Children of the 90s One Hit Wonder Mash-Up: 1993

1993 was a highly varied year for one-hit wonders, with a great span of genres coming to the forefront of popular music. These songs ran the gamut from whiny to contemplative to club-thumping without skipping a beat (well, occasionally the club-thumping ones did, depending on the DJ).

Without further ado, the most memorable and enduring one-hit wonders of 1993:

I'm Gonna be (500 miles) (The Proclaimers)

proclaimers - I' m gonna be 500 Miles
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Nothing's sexier than a guy with an accent. Unless, of course, it's two guys with accents. That look exactly alike. Oh, except if that accent is Scottish. I don't know about all of you, but I had to watch the movie Billy Elliot with subtitles. I've heard rumors it was in English, but I couldn't understand a damn word these Scots were saying. I suppose if you've got guys as lust-worthy as The Proclaimers, indecipherable accents aren't that important. After all, these sexpots sported the same eyeglass frames as my grandmother. Swoon!

Sure, they may not have been your typical young male pop act, but they certainly had some form of mesmerizing charm. Their uncanny ability to sing in perfect snappy staccato unison was a marvel all of its own. I didn't have to understand the words. I spent the next few years contemplating what exactly it would mean for them to haver to me. To this day. I'm still shaky on the definition. Okay, okay. I have no clue. But I can only imagine it's something to illustrate commitment in a manner relative to talking a 1000-mile stroll to fall down at my door. I'm pretty sure.

Insane in the Brain (Cypress Hill)

Cypress hill - insane in the brain - 1993
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What better place to be insane? I really hate it when a rebellious knee or elbow of mine randomly asserts its psychoses and has to be restrained with mini straitjackets. No, the brain seems like a pretty fair location for insanity to flourish.

Cheap jokes aside, you've got to love that intro. The beat, the rap--they so shrewdly represent all that was fun and non-threatening about 90s hip hop. Also, imagine how many thugs learned such valuable biological terms as "membrane". Before this song's rise to one-hit wonderdom, people would have to refer to the location of their sanity in far vaguer terms. Following its peak, however, we could all pinpoint its whereabouts to the slightly mores specific "membrane". In the brain.

We also were exposed to such brilliant poetics as:

Like Louie Armstrong
Played the trumpet
Ill hit dat bong and break ya off something soon
I got ta get my props
Cops
Come and try to snatch my crops
These pigs wanna blow my house down
And underground to the next town
They get mad when they come to raid my pad
And I'm out in the night loose scared

Who doesn't love a good fable or fairy tale reference in their rap songs? Especially when referencing impromptu marijuana raids? Kudos to you, Cypress Hill. Kudos.


Blind Melon (No Rain)

Blind Melon - No Rain
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This is probably the first time I've ever really watched this video, and let me be the first to say that it's totally and completely insane. Everyone laughing at a tap-dancing young girl in a bee costume is undeniably a unique music video plot point. You can't accuse Blind Melon of unoriginality. In fact, their music video actually supposedly inspired Pearl Jam's song, Bee Girl. If your bizarre music video concept is enough to inspire contemplative odes, your concept is probably pretty compelling. Or crazy. Take your pick.

No Rain is an incredibly catchy song. I challenge you to listen to it the whole way through without being at the very least tempted to sing along. The music is so simple and repetitive that it actually manages to embed itself into your brain's cortical membrane (formerly the location of the above mentioned insanity. See Hill, Cypress.)

In 1993, I performed an ensemble tap dance to "Tea for Two" at my dance recital and was thus convinced that this song (due to its inclusion of the phrase "All I can do, is just pour some tea for two") was somehow related to the jazzy 1925 song from the then-hit musical No, No, Nanette. I swear, if you were 7 years old, it would make perfect sense to you to. A more thorough retrospective examination indicates this song is a lot darker than I'd originally surmised. I was also way off on the tea party quotient.


What is Love? (Haddaway)





Since we just reminisced about Night at the Roxbury a few days ago, it is certainly appropriate to take a look at its trademark tune. This is one of the most repetitive, irritating, can't-expel-from memory-even-if-you-had-one-of-those-Matrix-flashy-things songs in history. Sure, it's got a fun beat. The first time it loops. Then we get to hear it a staggering 50 more repetitions. By the end, it really gives one the urge to start vomiting Jock Jams CDs and sweating out cheap clubbing cologne to purge the song's memory from your system.

