One Hit Wonders of the 90s (Part 16) - Western Edition

Hello, dear reader. I have a favour to ask you. The original post begins after all of the asterisks, if you want to skip this.

Now that the One Hit Wonders of the 90s series is over, I'm not going to be doing my weekly revisiting of all these posts (I had to do that to add the new post to the bottom). Thus, I won't be able to catch any broken picture links or deleted videos any more. Yet I want these posts to be as good as possible.

Please, if you happen upon one of these posts, or if you take a walk through a whole bunch of them, let me know if you find anything that doesn't work. You can leave a comment, or you can send me a message using that handy "Contact Me" page linked above.

Also, feel free to let me know what you think of the post or any of the videos!

Thank you.

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There's something romantic about the Old West. And when I say "romantic," I mean "full of psychotic killers and lots of dust." Yet we seem enamored of it for some reason. The Western was one of the main staples in the movies for decades. I'm not really sure why that ever went away. Sure, you can't have "Cowboys & Indians" any longer, but what's wrong with a few outlaws, cattle rustlers and what have you?

Every once in a while, though, a Western does come out. There was that Yuma remake a few years back, and in the video game area, there was Gun. Last week, Rockstar came out with the game Red Dead Redemption, and in its honour (as well as the honour of the fact that I'm going to be getting the game this week), how about a Western edition of my weekly one-hit wonders post?

There were many one-hit wonders in the old West, though granted most of them didn't last very long (usually the guy they were facing was a multiple hit wonder, leaving them all sorts of dead). It's a perfect fit! Of course, if the movies were to be believed, the West would have been so full of dead bodies that you could have made a fort out of them.

Hey, wait. Maybe they did!

I thought about making a "silly pet" edition of the show, but then I saw this:



I got tired even visualizing it.

As usual, you can find the list of one-hit wonders I'm using here. You really don't want to know what I'm going to do if you take a look before I'm done, though.

He did.

And here we go!

1) Cypress Hill: "Insane in the Brain" (#19)



Ok, I kinda thought last week that there wasn't going to be much rap this week.

Wow, how wrong could I be? So wrong that I might as well have said that Nicolas Cage is totally sane.

I think I just threw up in my mouth a bit. This song sucks by rap standards, and that's saying something! My ears are totally rebelling right now, actually. I'm not sure if they're going to let me continue this post. Not without some serious sedation.

This song is truly Unforgiven.

2) Big Daddy Kane: "Very Special" (#31)



(no real video is out there that I can find...no real music, either)

I'm getting so depressed.

That being said, this song isn't necessarily that bad. At least there seems to be a song behind the rap, which you can't really say most of the time. This rap/singing hybrid is probably one of the least objectionable ones on this list.

It's still stupid, of course. You can't get *that* far away from normalcy.

This song is a Pale Rider compared to most, you know, *good* music.

3) Haddaway: "What is Love" (#11)



Redemption!!!! I had no idea what this song was when I stuck it in the old Youtube randomizer, but I love it! Great keyboard work, this song makes me want to get up out of my seat and dance! Except that my cat will look at me funny. Even so, this song makes me feel good at the best of times, and after the rap deluge, I really needed it.

Yeah, the video is silly as hell, making me laugh out loud a couple of times. What's with those costumes?

Why do I not have any trouble seeing Haddaway standing up to a mob in some godforsaken Western town and saying this?



4) Blind Melon: "No Rain" (#20)



Two for two in the "no more rap" sweepstakes. Nice to see.

I feel sorry for that kid. Don't you? But then she tortures all of those other people, and I no longer do. It's funny how the field of the bee people is locked away behind a fence like that. But how can you not lock the gate?

Anyway, I actually kind of like this song, in a "brain not quite working" way. It's kind of cute, though the lead singer's voice starts to grate after a while. They always seem a little counter-culture, if you can be counter-culture in the 1990s.

Maybe they *didn't* smoke weed? That would be definitely be counter. Kind of like the Outlaw Josey Wales of acceptable music.

5) Intro: "Come Inside" (#33)



More soulful soul music. Not quite Boyz II Men wannabees, but they do come close. While it's not a bad song necessarily, it once again doesn't really distinguish itself from the rest of the pack. Though if you *really* listen to the words of this song, it's a lot more direct than you would think otherwise. Master of the double entendre!! I wonder if that's not all that he's master of.

I'm starting to feel better about this list now. I just hope my stagecoach doesn't get ambushed just on the outskirts of December 1993.

Because that would really suck.

I was starting to feel like this guy:



But I'm much better now.

6) Lisa Keith: "Better Than You" (#36)



They seem to have left the "There's none" part out of that title, though. Here I thought she was going to say that she had found a guy that was better than you at doing everything. Nothing like singing about somebody's shortcomings! In more ways than one, I'm sure.

This is kind of a cute bubblegum pop song, the likes of which we haven't seen much of in the 90s (at least not the one-hit wonder variety). It brings on some 80s flashbacks a bit, which is never a bad thing (or can be Hell on Earth, if you listen to the wife).

By all rights, this should be the Magnificent Seven, but I know what's coming next, so I definitely can't use that joke in its proper place.

Comedy hampered by reality. Who would have thunk it?

7) D.R.S.: "Gangsta Lean" (#4)



And then I go on to find that even I can be totally wrong.

Instead of a rap, it's a very touching song about the gang mentality and the often fatal lifestyle. It's an ode to friends lost. I do wish it had been a firmer indictment of the gang culture rather than just showing the effects on those left behind (though that, by itself, can be a strong voice), but watching the lives shattered by this violence (which was quite prevalent in the 90s) can be almost heartbreaking. Especially considering this song charted late in the year, when people are thinking about Christmas and all that stuff.

No joke, no Western theme on this one. Just a powerful song.

8) K7: "Come Baby Come" (#18)



Ummmm, ok. I know most rap songs are pretty blatant, but this one takes the cake! And the cream, and...well, I'll stop there.

Yet for some reason, the beat's just got me tapping even as I'm rolling my eyes at the lyrics. It's almost like a mixture of Shane and the Quick & the Dead remake (boy, that Sharon Stone can shoot a sixgun, can't she?).

This isn't enough to make me say I enjoyed listening to it, but it didn't make me want to go postal or anything.

So that's an improvement!

And that's it! We've come to the end of 1993, not with a bang, but with a huge whimper and the promise of yet more rapping to come. I know I can't wait! Just glancing ahead to subsequent years, we may be exiting the wilderness, getting over the side of the mountain, entering the land of our freedom, parting the Red Sea to save our people!!!!!

Oh, sorry, wrong Charlton Heston movie. This is a Western show!

Many thanks to my co-producer, the Waco Kid, without whom I wouldn't have been able to do today's post.



And I hope you have a great Sunday. I know you'll be hardened by having to listen to this crap today. Wait, you don't have to listen! That's my job. Now, I have to decompress.



Ahhhhhh, much better.



One-Hit Wonders of the 90s
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8
Part 9
Part 10
Part 11
Part 12
Part 13
Part 14
Part 15
Part 16
Part 17
Part 18
Part 19
Part 20
Part 21
Part 22
Part 23
Part 24
Part 25
Part 26
Part 27
Part 28
Part 29
Part 30
Part 31
Part 32
Part 33
Part 34
Part 35
Part 36
Part 37
Part 38
Part 39
Part 40