Hitting it big with one song then going off the grid is not new phenomenon. Or an especially rare one. But being two-hit wonder, now that is something else indeed. Having a pair of successful, high-profile hits and doing a disappearing act after that is a tough feat. Trust me, it has happened more than you may think. It doesn't mean that the singers or bands were bad; they just never had all the cards fall the right way again. We thought it might be fun to look back at the 1990s and see the two-hit wonders that arose from that decade. Some of them were really listenable and memorable. Here we go!
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The Rembrandts
One of the most emblematic TV shows of the 1990s was Friends. It made beloved stars out of six unknown actors - Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matthew Perry, David Schwimmer, and Matt LeBlanc. The 1995 theme song of the show, "I'll Be There for You," was sung by The Rembrandts. Per The New Zealand Herald, band member Danny Wilde said, "The song became an albatross round our necks and broke up the band for a few years. My bandmate Phil Solem had pretty much had it, so we took a two-year vacation from each other." They had another hit with "Just the Way It Is, Baby." They were likable two-hit wonders.
Spin Doctors
This band had a pair of solid hits with "Two Princes" and "Little Miss Can't Be Wrong." Both landed in the Top 20 of the Billboard Hot 100 chart. Per syracuse.com via Rolling Stone, the band's frontman, Chris Barron, said, "I was baked outta my mind high 24/7, man. I was high from the age of, like, 14 to 30. I stopped when my daughter was born. I wasn't together with her mom. And I had this epiphany of like, 'If I'm getting high all the time, this is an avenue for my kid to be taken away from me.'" Spin Doctors is still touring.
Marky Mark And The Funky Bunch
Before Mark Wahlberg was an acclaimed actor, there was Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch. Thinking of him in that long-ago incarnation brings a smile to my face even now. The band notched two hits of significance, "Good Vibrations" and "Wild Side." Per American Songwriter, "These songs hit No. 1 and No. 10, respectively, on the Billboard Hot 100. Even today, the chart-topping 'Good Vibrations' is a crowd-pleaser...."
Ugly Kid Joe
Even the name Ugly Kid Joe is so gorgeously 1990s! The band had two whopping moments of charting glory with "Cat's in the Cradle" and "Everything About You." Per American Songwriter, "'Everything About You' hit No. 9 on the Billboard Hot 100...'Cat's in the Cradle' that got even higher, peaking at No. 6." At least Ugly Kid Joe had its 15 minutes of fame.
