One Hit Wonder

The sweetbitter beauty of the one-hit wonder: how it hangs by itself in the firmament of random radio play, dead star delivering spent light, no larger body of work to give it shape or context.

Or how it becomes all context, the pure sound of a gone era, free of the need to be a point in somebody’s arc of development--early late-early [HIT HERE] middle late middle sad late--pulling it out of the instant where it had its special genius. No longer a song, it’s a time: 1961, 1982, 1995. Modernity begins with the one-hit wonder.

What’s the equivalent in poetry?