The Whoa-oh-oh-oh-ohh-oh-ohhh, oh-ohhh-oh-ohhh, ohhh-oh-ohhh, ohhhhhhhh part doesn't help, either.



What's Up? (4 Non Blondes)

Four non blondes - what's up
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The song's title really fails to do it justice. First of all, the phrase "what's up?" never comes up in the song's lyrics. Ever. Also, it brings to mind those painful oft-quoted Budweiser "WHAZZZZUP???" commercials. In all of their all-caps multiple-punctuational glory.

The general tone What's Up? was just south of Debbie Downer and only slightly north of Suicidal Susie:

Twenty - five years and my life is still
Trying to get up that great big hill of hope
For a destination
And I realized quickly when I knew I should
That the world was made up of this brotherhood of man
For whatever that means
And so I cry sometimes
When I'm lying in bed
Just to get it all out
What's in my head
And I am feeling a little peculiar
And so I wake in the morning
And I step outside
And I take a deep breath and I get real high
And I scream at the top of my lungs
What's going on?
And I say, hey hey hey hey
I said hey, what's going on?
Ooh, ooh ooh
And I try, oh my god do I try
I try all the time, in this institution
And I pray, oh my god do I pray
I pray every single day
For a revolution
And so I cry sometimes
When I'm lying in bed
Just to get it all out
What's in my head
And I am feeling a little peculiar
And so I wake in the morning
And I step outside
And I take a deep breath and I get real high
And I scream at the top of my lungs
What's going on?
And I say, hey hey hey hey
I said hey, what's going on?
Twenty - five years and my life is still
Trying to get up that great big hill of hope
For a destination

Talk about before its time; 4 Non-Blondes were the original emo. I'm just thankful I wasn't twenty-five at the time of its release and thus joining in on the contemplation of my life's lack of direction. The only revolution I was praying for was a coup against my tyrannical beginning-swim instructor.



Whoomp! There it is! (Tag Team)

Tag Team - Whoomp There It Is
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You have to be at least slightly endeared to a song that opens with a call to "Party People!" You've gotta admit, it sounds like a fun group. Something I would really like to be a part of. Other folks can have their quilting circles and bowling teams. I'm joining the Party People.

Funnily enough, the song was released a mere month after the group 95 South put out "Whoot! There it is." Yep. Whoot and Whoomp. Not only are we not especially original at coming up with titles, we're making up words to boot. I preferred the Tag Team song, particularly because I have a soft spot for responsive shouting in songs such as this:

Can you dig it?
We can dig it!
Can y'all dig it?
We can dig it!

I liked knowing when my part was coming up. It really made me feel a part of the song. Tag Team had sat down and though, "You know, little kids probably want to get in on this too. If we ask them a question, I'm sure they'd be more than happy to respond with a hearty exclamatory reply."


So there you have it. Perhaps these artists' careers didn't flourish much beyond these fleeting glimpses of success, but in the end it seems they have the last laugh. After all, you're probably going to be humming these songs all weekend long.

Michael Jackson, You Will be Missed

Regardless of your take on his personal life, it's undeniable that Michael Jackson was an immensely talented artist. The King of Pop deserved his title for his unending string of catchy, original hits spanning from the late 70s to mid 90s. Though his life became a complicated and unhappy one, he should certainly be recognized for his innumerable achievements. Unfortunately, we will never get to see his comeback tour. RIP, Michael Jackson. You will be missed.

I leave you with the video that once gave me weeks' worth of nightmares but I have since come to love. From the best-selling record of all time, Michael Jackson's Thriller. Feel free to dance along:

Michael Jackson - Thriller
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Puppy Surprise

What exactly about the birthing process do toy companies perceive to be so child-friendly? Aside from the fact that labor begets a child, that is. Children are both innocent and inquisitive, and parents have a hell of a time balancing those two conflicting natures without sadistic toy manufacturers coming in and mucking it up with biologically confusing playthings.

In the late 80s and early 90s, Hasbro came up with a glorious marketing scheme guaranteed to disappoint one in five children. "What if we had this animal doll," a Hasbro rep would suggest excitedly. "That has babies inside of it?" The guy at the head of the table would clasp and unclasp his hands, asking thoughtfully, "But how would the children extract the babies?"

