Was there more that I could do?

‘Buddy’, the opening song off Tim Heidecker’s 2022 album High School, doesn’t give a lot away at first. It trots out of the gate with confident, major key strumming and a classic, full-band sound. It’s straightforward, studied soft-rock, the precise sound that you would expect a rock music nerd with a public profile and nothing to lose to indulge in. Music isn’t Heidecker’s one-wood; he’s a comedian by trade. But music is the thing that he gets to do, both because he’s a very good comedian and because he is a good musician.

‘Buddy’ initially sounds good, like most of Heidecker’s musical output. Then you realise the songwriting here is unusually poignant.

“Buddy, I’ve been thinking ‘bout you / and all of the shit that you’ve been through

Nothing, nothing ever worked out right / The only time you smiled is after a few drinks at night

Nothing, nothing ever went your way / You told me that things would be better someday”

Then you hear Heidecker resolve the melody on the chorus, “gone, gooooone, gone”, in such a way that it pangs with regret and resignation. And then, after rifling through the bands his teenage friend would spend his stoned afternoons with – Pink Floyd, Queen, Rage Against the Machine – Heidecker lands the most perfect sleight of hand, one line that changes the complexion of the entire song:

“And you turned it up, so you didn’t have to hear / the yelling going on downstairs.”

What a perfect couplet. Within a perfect song, I realised at that moment. ‘Buddy’ is moving and funny and altogether faultless. And it’s immediately clear that it’s Heidecker’s finest moment – a good artist’s one, great work.

‘Buddy’ reminds me that it is one of the supremely joyful things about music how, surprisingly often, an average artist crafts one truly excellent song over the course of their career. This is essentially the one hit wonder concept. Except one hit wonders are usually referred to with a note of derision, as if there’s something illogical about being capable of making a great work of art but failing to do it consistently, or even again.

That’s a little sad. Why not with wonder? It’s in the name! Why don’t we marvel more often at the fact that there is a morsel of greatness inside a bunch of the artists we might be tempted to dismiss? I think a lot of it stems from the growing push to shun music criticism. I feel like listeners increasingly captured by the idea that music cannot be good nor bad, but success is success. When it’s unfair to characterise an artist as objectively mid, it is impossible to identify a time when they have exceeded their potential. And when you can only appraise an artist on the basis of their sheer popularity, expectations are defined by their most notable accomplishment.

The truth is that most artists are average – by definition – and should be celebrated less on the basis of their career contribution to music, and more for the cosmic fortune that allowed them to create something greater than themselves, even just once. I have tried to do so for the artists below – most of them admittedly good artists, like Heidecker – a selection of true one hit wonders in my eyes. It should be said that each song profiled is a perfect 10 (or 100 if you’re really Redshift-pilled).

Childish Gambino

Me and Your Mama (2016)

Donald Glover entered the most rewarding phase of his perpetually frustrating music career with an unimpeachable, infernal eruption of funk. ‘Me and Your Mama’ opens with a twinkling intro that loiters around for an indulgent two minutes, and cools down with a meditative coda that lasts just as long, and still every second of the song’s generous runtime feels warranted by the white-hot intensity of its climactic second act. Ludwig Göransson’s bassline saunters menacingly up and down the stave; a gospel choir cries out to the heavens; Glover’s throat-shredding vocals rain fire and brimstone over the whole scene. This section is as rapturous as it is hallucinogenic, and taken whole the song could almost be described as a fever dream: just as impossible to look away from as it is to understand what the hell is going on.

Tom Odell

Another Love (2012)

If I have a chequered listening past then the evidence for it rests with Tom Odell. I used to be enraptured by him, unconcerned that the sheer earnestness of his music would eventually curdle. I could easily rattle off ten tracks to try and justify why he’s not half as bad as you think he might be but they’ll all pale in comparison to this, ‘Another Love’, the most uncompromisingly effective sad song you’ll hear in your life. Elliott Smith, Phoebe Bridgers, Nick Drake, Thom Yorke – none of them have ever succeeded in quite as dramatic a fashion at sounding utterly devastated. No number of slowed-down TikTok edits could ever truly blunt the power of that piano melody; no level of analysis could make the writing ring hollow. It’s okay to admit that we all deserve a song like this.

