On being a two-hit wonder

[ckd]

Suzanne Vega has a great blog post up over on the NYT's website, about "Luka", being labeled a "two-hit wonder", and more. Highly recommended.

(via libertango)

Comments

[schulman.livejournal.com]

Huh. Very interesting; thanks for the link. It wouldn't occur to me to label her an n-hit wonder, though; "Last Year's Troubles" got plenty of airplay on WYEP, and "Frank and Ava" was all over the place last year.

[ckd]

The definition of "hit" is one of those things that leads to some quite counterintuitive results; it means the song has to crack the Top 40. This means that in a long and successful career, you may still only have one "hit" if many of your songs do well, but not quite well enough.

For example, Jimi Hendrix has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, is in both the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and UK Music Hall of Fame, and was named the greatest guitarist of all time by Rolling Stone. He is also, technically, a "one-hit wonder" in the US whose one hit was a cover song ("All Along the Watchtower").