3 One-Hit Wonders From the 80s That Defied Expectations and Hit No. 1

When it comes to hitmakers and their biggest songs, it’s not always love at first sight. Here are a few hits from the 80s that not everybody believed in, before they took over the charts.

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“Don’t You (Forget About Me)” by The Simple Minds

This song was actually written specifically for The Breakfast Club (1985), which is where you likely heard it first.

Jim Kerr actually told Songfacts in 2022 that the band wasn’t too happy about having to use a song that was pre-written. They wanted to use one of their own.

“And of course, later on it was explained,” Kerr started, “But the song was written to the script and every time they tried to make it more amenable, it sounded worse, because they would say, ‘It sounds really like Simple Minds,’ and we would be infuriated. ‘How dare you rip us off and then try and sell us on an idea!’”

Internationally, Simple Minds have done pretty well. But, at least in the United States, this song seems to be the one that most people are familiar with.

“Come On Eileen” by Dexys Midnight Runners

This song, inspired by frontman Kevin Rowland’s Catholic guilt over sex, was a huge hit for Dexys Midnight Runners. Ironically, though, their record label didn’t see the hit’s potential at first.

“By the time the song was finished my confidence in it had really been knocked,” Rowland explained. “And when the record label said they didn’t want to release it, I didn’t put up much of a fight. It was actually a radio plugger who persuaded them that it would make a great single in the end.”

“Video Killed The Radio Star” by The Buggles

Before this 1979 song became a career-defining hit for The Buggles, it was actually turned down by several labels. Written by Trevor Horn, Geoff Downes, and Bruce Woolley, the song is a bit of a callout to the way the media was changing at the time.

Horn explained in I Want My MTV: “It came from this idea that technology was on the verge of changing everything. Video recorders had just come along, which changed people’s lives. We’d seen people starting to make videos as well, and we were excited by that. It felt like radio was the past and video was the future. There was a shift coming.”

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