A fine question indeed, guy at the head of the table. I'll tell you how. In a natural order-defying act of toy bizarreness, the good people of Hasbro developed a velcro-adhered pouch that children could simply open and close as they please. As you can imagine, this led to inevitable confusion about birthing. A whole slew of Puppy Surprise-toting kids spent years thinking that when you're done playing with a baby, you can simply shove it back into the womb. No problem here.

The "surprise" element of Puppy Surprise referred to the fact that the doll could contain three, four, or five puppies. Kids are fairly simple creatures, and are thus easy to persuade that more equals better. In fact, every child was convinced that as special as he or she was, it was only fair that their doll contained the maximum of five puppies. You can bet parents had a swell old time consoling these children when their doll (as most did) contained a scant three puppies.

Three puppies? Don't insult me, Hasbro. What can I do with three puppies? Five, now that's a fun toy. But three? Come on.



Note that sped-up fine-print speech at the end: "Puppy Surprise comes with three, four, or five baby puppies! One in five Mommy dolls comes with four or five puppy dolls." Luckily, children are terrible at math, or they'd realize they had a crappy 20% chance of achieving the maximum (or even silver medal) Puppy Surprise experience. They are, unfortunately, pretty adept at counting and thus are clearly aware when they are being cheated.

I remember a birthday party at which one of my classmates received a pink Puppy Surprise with five puppies. How was I supposed to compete with that when my spotty mommy doll had been significantly less fertile? This was the precise moment in a child's life when they learn that life is not fair. Luckily for parents, they also learn greed, envy, anger, and all sorts of other fun hard-to-quell negative behaviors. Thanks, Hasbro!

All images from here on out from the exhaustive http://timpersock.googlepages.com. I implore you to check it out. Really, I'll wait. It's the most incredibly exhaustive Hasbro Surprise toy site/shrine in existence. Enjoy!

Fortunately, if you struck out the first time, there were approximately one million alternative variations you could subsequently beg for to try your luck of the litter again. All dolls in the Surprise line had similar by-the-books adorableness achieved by the winning combination of hard plastic faces and soft, pliable bodies. The box assures us that each of our babies, just like us, are unique. Unlike us, their uniqueness is broadcast by a ribbon round the neck declaring the puppy to be of the male or female persuasion.


Hasbro churned out all variations of huggable Surprise creatures including Kitties, Bunnies, Bear Cub, and Pony. Conveniently, in Hasbro world all of these animals and their corresponding offspring were roughly the same size. Lucky for us, the fun didn't stop there! As the ever-competitive toy market necessitates, Hasbro had to milk this concept until the Mommy Surprise ran dry. Let's investigate some of the odder exploits Hasbro undertook in order to continually surprise us:

Drink n' Surprise.

To those of us now immersed in semi-adulthood, this sounds like a typical weekend. Back in the early 90s, however, you would have been far happier to wake up to this surprise the next morning. In this case, if you shoved a tiny bottle of water down your puppy's throat, you could be rewarded with a variable physical reaction. As the tag-line said, "Will your puppy drink n' wet or drink n' burp?" If only we so excitedly anticipated these outcomes in human infants.


Surprise Outfit




These lucky pups came complete with a mysterious box that could contain any type of outfit. Just imagine! Sure, you only had three puppies to speak of, but that one comes dressed as a mermaid. Makes up for it, right?

Playful Hair Surprise


In essence, you yanked on the little guys' till their hair was visible, with blue hair indicating a male and pink a female. The hair could also be re-retracted (yep, two re-s) into the body. That certainly is...a surprise.


There were oodles more there those came from, but they all generally shared the same ridiculous elements of Surprise. There was always some element of unexpectedness that lent some excitement to the toy opening process. After that moment had passed, however, the doll lost quite a bit of its luster.

Unsurprisingly, Hasbro began releasing "sold separately" packs of babies for reasons we can only assume are related to the continuous bitching from the four in five kids whose dolls contained just three babies. Though children delighted in this manner of cheating the system, there was a fatal flaw in the system. The velcro-pouch wombs were just big enough to accommodate innumerable additions to the additional litter.

At least it gave us an easily identifiable means of judging whose parents were child-spoiling suckers: the ones whose Puppy Surprise dolls' painfully bulging bellies dragged on the floor. Served them right. I was stuck with three puppies, none of whom had retractable hair or a mermaid costume. The only thing to console me? My Mommy Doll got to keep her svelte pre-litter figure. In your face, kids whose parents buy supplemental toys to appease their obnoxious children. In your face!