Channel surfing at the start of the year, I happened to catch VH1’s 100 Greatest One-Hit Wonders of The ’80s.
Though I was immediately transfixed for hours, I was also totally puzzled: Surely the most casual viewer would recognize that many of these songs never cracked the Top 40. Even putting that traditional measure of fleeting success aside, some of the artists featured on the show had better-known tunes than the so-called hit making the list. Either VH1’s countdown (which first aired in 2009) was calculated using the newest of New Math or merely betrayed the prejudices of the show’s producers. (I assume the availability of videos probably played into the final tally too.)
One VH1 “wonder” that had me pausing to think back was XTC. “Dear God,” a 1987 track from the British group, made VH1’s one-hit-wonder list at #62. “Dear God” began life as a B-side to the Skylarking single, “Grass,” but DJs preferred the flip, and subsequently the band’s record label added the song to U.S. pressings of the album. But another of the band’s songs, “The Mayor Of Simpleton,” released just two years later, was XTC’s biggest hit. That single spent five weeks at #1 on the Modern Rock chart in 1989, while “Dear God” didn’t make the chart. Of course, the three-and-a-half-minute tune does question the Almighty’s existence, controversial subject matter that certainly impacted its performance.
In an interview segment aired during the VH1 broadcast, XTC’s principal songwriter Andy Partridge said this about “Dear God”: “It was a subject that I wanted to write a song about for a long time. And I failed gloriously trying to put it into one 3-minute song. But you gotta start somewhere.”
In an out-of-left-field surprise that contrasted her angelic image, Sarah McLachlan covered “Dear God” for the 1995 tribute album, A Testimonial Dinner: The Songs Of XTC. By the song’s climax, the typically sweet-voiced McLachlan works herself into a fury, a juxtaposition of tone that makes me love it so. Hear here (yes, her take on “Dear God” later made the 2007 television soundtrack for Fox’s resident medical skeptic):
Purchase Sarah McLachlan – “Dear God” via iTunes, Amazon MP3.
