Tuesdays with Tom: The Fleeting Joys of One Album Wonders
We remember the artists who only had one beloved album; plus thoughts on the new NBA television landscape, a Gollum movie and LinkedIn lessons
Several years ago, I wrote a piece about one hit wonders. I won’t link it because I’m horrified by the writing today, but it was a fun exercise. One hit wonders like Haddaway, Hanson, Lou Bega and Eiffel 65 are fondly remembered as nostalgic pleasures from the past. A less discussed but equally relevant topic: one album wonders. This is a subjective category, but I feel that one album wonders are not talked about much as one hit wonders, even though they are very similar. Platforms like Spotify and Apple Music are designed to focus on individual songs -- not albums. Still, I was curious to identify some notable one album wonders and give them their day in the sun. This is far from an exhaustive list and it’s definitely biased towards my musical tastes, but I think I’ve found some worthy candidates. Will you agree or disagree?
New Radicals - Maybe You’ve Been Brainwashed Too (1998)
President Joe Biden is a big fan of New Radicals. They inexplicably performed at his inauguration in January 2021 and it was the second most shocking thing that went down in the nation’s capital that month. Prior to that, the band had been broken up for 22 years. New Radicals was focused on lead singer Gregg Alexander. He wrote and recorded nearly every component of their album Maybe You’ve Been Brainwashed Too. The album featured several tracks of alternative, radio friendly jams. It was considered a throwback album at the time and became a revered 1990s classic.
Of course, the biggest song from the record is “You Get What You Give”, a so-cheesy-it’s-actually-kind-of-cool song that is undeniably infectious. The music video featured the band playing inside a shopping mall. I can’t decide what’s more dated between that backdrop or the band’s clothing. New Radicals had another big hit with “Someday We’ll Know” and there are other respectable tracks across this album. Alexander abruptly ended the band in 1999. He seemed to be allergic to the idea of being famous and retreated into a more private life as a behind the scenes music producer. Considering they literally only have one album, New Radicals is a great starting point for this conversation.
Yellowcard - Ocean Avenue (2003)
I have to confess that I didn’t know the song “Ocean Avenue” is a nod to a street in Jacksonville, Florida -- not Los Angeles as I assumed for almost 20 years without ever questioning it. Perhaps if Yellowcard had remained a relevant band for longer than a few years, I would have learned about their Floridian roots sooner. Six years after their debut 1997 album Midget Tossing (that’s right!), Yellowcard re-emerged in a big way with their 2003 album Ocean Avenue. The album’s title track gets the most attention and deservedly so. But over 13 songs, Yellowcard delivered some other pop punk classics. “Way Away”, “Inside Out” and “Only One” are wide-ranging yet undeniable songs that propelled the band to the top of the charts. The song “Ocean Avenue” was so popular that it briefly made the electric violin seem badass. Alas, Yellowcard never replicated the heights of Ocean Avenue. They’re the Rich Gannon of Millennial era punk rock. They were a painfully average band outside of a few magical years.
The Postal Service - Give Up (2003)
This band was almost intentionally designed to be a one-off, led by Death Cab for Cutie frontman Ben Gibbard, producer Jimmy Tamborello and singer Jenny Lewis. In fact, everything about this band was pretty strange. Their lone album is called Give Up, which they immediately did afterwards. The title of the lead single, “Such Great Heights”, is ironic given that it's by far the biggest song the band ever wrote. “Such Great Heights” became so ubiquitous that it could blend into a UPS commercial and you wouldn’t think twice about it.
I’ll be honest: I didn’t spend any time with this band. But I remember people loving them when this album came out. I’ve always had an indefinable dislike for Death Cab for Cutie and that likely played a role in why I never gave The Postal Service a chance. But like a lot of these groups, they were a cool band for a moment and their swift and sudden exit left fans wanting a lot more from them.
