Ooh, my little pretty one, my pretty one / When you gonna give me some time, Sharona? asks The Knack’s 1979 successful song, “My Sharona,” blossoming from a sturdy rock beat and exasperated vocals. It was a song that catapulted the group into the spotlight, becoming not only a No. 1 hit, but a cultural icon itself.
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“My Sharona” has since been dubbed among the greats of one-hit wonders. With its snappy composition and irresistibly chant-able M-m-m-my Sharona, the tune endures today, but that begs the question: has The Knack?
The Knack Then
The Los Angeles-formed new wave band—originally comprised of frontman Doug Fieger, multi-instrumentalist Berton Averre, drummer Bruce Gary, and bassist Prescott Niles—came to be in the late 1970s. Before ever releasing an album, the power pop four-piece found immediate success on the Sunset Strip scene, dominating local clubs and inciting a bidding war between major record labels, according to Theo Cateforis’ 2011 book, Are We Not New Wave?: Modern Pop at the Turn of the 1980s.
The band released their debut album, Get the Knack, with Capital Records in 1979. “My Sharona” was its lead single. The song and album quickly became No. 1, topping several end-of-year charts and marking some of the best releases to close out the decade.
However, “My Sharona,” and their debut as a whole, proved to be a tough act to follow for the band. They immediately released the 1980 album, …But the Little Girls Understand, and Round Trip in 1981. While both saw a healthy chart performance, neither release garnered the same explosive success Get the Knack had enjoyed.
Amid dwindling success, the band called it quits just before 1982. They regrouped only a few years later in 1986, playing together sporadically and eventually releasing Serious Fun in 1991, and the follow-up to Round Trip a decade later.
The Knack Now
The Knack continued to tour and record throughout the next few decades. In that time, they released two more albums, Zoom in 1998 and Normal as the Next Guy in 2001. The band sadly came to an end in 2010 with the passing of Fieger after a years-long battle with brain and lung cancer.
The Knack would release their final album, a collection of demos from the band’s early days titled Rock & Roll Is Good for You: The Fieger/Averre Demos, in 2012. While the band is no more, The Knack lives on today in the jarring drum hits, guttural bass line, and lustful lyrics of “My Sharona.”
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