31 December 2012

One-hit wonder: Babylon Zoo - "Spaceman"

A one-hit wonder is a person or act whose only reason for visiting our world is to record a one special song before sinking into oblivion. Special, because it is much much better than the rest of works of a particular artist. And because of its enormous awesomeness it manages to storm the charts and gain the unknown artist immortality.

The song I present below went straight to number 1 on the UK singles chart on 21 January 1996, selling 418,000 copies in the first week of release. At the time it was the fastest selling single by a debut artist in the UK. The single remained at number 1 in the UK for 5 weeks, selling 893,000 copies in this period. The single also went to number 1 in the single charts in twenty-three countries. Babylon Zoo released two more singles from the debut album and the next album followed three years later, but they never repeated this success and eventually they broke up.

The song is undeniably great, but two more factors helped with its success. One was a brilliant video, put on heavy rotation on MTV. And the other - it was used in a popular Levi's jeans ad.

Finally, another reason to praise Babylon Zoo for this song is that it kicked out Coolio's shameful rip-off "Gangsta's Paradise" from the top spot on several charts. Thank you, guys.

By the way, do not buy this track. If you like it, just download it from the Internet and use your money on another artist. These guys would not see a single penny, as all the rights belong to the fucking EMI, who is not interested in profiting from this song anyhow. If they were interested they would not block this video in some countries on YouTube and DailyMotion.



Babylon Zoo - "Spaceman"


Disclaimer: No Wikipedia articles were hurt in making of this post, but some of them were extensively used.

05 December 2012

Bobywan - "Be My Boby"

Interesting electronic tunes (8/10)

Interesting instrumental tunes, balancing on the border of electronica and rock. What a pity the album is only 5 minutes long.



SUPPORT INDEPENDENT ARTISTS

If you like this album and you can afford it, consider supporting the artist by making a donation on this page - use the button "Donate" in the upper left corner.

[mirror @ archive.org]

Creative Commons License