Jet - Get Born (2003)
If you remember anything about Jet, it’s most likely from the famous Apple commercial launching the iPod into existence. The Australian rock group randomly reignited garage rock with their debut album Get Born in 2003. It had a handful of signature tracks like “Are You Gonna Be My Girl”, “Look What You’ve Done” and “Cold Hard Bitch” that announced them to the world. They were a C+ version of AC/DC, who dressed like The Strokes, and for some reason people were all about it.
Pitchfork wrote an infamous review of their second album Shine On that was nothing more than a video of a monkey peeing into its own mouth. That was only slightly more offensive than the 0.0 rating it received from Pitchfork. Other publications were a bit more positive, but the review essentially torpedoed their careers. The band is improbably still around, albeit with much lower profiles. I still think those early Jet singles are a lot of fun.
Bloc Party - Silent Alarm (2005)
The English rockers made a scintillating debut with their first album Silent Alarm in 2005. The music simultaneously honored the old traditions of UK indie rock while revitalizing it. They were fast, loud and snagged your attention immediately. The fury starts with “Like Eating Glass” as the album’s opening track. Silent Alarm is one of those flawless, no-skip albums. The big hits from this one include “Helicopter”, “Banquet”, and “This Modern Love” to name a few. Being a Bloc Party fan in 2005 gave you immediate credibility as a music fan.
And then it was suddenly over. Their follow-up album, A Weekend in the City, performed modestly and it flummoxed critics and fans. They disappeared almost as quickly as they appeared. I forget about this band for years at a time, which is a shame because I absolutely love Silent Alarm. It might have been a short party, but Bloc Party was a hell of a time.
+44 - When Your Heart Stops Beating (2006)
When Blink-182 announced they were going on hiatus in 2005, I was bummed out. But I didn’t have to wait too long to hear from two of Blink’s members. Mark Hoppus and Travis Barker formed a new band called +44 and released their first song “No, It Isn’t” on YouTube. The song was clearly about the break-up of Blink and it was perfectly, bitterly emo. It was actually the first thing I ever watched on YouTube. When Your Heart Stops Beating was an excellent post-Blink project that features an era-appropriate blend of pop punk, electronic elements and catchy melodies.
My personal favorites on the record are “Lycanthrope”, “Baby Come On”, “Cliff Diving” and “Chapter 13”. There’s not a dull moment on the album. The somewhat vitriolic tone was a reaction to the feud with Tom DeLonge, who promptly started his own band, Angels and Airwaves, not long after +44 debuted. It was a mild commercial success, ranking in the top 10 on the US Billboard 200 album charts. But +44 never made another album. The band ended in 2009. Blink-182 was back in business a few years later and Hoppus, Barker and DeLonge have long since buried the hatchet. But When Your Heart Stops Beating was an amazing 2000s-era pop punk album and it gradually became an underrated relic in the genre’s history. It’s a sentimental favorite for me that I still revisit often.
MGMT - Oracular Spectacular (2007)
For a few years, MGMT was the poster child for the indie pop wave that dominated 2000s culture and music festivals around the globe. It was all thanks to Oracular Spectacular -- an anthemic assembly of crowd-pleasing bangers that served as mission statements for carefree youths everywhere. MGMT, which consists of two men, Andrew VanWyngarden and Ben Goldwasser, were signed to Columbia Records after meeting as students at Wesleyan University. Oracular Spectacular is the indie equivalent of a rookie quarterback leading his team to the Super Bowl (that should be easier to follow than my Rich Gannon joke).
“Time to Pretend” makes you want to run through the streets with reckless abandon and crack open a beer with your pals on a hot summer day. The same could be said about “Electric Feel” and “Kids”, both of which have over 700 million plays on Spotify. Oracular Spectacular was rapturously acclaimed by critics and indie fans. It led to a stratospheric rise to fame for MGMT. They went from fooling around in dorm rooms to opening for Paul McCartney at marquee festivals in a hurry.
