The issues with this article have been brought up before, but nothing's actually being done about them, and that needs to change.
First off, the definition. The definition we seem to be using is the "cultural" variant, in which the general public only remembers an artist for one song, even if they had other hits. This is quite subjective, yet this page isn't marked YMMV. Furthermore, I can't say I'm a fan of the whole "MC Hammer is a one-hit wonder even though he had five top 10 hits" definition of an OHW, especially since this sort of thing is already sufficiently covered by Signature Song and Chart Displacement.
Second, the examples. Even by our current definition, the examples are all over the place and lack anything resembling consistency or coherence. For instance, several examples discount featured guest spots when describing an artist's OHW status by stating that "it wasn't their hit", but other artists are listed as OHWs for a song they were featured on. The problem is a lack of criteria; the facepalm-worthy comment code on the main article might as well read "we didn't bother to agree on a definition, so feel free to add whatever". As a result, the pages are full of awkward, shoehorn-y examples, but it's hard to call shoehorning because of a lack of criteria for what qualifies and what doesn't.
We need some hard criteria for this. Criteria for what counts as a "hit", so that we can have examples that amount to more than a puddle of meaninglessness. One suggestion I have is to split the examples into categories:
Actual one-hit wonders, that only had one top 40 hit, then faded away.
Borderline cases, the ones who had one big hit, then followed it up with one or two low-scraping top 40s with little to no longevity.
The purely technical ones, who are well known for more than one song despite only having one top 40 hit, or examples whose "one hit" isn't their signature.
Artists whose "one-hit" wasn't actually a hit, but is still remembered for other reasons. (not entirely sure if we should have this one)
The MC Hammer/Rick Astley-type examples should just be axed. Too subjective, and more of a sign of ignorance than anything.
This article is a mess.
The issues with this article have been brought up before, but nothing's actually being done about them, and that needs to change.
First off, the definition. The definition we seem to be using is the "cultural" variant, in which the general public only remembers an artist for one song, even if they had other hits. This is quite subjective, yet this page isn't marked YMMV. Furthermore, I can't say I'm a fan of the whole "MC Hammer is a one-hit wonder even though he had five top 10 hits" definition of an OHW, especially since this sort of thing is already sufficiently covered by Signature Song and Chart Displacement.
Second, the examples. Even by our current definition, the examples are all over the place and lack anything resembling consistency or coherence. For instance, several examples discount featured guest spots when describing an artist's OHW status by stating that "it wasn't their hit", but other artists are listed as OHWs for a song they were featured on. The problem is a lack of criteria; the facepalm-worthy comment code on the main article might as well read "we didn't bother to agree on a definition, so feel free to add whatever". As a result, the pages are full of awkward, shoehorn-y examples, but it's hard to call shoehorning because of a lack of criteria for what qualifies and what doesn't.
We need some hard criteria for this. Criteria for what counts as a "hit", so that we can have examples that amount to more than a puddle of meaninglessness. One suggestion I have is to split the examples into categories:
The MC Hammer/Rick Astley-type examples should just be axed. Too subjective, and more of a sign of ignorance than anything.
edited 28th Sep '16 7:48:05 PM by MyTimingIsOff