0008 - 4 Non Blondes

The one-hit wonder is a funny thing.  If I asked you to name three off the top of your head, I bet I could argue that at least two of them weren't, in fact, one-hit wonders.  Just have a look at the ludicrously convoluted Questions of Definition section on Wikipedia's One-Hit Wonder page and you'll see where I'm coming from here.

In short, Carl Douglas had two hits besides Kung Fu Fighting, the Buggles had a second top-20 hit, Edison Lighthouse are no more one-hit wonders than The Timelords and if you honestly think that the Boomtown Rats, Dexys Midnight Runners or a-ha count, you need to look up 'parochialism' in a dictionary.  I'm tempted to argue, though, that in 4 Non Blondes, we may have a winner*.



It seems astonishing that What's Up? (which is the only 4NB song I have - the only one I can ever remember hearing, if I'm honest, although I'm sure I must have heard follow-up single Spaceman back in the day) can have been such a huge worldwide hit and yet they failed to make any sort of impression on the singles charts again.  It's not even as though their one album - Bigger, Better, Faster, More! - was a flop, having sold over one million copies in the US alone.

I made a brief attempt to discover where it all went wrong and it seems to be mainly the old favourite, musical differences, exacerbated by the cold, dead hand of the industry, largely in the shape of journeyman producer/egomaniac, David Tickle.

Tickle seems to be a glorified recording engineer (not that there's anything wrong with recording engineers) whose main claim to fame is being sacked by Crowded House for demanding more money than the actual producer to engineer their first album. His main contribution to generally making the world a worse place while working with 4NB was in having guitarist Shaunna Hall sacked (as recounted by singer Linda Perry here), perhaps an understandable move if it had led to stellar guitar playing. However, at least on What's Up?, the playing of replacement Roger Rocha is uninspired rubbish. And the record sounds like a rushed demo - about the time this came out, I was playing in bands in Edinburgh, where we'd go into the studio for a day and record and mix two or three songs for about £150, and they sounded better than this.

Anyway, here's the song.  I don't know about you, but I can't hear it without thinking of Bobby McFerrin's Don't Worry, Be Happy:

Twenty-five years I'm alive here still
Trying to get up that great big hill 
Don't worry, be happy.

I'm glad to say that there is a happy ending to the tale of 4 Non Blondes, at least for Linda Perry, who has gone on, Cathy Dennis-like, to become a much sought after songwriter for the likes of Pink and Christina Aguilera. And sacked guitarist Shaunna Hall now plays for Parliament-Funkadelic. Stick it to THE MAN.

* OK, Spaceman got to #19 in Austria and #25 in the Netherlands, so I suppose I'll just go and look up 'parochialism' in my dictionary...


 A little postscript to this - I was amused (and quite pleased, if I'm honest) to see this poster on the London Underground last week:

 

No mention of 4 Non Blondes - what's up with that?