Jayda G

Both Of Us (2020)

The COVID days won’t be remembered too fondly for their impact on the dance music ecosystem, but they did at least yield one barnstormin’, piano-stabbin’, tempo-slidin’ gem of a house track that sounds just as good on open-air stacks as it does in your bedroom. Jayda G’s ‘Both of Us’ (just quietly – co-produced with Fred again.., who also  achieves one-hit wonder status *derogatory* with this song) was an instant classic because it stutters and struts in equal measure, charged with as much potential energy in its nervy, giddy chords as it expels in its weighty deep house swing.

Gotye

Somebody That I Used To Know (feat. Kimbra) (2011)

Truly needs no explanation. Gotye had been plugging away for years at the edges of the Australian music industry, made potentially the best global number one hit ever, and dipped the fuck out of sight.

Florence + the Machine

Dog Days Are Over (2009)

Florence Welch feels like she has another perfect song, but she doesn’t. The secret of ‘Dog Days Are Over’ is that everyone feels like it’s their song. Club kids think of it as their one special, baroque song; pop fans hear the harp and the chamber vocals and hold it on a left-field pedestal; indie sleaze people feel a sense of ownership over it as it emerged in direct response to their movement. I feel like it’s my song because about an hour after the Western Bulldogs won the 2016 AFL Grand Final, Channel Seven used it for a montage that captured a handful of player reactions to the final siren sounding, and it was one of best things I’d ever seen.

Coco & Clair Clair

Pop Star (2020)

Coco & Clair Clair’s breakout single ‘Pop Star’ sounds like the most fun anyone in the world managed to have that year. It’s as hilarious as it is genuinely alluring; Clair Clair’s breathless chorus genuinely oozes star power. “If you wanna hang with bad bitches there’s gonna be a fee”, you say? Money down.

Imogen Heap

Hide and Seek (2005)

Mmm… whatcha say? Released at the time of the nascent dubstep era, this was straight gunfinger food from the unlikeliest of sources. Vocoder mastery to predate Kanye and Justin Vernon: Heap was never topping this. It’s all for the best.

Jessica Mauboy

Running Back (feat. Flo Rida) (2007)

‘Running Back’ is probably the greatest triangulation of what works in US, UK, and Australian pop that I could point to. It marries the synth-led experimentation of the Timbaland-Neptunes era of 00s chart pop with a frenetic breakbeat, and it’s performed by one of Australia’s most eminently likeable musicians, albeit one who hasn’t released anything essential in some time. This is a criminally underrated pop song, as tense and compelling as anything released in 2007, and perhaps its greatest feat is that it conjured a little bit of greatness from Flo Rida, of all rappers, who delivers the most spot-on Lil Wayne verse that Weezy never wrote.

Post Malone

White Iverson (2016)

Post Malone has spent his entire career running away from ‘White Iverson’, the track to which he owes everything. He tried to harden his edge on beerbongs and bentleys; then he tried to level-up his respectability on Hollywood’s Bleeding and Twelve Carat Toothache. Around this period, everyone’s appetite for more Post Malone music waned. So he picked up a guitar and noodled away at it on Austin. This past year, he gave up any semblance of the rap act and turned himself in to the country industrial complex, collaborating with the kind of characters who probably would have listened to his breakout single and started slinging racial slurs.

‘White Iverson’ was fake, and posturing. The whole time, Post just wanted to nestle himself in a sound that felt more real. But that was always an oxymoron: the real Post Malone is fake as fuck. The braids and the tatts and his deeply vulgar writing and his impeccable late-night talk show presentation. None of it makes sense; he remains an irreconcilable star. The beauty of ‘White Iverson’ is that it was, simply, a perfect little world for Post to play-act within. Inside a shimmering snow globe of his own design, he could sauce and swag and ball to his heart’s content. It didn’t matter that it was all a mirage. For a few precious, harmless months, we all just got to watch and wonder at the spectacle.

You can luxuriate in the full playlist below.

Sam Gollings

26 January 2025