Tasmin Archer, ‘Sleeping Satellite’: Let’s not say one-hit wonder

Tasmin Archer
‘Sleeping Satellite’

Highest UK Top 40 position:
Number One on October 17, 1992

1. I blame you for the moonlit sky

A while back, a friend of mine (who is sadly no longer with us) wrote a beautiful little piece about seeing Janis Ian live, and wondering what it feels like to have creatively peaked you were a kid.

Janis Ian started her recording career at age 13 with the song ‘Society’s Child’. At the age of 22, she released what would become her best-known song: ‘At Seventeen’.

In the intervening years, Ian has released 24 studio albums, including one this year (it’s pretty good). But, for all of her success, she never again wrote anything remotely as commercially successful as ‘At Seventeen’.

Lots of people can name one Janis Ian song. Few can name two.

So, in a sense, you could argue that Ian is a one-hit wonder. But can you really say that about someone with 24 albums? And what does “one-hit wonder” even mean, anyway?

2. With the eagles’ flights

I recently had a Twitter conversation about whether Tasmin Archer is a one-hit wonder, seeing as she never really matched the success of ‘Sleeping Satellite’. Lots of people disagreed, but I am far from the first person to suggest this.

It got me thinking: we really need a better term than “one-hit wonder”, which is such an ugly, dismissive term. It’s fine for novelty acts like Mr Blobby or The St Winifred’s School Choir, but you can’t say that about serious musicians.

No, we need a different term for people like Tasmin Archer or Janis Ian. In fact, we might need a whole taxonomy to describe the various kinds of people who have too-brief chart careers.

So, let’s do it! Here are some proposed categories to replace the term “one-hit wonder”:

• The One-ders: An act that reaches Number One and then never make the Top 40 again. Very few artists qualify this category, especially if you discount things like charity singles. Probably the greatest One-ders of all time are Althia & Donna, who blessed us with ‘Uptown Top Ranking’ and then vanished from the charts forever.

• Chart tourists: Artists who are successful in their home country, but internationally regarded as one-hit wonders. Examples include Nena (dozens of hits in Germany besides ‘99 Red Ballons’) and Jon Secada (one of the biggest Latin American artists, but only really known here for ‘Just Another Day’). Lots of UK Top 40 heroes are considered one-hit wonders in the States: T Rex (‘Get It On’), Blur (‘Song 2’), and even S Club 7 (‘Never Had A Dream Come True’.)

• Wombles: Underground legends who go overground with a single hit. Janis Ian qualifies here, but the apotheosis is Lou Reed, who is technically a one-hit wonder thanks to the chart success of ‘Walk On The Wild Side’. However, you would never actually refer to Lou Reed as a one-hit wonder because he is Lou fuckin’ Reed. God only created one universe; are you gonna call him a one-hit wonder?

• Side hustles: Some one-hit wonders are actually side projects helmed by established artists. For example, ‘Tetris’ by Dr. Spin was a sneaky cash-in by multi-hit wonder Andrew Lloyd Webber. The Timelords were technically a One-der (they hit Number One with ‘Doctorin The TARDIS’ and never released anything else) but that’s basically a KLF record.

• Mayflies: Bands that fall apart just as they hit the big time. The Vapors became stars with ‘Turning Japanese’, but behind-the-scenes drama caused them to split within a few months. Trevor Horn and Geoff Downes were the first band on MTV with ‘Video Killed The Radio Star’, but they both then immediately quit The Buggles to become members of prog-rock giants Yes.

• AWOOSHs: Artists With One Outsized Signature Hit. It feels unfair to call these people one-hit wonders, because they often have a substantial catalogue with a smattering of modest hits. It’s just that one of their songs was massively more successful than the others. Tasmin Archer is a good example of an AWOOSH. You can see in her Spotify stats that her big hit absolutely eclipses everything else she’s done:

For the AWOOSH, their signature hit is both a blessing and a curse. It elevates them above their peers and, in some cases, guarantees a lifelong stream of royalties (you wouldn’t believe how much money Katrina and the Waves have made from ‘Walking On Sunshine’.)

But it also means they’re tied to that one song for life. There’s a great sketch in the show Big Train that shows Ralph McTell trying to sing a song other than ‘Streets Of London’, casuing the audience to react in horror:

If you’ve ever seen someone like Ralph McTell, you’ll know this sketch is rooted in reality. Audiences don’t see AWOOSHs for new stuff or deep cuts. They just want to hear The Song.

3. Don’t blame this sleeping satellite

It must be so weird to write a pop song that defines your life, especially if it’s something that you dashed off in the space of a few minutes.

The record-holder here is Edward Barton. Earlier this year, we dedicated a whole issue to the story of how he wrote, ‘It’s A Fine Day’. a tune that inspired hits by Opus III, Orbital, and Kylie. The incredible thing is that he reckons he wrote the whole song in around tow minutes—longer than it takes to perform it.

How would you feel if that happened to you? Would you be thrilled that you found gold? Or would you spend your life in frustration, wondering when that kind of inspiration will strike again?

I guess it depends how you end up in that position.

Things looked promising for Tasmin after ‘Sleeping Satellite’. The album, Great Expectations, did well and she won the Brit Award for Breakthrough Act. Unfortunately, the record label didn’t seem to have any kind of strategy to build on that success. The second single, ‘In Your Care’, wasn’t released until March 93, at which point Tasmin’s moment was kind of over.

You could end up being bitter about this. You could come to resent your one hit, which made a lot of short-term profit for executives who didn’t invest in your long-term career.

I hope that’s not true for Tasmin though. When we posted ‘Sleeping Satellite’ recently on the @twit90s Twitter and TikTok (update: both are now defunct, I’m only on Bluesky), it received an overwhelming response, with tons of people commenting along the lines of, “wow, I haven’t heard this in years, it still sounds amazing.” People still love this song after 30 years. Rightly so. It’s beautiful.

When my friend Danny wrote his thing about Janis Ian, he compared her live performance to that of Bob Dylan. Dylan always seems like he’s in conflict with his old tunes, trying to wrestle them into submission as if he wants to prove that he’s better today than he was at the start of his career.

Whereas Janis Ian still closes all of her concerts with ‘At Seventeen’, and she plays it with the warmth of a proud grandma showing you baby photos. Can you believe I made something so beautiful, she seems to say.

If you make something truly beautiful, regardless of how you got there, you get to feel proud for the rest of your life.

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