Unfortunately for MGMT, they set the bar incredibly high for themselves and never recovered from their own hype. They’ve been open about how they didn’t take their careers seriously following their first album. Their next four albums deviated dramatically from the formula that made them famous. They refused to placate fans (nor Columbia Records) with music that mirrored the sounds or tone of Oracular Spectacular. They did get a brief Renaissance after being prominently featured in the horrific movie Saltburn, but it didn’t translate into strong results for their 2024 album, Loss of Life. MGMT is a cautionary tale, but those initial songs still hit for me.
Kid Cudi - Man on the Moon: The End of Day (2009)
When I asked around about who to feature in this list, a brave person dared to say Chance the Rapper with Acid Rap. I’m not willing to go there with Chance yet, even if his reputation has cratered in recent years. However, it did give me a lot of thoughts about rap as it relates to one album wonders. Rappers have a history of collaborating with one another, making the focus on their album work less pronounced. On one hand, Kid Cudi is a consistent fixture in music for 14 years running and is featured on some major hits with other artists over his long career. On the other hand, his individual album work is pretty lackluster outside of his debut in 2009.
Cudi already made a name for himself co-writing songs with Drake and Kanye West prior to this full length release. He didn’t invent sad boy emo rap, but he did give it a new face. Songs like “Day ‘N’ Nite (nightmare)” did a graceful job turning his troubles into college party anthems. “Soundtrack 2 My Life” is an instant nostalgia blast for me, as is “Up Up & Away”. Cudi has always blended melancholy and swagger well. But his succeeding albums were bloated and largely inessential. Kids See Ghosts, the 2018 combo album with Kanye West at the beginning of his epic downfall, is a low point. But he finds a way to remain relevant and seems to work well with others.
fun. - Some Nights (2012)
A stupid band with a stupid name that is stupidly stylized. I didn’t have any FUN with “fun.” in 2012 despite ample opportunities to do so. They were on the radio every day for about two years when I was in college. You couldn’t escape them. They were one of the focal points of what I can only describe as the “chant and clap” era of indie pop that was propelled by bands like them, Mumford & Sons, Sheppard, Bastille and Walk The Moon. These bands would demand participation in nonsensical lyrics like “Say Geronimo!” unironically and people did it with glee (and sometimes literally on the Fox series Glee). fun. was the Icarus of this embarrassing era.
Their album Some Nights peaked at No. 1 on the US Billboard Hot 100 and the band won the Grammy for Best New Artist not long after that. They also won Song of the Year for “We Are Young”, their most popular and most annoying track. “We Are Young” was drunkenly belted out at bars everywhere. It’s the cringe Millennial version of “Kumbaya”. Just imagine people putting their arms around each other and swaying in unison to the song’s all-time corny chorus.
“Some Nights” was another huge song and “Carry On” rounded it out for a trio of maple syrup grade pop sap. I couldn’t have been more out on this band. I was relieved that they evaporated from existence not long after this surge in popularity. They officially called it quits in 2015 to pursue other musical endeavors. Some of those have been successful, but short-lived thrills of fun. were beloved by many. What a spectacularly fast flameout for this band.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Next time, I am doing another mailbag. Please send me your hard hitting questions and you could be featured in the next edition of Tuesdays with Tom!
Tom’s Thoughts of the Week
In the last two episodes of Friday Night Beers, Vince and I drank Dos Equis and Amstel Light. You may recall the memorable ad campaign from Dos Equis that featured The Most Interesting Man in the World. That’s the focus of our Dos Equis conversation, with a little bit of Chuck Norris and other interesting men to flesh it out. Unfortunately, there’s nothing memorable about drinking Amstel Light and we debated the merits of mediocrity in that episode. Please subscribe, rate and review our podcast here and follow our Instagram page for relevant updates!
