Hipsway - The Honeythief

Ah, the one hit wonder - such an interesting phenomena.  The category is comprised of major bands where only one single hit the Top 40 (such as Roxy Music), talented underappreciated artists who never quite caught on (Marshall Crenshaw), and acts who just caught lightning in a bottle (T'Pau).

Hipsway is mostly the latter, but there was definitely talent in the band, as well.  The group formed in Glasgow, Scotland in 1984 and was led by Johnny McElhone (fomerly of Altered Images) on bass. Singer Grahame Skinner, guitarist Pim Jones, and drummer Harry Travers rounded out the lineup.

The group's self-titled debut album came out in 1986, and had a seriously catchy song on it, "The Honeythief," which became a hit.  Interestingly, "The Honeythief" was the third single released from the LP, which is kind of hard to understand.  At any rate, the song reached #19 in the U.S. and #17 in the UK, and helped the album to chart, too (#55 U.S., #42 UK).

Unfortunately, follow up success was elusive, thought Hipsway did have a few charting songs in the UK.  However, after the poor performance of their second LP (1989's Scratch the Surface), they broke up.  Noteably, Johnny McElhone would go on to have continued success in the UK with his next band, Texas (a definite candidate to show up on this blog down the line).

Hipswap did re-form in 2016, and even released a new album in 2018.

Kix - Cold Blood

Although they were lumped in with the hair metal scene, Kix were actually more of a bluesy hard rock band, along the lines of AC/DC or Cinderella.  Additionally, they were an East Coast act, cutting their teeth primarily in the northeast until their all-too-brief period of success.

The band formed in Maryland in 1977 and were initially called Shooze.  They then changed their name to The Generators before finally settling on Kix.  Led by frontman Steve Whiteman, and with bassist Donnie Purnell as the primary songwriter, the group seemed to have all of the ingredients for major success.  However, in spite of strong material their first three albums barely dented the charts.

This all changed with 1988's Blow My Fuse.  The LP went platinum and reached #46 on the charts, led by the power ballad "Don't Close Your Eyes" (which reached #11 on the singles charts).  However, in classic ERV style, we're opting for "Cold Blood" instead - a straight up banger that is more representative of Kix' style.

Unfortunately, the band was unable to maintain its momentum; the 3 year delay between Blow My Fuse and Hot Wire probably didn't help matters.  With the emergence of grunge, their fate was sealed, and the band broke up in 1995.  However, they subsequently re-formed in 2003 (without Donnie Purnell) and have been performing since, albeit with some personnel changes.

Cool trivia fact: the actress in the video is Helene Clarkson.

Sting - Fortress Around Your Heart

By the early 1980s, The Police were one of the biggest bands in the world, so Sting's 1985 solo album was huge news. Interestingly, The Police were apparently only on hiatus at this point, but they officially broke up shortly after a failed attempt at recording a new album in 1986.

Likely contributing to the breakup was the huge success of The Dream of the Blue Turtles (named after a dream that Sting had).  The album showed significant musical growth for Sting as it was both more polished and jazzier than The Police.  The result was an LP that peaked at #2 on the Billboard charts with four top 40 hits.

"Fortress Around Your Heart" was the third single off Blue Turtles and it reached #8 on the charts.  In our view, it was the most Police-like single off Sting's first solo album, and the odd, atmospheric video didn't hurt the song's success a bit.  In fact, it was all over MTV for a time in 1985.

Sting would go on to have almost continual success throughout his career, though he does seemed to have slowed down of late.  The Police eventually reunited for a hugely successful 2007-08 tour, but then disbanded, seemingly for good.  

The Outfield - My Paradise

The 1980s musical equivalent of a sunny summer day, The Outfield recorded a bunch of bright power pop gems, but somehow never became big stars.  While their first LP broke the top 10, they quickly fell out of favor, something that baffled us at the time (and ever since).  We suppose that there is no small amount of luck involved in success, and the group was not the flashiest, but they truly deserved a better fate.

Long time readers may recall that we featured the group's "Say It Isn't So" on ERV back in 2014.  That song was one of four singles off the Play Deep LP that did receive some airplay during the band's all-too-brief period of major success (primarily 1986).

For the blog we had several good options, and finally decided on 1989's "My Paradise." This song was the second single off the Voices of Babylon album (after the title track).  We don't recall seeing the video back in the day, and the single stalled at #72 on the charts.  To our ear though, this is a power pop gem. 

The Outfield continued recording through the early 1990s, but were absent from the industry from most of the rest of that decade.  They became more visible in the 2000s, but officially broke up when guitarist (and primary song writer) John Spinks died in 2014.  Sadly, lead singer/bassist Tony Lewis has also died (in 2020).