Four minutes

While flipping around the dial this evening I cam across a rerun of VH-1’s “Top 100 One Hit Wonders of All Time” and it got me thinking about whether being a one hit wonder is a bad thing or not. And in my mind, it probably isn’t that bad of a thing.

Because some bands, or some people only have one song to sing. Ken Kesey only had one novel in him and that just happened to be One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Likewise, The Kingsmen only had one worthwhile song in their repertoire and it just happened to be Louie Louie and if you had to list the ten most influential pieces of music of all time Louie Louie would probably fall in between Beethoven’s Ninth and La Marseille. And that is not a bad accomplishment for a career.

Sure, there are a lot of one-hit wonders that are either novelty songs or bad acts that just hit the cultural zeitgeist at the right moment. Every decade people need to have a catchy organized dance song so we get the Macarena or Achy Breaky Heart or the Twist. Those songs exist because for some bizarre reason, a number of people can only dance in well defined patterns. You have your Pac Man Fevers, which exist because wacky FM DJs always seem to have ample access to recording studios. And there is the occasional Take on Me, a song that is known for having a really cool video.

But a lot of the time, a one hit wonder is a person who just for a moment had an idea that worked. Wrote something that in four minutes gave meaning to a lot of people. Made them smile, made them dance, made them think. Maybe it wasn’t enough for an album, maybe they never caught that muse again but for four minutes they had magic in a bottle. And that’s something most people never get to experience. Not too many people can create four minutes of brilliance once in their life.

Sometimes we focus on the pinnacles, those hall of fame performers, the people who will be appearing in history books once the school systems decide that teaching pop culture is better than teaching history. That’s what we all aspire to be but that might be setting our sights to high and we get depressed when we never reach that goal of being world famous and the best on the planet. Maybe all any of us should try for is four minutes of perfection to share with the world. You do that and you will gain your measure of immortality, if only by appearing in a VH-1 special.

(Late Breaking News Update: The TomKat baby has been born. No news yet on a) name, b) whether the birth was silent or c) whether Tom Cruise will in fact eat the placenta. I’m not making the last one up, it was a false rumor that was spreading around the internet today. Or at least we assume it is a false rumor. At this point, anything is possible.)