There are rumors circulating about the ongoing negotiations between the NBA and their future television partners. The current arrangement expires for the NBA after the upcoming 2024-25 season. As of today, it looks like ESPN will stay on as a flagship television partner for the NBA. It’s also been reported that Amazon Prime will join as the league’s first streaming partner. The most shocking piece of speculation is that Warner Brothers’ property TNT might be the odd network out of this media rights race. NBC is set to offer the NBA $2.5 billion annually to reunite with the league after losing media rights to the NBA in 2002. That would be more than double what TNT currently pays to broadcast NBA games. Warner Brothers CEO David Zaslav infamously said that the company “doesn’t have to have the NBA” in 2022. It appears his words will be put to the test two years later.
I respectfully disagree with Mr. Zaslav’s take. Warner’s cable networks are a disaster outside of live sports. Just look at the programming slate for TNT and TruTV on a day without them. You may have noticed that all their NBA and NHL playoff games now simultaneously air on both networks. That’s because their original slate is so uncompelling that they need to fill the ad slots twice for those games. If TNT doesn’t have the country’s second biggest sport any longer, that will be a huge blow to their value for viewers. On the flip side, this would be a major victory for Amazon and NBC. Amazon is a proven live sports force with their NFL partnerships. I have confidence that they’ll do similarly well with NBA games. The league is smart to align with them and leverage Amazon’s data capabilities to learn about their fans. For NBC, they can dust off their iconic NBA jingle and also provide a significant boost to their linear TV and streaming library with Peacock by including NBA games. Sure, it’s expensive and they don’t have the pockets of Amazon. But it gives them something to run with when football is over and there is a nostalgic brand connection with certain NBA fans who remember their original days with the league. Overall, the NBA is poised to triple their TV revenue at $76 billion total between those three companies for the next decade. As Larry David would say, that is pretty, pretty, pretty good.
I hate to pile on Warner Brothers, but when you announce a Lord of the Rings movie, I cannot stay quiet about it. That’s exactly what they did last week with the news that a new film is officially underway called Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum. According to the press release, it’s set to arrive in 2026 and will be directed by Andy Serkis, the man who has played Gollum via motion captured CGI since this whole movie universe started in 2001. It will also be produced by Peter Jackson, the mastermind behind the original trilogy and the less-than-beloved Hobbit prequel trilogy. I’ve been very open about my complete lack of interest in more Lord of The Rings films. But even if you ignore that and the existence of nearly a calendar day’s worth of these movies, I am particularly confused about the choice to do a Gollum-focused movie. While Gollum is certainly an important side character in the original books and films, he’s not someone I’m dying to spend more time with. The character is also notably dead by the end of Lord of the Rings: Return of the King and one of the core elements of his backstory is that he spent four and a half centuries in listless exile obsessing over that silly little ring. They even did a mini “how did he become Gollum” sequence in Return of The King, leaving even less room for cinematic exploration within this character’s story. But will any of this stop them from spending tens of millions on location in New Zealand to make a soulless spinoff film? Absolutely not.
There’s a never-ending glut of cringeworthy content on LinkedIn that I’ve talked about in the past. But we may have a new record holder for the most cringe thing in LinkedIn history. A LinkedIn user shared a photo of his engagement with the astounding combination of words “I proposed to my girlfriend this weekend. Here’s what it taught me about B2B sales.” A proposal is usually one of the most emotional and important moments of your life. I wonder how this guy’s fiancée feels about their intimate love life becoming a lazy metaphor for the power of the B2B sales cycle. The man was appropriately flamed online for this inexplicable segue, inspiring some amazing parody posts across the Internet. The post is the latest example of how performative vulnerability and ham-fisted personal life connections with business have gotten way out of control on LinkedIn. As The Independent correctly points out, social media is a self promotion engine that “normalizes users turning important milestones into business or advertising opportunities.” There’s a fine line between incorporating your personal life into your business life. Posts like this are painful reminders that some of those things should never overlap. In a time where America’s corporate leaders are convincing humans that AI personas should replace real dating, and human beings are shamelessly making their life’s biggest moments into billboards for their latest sales pitch, I think we need a serious re-evaluation of how we’re leveraging our human emotions, modern technology and our career goals.