely limited to Collective Soul, as there were a slew of bands that had a couple of hits before vanishing off the face of the Earth. It wasn't a one-hit wonder issue either – Collective Soul is clearly better than bands like Len (“Steal My Sunshine”) or King Missile (“Detachable Penis”).

But along with Toad the Wet Sprocket and Better Than Ezra, it seems like Collective Soul had a hay-day and then vanished, giving way to better bands with staying power (Green Day, The Beastie Boys) and puss rock (The Goo Goo Dolls). My theory, assuming there wasn't something like band tension at work, blames radio DJs. I think more than anyone else, they serve as “tastemakers,” and if you hear the same band or style for a couple of years, four to eight hours a shift for five days a week an entire year, you invariably want new music, even if the audience is still OK with it. It wouldn't surprise me if DJ fatigue is responsible for nuking plenty of bands.

2) “What I Got” by Sublime. Everybody I went to high school with and hung out with knew the lyrics to this song, and it's not like I ran in a crowd obsessed with the song of the moment. Half of them were in a band that's main musical influences were The Beatles, Lynyrd Skynyrd, The Band... and it was 2002.

But invariably, if this song came on, everybody knew the words. The only other CD that had that status was the blue album by Weezer, which even Mike Smith knew the words to. The lead singer of Sublime, Bradley Nowell, also pulled a Cobain and killed himself before he could make a truly bad album. Or, as I call it, before he could Pearl Jam his band, forcing them to make a bunch of inaccessible, artistic crap that isn't worth listening to.

While some people insist that 40 Oz. To Freedom is a better CD, I think that only applies if you're really into booze or weeed or flashy titles or rebelling against pop sensibilities. From start to finish, Sublime's self-entitled CD is one of the best albums of the 1990s. It is a refined ride that branches a bit into reggae, alternative and hard rock seamlessly.

3) “Smack My Bitch Up” by Prodigy (only a minute available online, unfortunately). The song itself is actually pretty mundane, the mirror opposite of a landmark, great video that was so good that MTV even caved and showed it late at night, even though it had full-frontal nudity, drug usage and vomit. The song features a rhythmic, hypnotic, grinding beat throughout, its best virtue, but the rest is primarily unimaginative techno staples – the droning chorus of “Smack My Bitch Up” and ethereal female singing.

However, like a lot of techno, it makes for a great music video, which follows the day in the life of a British hooligan. You follow the hooligan through cocaine usage, heavy drinking, a bar room fight, vomiting, a strip club and promiscious sex, only for the reveal at the end that the “hooligan” is a woman by a look into the mirror a few seconds before the video ends. A very neat concept video, with some nice touches like breaking up and muting the song with the punches in the bar fight and the effects of the drugs.

4) “What Would You Do?” by City High. Rap one-hit wonders never get as much attention in hindsight as similar rock and pop tracks; I'm not entirely sure why. During the summer of 2001, this song was ridiculously popular. Now, when I mentioned it in passing a few months ago (don't ask me the context, I have no idea), nobody had any idea what I was talking about, even though they were all the same age as me. I realize I have a good mind for pop culture and pop music, but this song probably hit #1 at some point, charted for a long time and had a chorus that was its title.

5) “Some Postman” by The Presidents of the United States of America. Outside of myself and high school and URI friend Bill Bartholomew, I don't know anyone else who loves this band. But I do. Just about any track they've ever done, I'm a big fan of.

This one comes off their ill-fated, most recent album, Love Everybody. I remember giving it a positive review as a college junior or senior, and I was surprised at the time that nobody else even wanted to review it. They were a “name” band that had sent us a free CD, when the usual crap we got was from affiliates of the Wu-Tang Clan with horrible names like Holocaust.

In the pantheon of PUSA songs, “Some Postman” is one of my favorites. It combines the usual witty, twisted lyrics – the song is about a demented postman who abducts love letters – with the usual bouncy guitar, bass and drums combination of PUSA. I realize that the band is a bit one-note, but at least that note is freakin' awesome. Always better to shoot for perfection and greatness in a single area as opposed to striving for “balance” and mediocrity.

6) “Here It Goes Again” by OK Go. And oddly enough, I'll end it for now on the band that most reminds me of PUSA. OK Go has more of a hard rock edge, and they are much more popular than PUSA ever was. But I still hear the same sort of rhythmic rock in them that I did in PUSA and other bands I enjoyed while growing up.